The homeless in Victoria have one less place to sleep after a church decided to put up a decorative fence.
The fence is now in place along the front of the Central Baptist Church.
The combination of cement blocks, iron fencing and spikes has been put up to keep people from gathering in an undercover area.
It comes after a round of cold, snowy and wet weather around the south coast of B.C.
“We’re trying to reach out to our street community, we care about them and we do a lot of work with them,” said Barton Priebe, Central Baptist Church pastor. “But we are also trying to reach out to the rest of our demographic, like children and youth and families and the elderly.”
Area residents say they support the move.
“If you came around here at 6:30 in the morning and you saw the problem lying all over the place and the mess,” said one resident.
But volunteers from other churches in Metro Vancouver say this is not the answer.
“It could be one of our children out there and I would love to think there’s an organization like Nightshift or another church that would open their doors even though the messiness and offer people a safe, warm place to stay, especially in freezing cold weather,” said Mary Anne Connor from Nightshift Street Ministries in Surrey.
“In my humble opinion it’s inhumane not to do that.”
-With files from Julia Foy
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