‘No easy solution’
Happy Valley-goose Bay’s transient population the subject of complaints and social media posts
Transient people on the trails in Happy Valley-goose Bay isn’t a new problem, but it has been getting worse in recent years, according to some local citizens.
Stories on social media abound about people being passed out on the trails, breaking into vehicles and having sex in public.
Jackie Compton-hobbs, chair of the Happy Valley-goose Bay Housing and Homelessness Coalition, said there are really two issues.
“There’s the homeless, who are staying in the shelter, and then the transient population. These people are not homeless,” she said. “There’s local people there, there’s people coming from the coast, there’s a mixture of people who are living in the woods and they’re not homeless, they’re transient.”
Compton-hobbs, who is also a member of town council, said over the years all levels of government, representatives of Indigenous governments, business owners and the public have been considering the issue.
“There’s no easy solution,” she said. “I’ve noticed the problem has increased this year and we need to take action. I think the meeting times are over.”
Funding has been requested for day programming from the provincial government, Compton-hobbs said, which they think could help mitigate the issue, and an extension on the shelter to increase capacity. The shelter is meeting the needs of the homeless in the community, she said, but day programming would give people somewhere to go in the daytime. The shelter
“There’s the homeless, who are staying in the shelter, and then the transient population. These people are not homeless.”
Jackie Compton Hobbs, chair of the Happy Valley-goose Bay Housing and Homelessness Coalition
is only open from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
Compton-hobbs has seen and heard concerns from people of all walks of life and age groups. People who use ATVS in the woods are worried about hitting transient people who are
sometimes found passed out on the trails, and people don’t feel safe walking the trails.
The public also needs to report it more, she said, talking on social media won’t achieve any result.
Compton-hobbs said she’s seen that some community members have been organizing and cleaning up some of these areas, which is a great start. She’d like to see more of that happen and said if the town doesn’t have the resources to deal with all the issues then maybe the community could help.
She said citizens need to get
involved in other ways as well, such as setting up a citizens-onpatrol group. She has contacted the town’s crime prevention committee to see if they can work together. They don’t want members of the public confronting transient people, she said, they need to report incidents to the RCMP or municipal enforcement.
“We definitely don’t want the community taking these matters into their own hands, that’s not the way to go,” she cautioned.
“They have to report it.”