Homeless advocates in Maple Ridge are concerned, saying they’re not seeing any action to help the area’s most vulnerable citizens.
Alliance Against Displacement organizer Ivan Drury says this comes after the province announced intentions to build modular housing.
“It’s now been nearly three months since they promised that they were gonna move on that with urgency, and they still don’t have that plot of land, so why are they dragging their feet?”
He said back in December, after the ‘Anita’s Place’ tent city defeated the city’s application for a court injunction, BC Housing said it would open up workplace units for temporary housing.
Drury said now, in the middle of February, people have survived the worst of the cold and rain outside in tents.
“Sort of an insult to injury, because the demand that’s come out from the homeless people here in this community has been for modular housing of the style that’s been displayed in Vancouver and to have 200 units of it opened right away, in order to take the people who are in this community on the street off the street, and indoors, and immediately begin building social housing, so that they’re then not stuck in that temporary housing forever.”
He added what those in Maple Ridge would get isn’t nearly as nice as Vancouver.
“They’ve opened this show model modular housing in Vancouver that are three to four hundred square foot units, that are self-contained with bathrooms and kitchens. And in Maple Ridge, what we’re getting is not those, but just Atco trailers. Like mining camp rooms. So, an isolated room in a trailer is not the same thing as a self-contained intentionally built unit with a bathroom kitchen where you can live a dignified life.”
Neither BC Housing or the provincial government have responded to a request for comment.