“Sending bylaw officers out to fine homeless people is stupid. Why would city council do such a stupid thing?” was a common refrain heard last week.
Yet the question sat there, unanswered.
Why indeed?
Is it to harass an already victimized population and financially punish people who have no ability to pay a fine for nuisance behaviour?
Or is something more going on?
Issuing tickets under this bylaw will give the city plenty of information about which parts of downtown are the worst, what the offences actually are and identify the most frequent offenders.
As for the fines, the city is required to stipulate penalties for all bylaw infractions.
Everyone who actually works with and deals with Prince George’s street population or who owns and/or operates a downtown business knows a simple fact. A small minority of the population is causing a majority of the problems. Identifying those individuals and finding ways to keep them off the street will go a long way.
The worst offenders don’t just make life miserable for downtown business owners and operators, RCMP and bylaw officers. They make life miserable for everyone, which includes homeless people.
And it’s likely a handful of the worst offenders don’t even live on the street. They already have stable housing through a variety of means but go downtown every day just to get free food, clothes and drug paraphernalia, followed by hours of fun tormenting everyone, from downtown shoppers and workers to social services workers to the actual people trying to live peacefully on the street.
That torment is real.
The physical and verbal assaults are real.
The vandalism is real.
The theft is real.
The infractions the bylaw officers will report back to city council will quantify what downtown business owners and operators have been reporting on their Facebook pages for years.
The damage to their buildings from fires and vandalism.
The needles, the litter, the urine and the feces left at the front door of their establishments.
The shooting up with drugs and the sex acts committed within full view of customers and workers.
How often is that happening?
Where is it happening the most?
Who are the worst offenders?
That’s what this bylaw is going to find out.
Acting alone, the City of Prince George doesn’t have the financial and personnel resources to respond to the broader social issues of homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, trauma and income disparity. It has been a good partner working with social services agencies and other levels of government to seek solutions but others, especially senior levels of government, need to do more.
City council is under enormous pressure from all sides, however, to do something and this is something it can do quickly.
The power and authority mayor and council do have is to address the current problems as a public safety issue.
The Safe Streets Bylaw is an effort to do that. The bylaw doesn’t target the homeless. It seeks to hold anyone engaging in nuisance behaviour accountable for his or her actions.
For homeless individuals and the broader street population, you have the same right as anyone else to be downtown. But no one has the right, regardless of their background or circumstances, to litter, to assault, to vandalize, to trespass or to utter threats. No one has the right to block the entrance to a business or to accost pedestrians with veiled threats for money.
What this bylaw spells out is that the streets of downtown belong to everyone and need to be shared.
-Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
