Smithers downtown merchants are at the end of their rope with a perceived crime wave and are pointing their frustration directly at the homeless encampment in Veterans Peace Park.
In a statement presented to Stikine MLA Nathan Cullen at a meeting July 10, Grant Harris, chair of the Downtown Merchants Association, said the encampment must be moved to another area.
Cullen said, the specific ask from the merchants of moving the encampment, is extremely challenging.
"We know how the law works, that we have to give people an alternative to living in a tent, we can't just evict," he said. "And that's why we've made several attempts to fund some programs... but it's going to take some time. In the meantime, keeping the downtown safe, better supports for merchants, more foot patrols, more community services, and those kinds of things I think are going to help and have helped so far."
For its part, the town has been grappling with the homelessness situation for many years, as have municipalities around the province and across the country, Areas close to downtown are popular because of their proximity to goods and services. In Smithers, the vacant lots and wooded area around King Street and Hwy 16, the greenspace behind The Meadows assisted living facility and Veterans Peace Park were common prior COVID-19.
At the beginning of the pandemic, a coalition of government entities, social and health services providers, businesses and law enforcement got together to create an encampment and relocate homeless people to the outskirts of town off Tatlow Road.
However, the displaced persons quickly migrated back to town. In 2021, the town designated Peace Park as the best temporary location for a camp.
The town explored other options during the process of updating its parks bylaw last year, but again, Peace Park was determined to be the most viable option.
The bylaw designated the park as an area for temporary overnight sheltering with the stipulation that camp could only be set up after a prescribed time and had to be taken down the following morning, but that proved to be impractical.
Smithers Mayor Gladys Atrill said while she does not know how much of the downtown crime is attributable to people in the camp, she sympathizes with the downtown merchants and efforts have been and are being made to make it safer, including increased patrols by the RCMP and the town's two bylaw officers.
While the merchants acknowledged an improved police and bylaw presence in the downtown core, Harris said they "continue to have thieves in their stores on a daily basis. It is a frustrating situation for them and all stakeholders in our mountain town as they try to deal with the seasonal uptick in incidents."
Harris also noted the merchants appreciate another initiative that came out of a meeting with the town and RCMP a year and a half ago. At that time, a Smithers Merchants Awareness Whatsapp group was formed to allow businesses to communicate with each other in real time about active thieves and mischief makers.
"It is a valuable resource for quick communication between affected businesses," Harris said.
Cullen said he would continue to work on long-term solutions to the problem including housing and social services initiatives, getting more police officers for the local detachment and working with the Crown to keep repeat offenders off the streets.
Nevertheless, it does not solve the short-term problem, one the merchants attribute directly to the location of the homeless encampment in their midst.
"Ultimately the need is the same, we need to move the encampment to another area," Harris wrote.
