City of Abbotsford gives homeless camp 48 hours to clean up and move out

The city of Abbotsford has given 48 hours notice to a homeless camp on Gladys Avenue – clean up and move out.

About 20 people live on the site, and relocated there after their previous site was covered with chicken manure. A number of Abbotsford officials have been implicated in that incident and the city has since apologised.

Now those people are being told they can’t stay at the new site and have until 8 a.m. on Thursday to move on.

Abbotsford Mayor Bruce Banman said the camp is not a healthy environment for people to live.

“Everyone was in agreement that this was not a safe or healthy environment for anyone to live in,” he said.

If anyone is still at the site on Thursday then police, fire, and members from the Salvation Army and the City will go in and help move the people along.

“The goal is to give people enough notice to give people somewhere else to go,” said Banman. He added that they have found places for some of the camp residents already.

Ward Draper, Pastor at The 5 and 2 Ministries in Abbotsford, said this decision came after much discussion with agencies in the city.

“We’ve had a couple of meetings about this site and the city has felt that it’s necessary to remove this camp for safety reasons, for health reasons, for public safety reasons,” he said.

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However, he does not think this is the best course of action.

“We’re not happy with this because this isn’t a solution, this is heaping more problems on our friends, heaping more problems on service providers, because now we have to start compensating for the losses, we have to start compensating for the emotional and physical difficulties these folks will be facing because of these issues,” he said. “It’s just adding more problems in so many ways, I recognize that it is alleviating some very real problems, but the truth of the matter is, this is not the best solution.”

Draper said the city needs to step up and give agencies a location to set up a campsite that is operated by service providers as well as members in the community.

“I think it’s very viable, very possible in our city,” he said.

Banman said all levels of government need to come together to find a solution to homelessness.

“We have to look at it in a holistic manner to deal with how people became homeless in the first place,” he said.