Opponents of City of Prince George's application for a court order to clear out what remains of the Moccasin Flats homeless camp will have some additional time to build a case against the move.
A day-long hearing on the matter is now scheduled for Mon., Dec. 13 after a judge rejected the City's request to hold the hearing as soon as this coming Monday, and just 11 days after the City had filed its petition.
Meanwhile, court documents related to the action now include an affidavit from Michelle McGregor, a legal advocate for the B.C. First Nations Justice Council.
McGregor says she was on at the camp at the end of Lower Patricia Boulevard on November 17 when the City deployed front-end loaders and a dump truck to clear out some of the sites left behind by the occupants no longer living there. Despite bylaw officers telling her the occupants have given consent to have their belongings destroyed, McGregor says she noticed two people "rummaging through a pile of tents that had been bulldozed."
The affidavit also includes a "point in time" count of homeless in Prince George conducted in March by Community Partners Addressing Homelessness in March but not made public until November 9, about a month after the hearing on the City's previous attempt to close down Moccasin Flats. A judge subsequently rejected that portion of the City's application, finding that if evicted, the occupants would have no other place to go.
The survey found that at least 163 people were experiencing "absolute homelessness" on the night of the count, up 18% from 133 in 2018 when the last survey was conducted.
