Downtown Kelowna businesses are in need of some help to address the costs associated with maintaining safety and clearing the detritus that accumulates nightly from the city’s street-entrenched community, the leader of BC United said Friday while touring Leon Avenue.
Kevin Falcon, flanked by MLAs Norm Letnick and Ben Stewart, as well as members of the Downtown Kelowna Association, were touring a stretch of Leon Avenue lined with the city’s homeless population. The tour was an attempt to get an idea of what local businesses are facing and, they said, it’s not much different than what’s happening in any other B.C. city.
“We’re seeing this right across the province and this is something that we didn’t see even a decade ago, and now we’re seeing it in every single community,” Falcon said, against a backdrop of people who had set up for the day along the sidewalk.
“And unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of social disorders and chaos, violent attacks, random attacks, assaults. And, you know, it seems to be that at minimum, the government should take some of the dollars they’ve got available and help the small businesses to survive in a very, very challenging time.”
Falcon said it’s incumbent on the province to offer help to small businesses that are struggling to survive in a “very challenging time.”
If there were dollars designated to the Business Improvement Associations across the province, it could be used to “pay for all the broken glass, deal with the vandalism, the graffiti, and a lot of the cleaning up of human waste and needles and all the other things that they’re having to deal with,” Falcon said.
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Kelowna-West MLA Ben Stewart said he’s seen a downward trend in the conditions on Leon Avenue since he was first elected in 2009, and he placed the blame on BC Housing.
“What we’ve seen with the changes in BC Housing is they’ve added shelter without really the proper supports,” he said. “Frankly, we’ve got single moms bringing their kids down here (to Leon Avenue) for health services, and they’re stuck in, as you can see behind me, this place where they don’t feel safe. So frankly, Interior Health is not doing its job. The government needs to find better solutions to deal with mental health and addictions and it needs to make certain that we can really truly make some progress… people are just tired.”
These comments come on the heels of a survey being released by the Downtown Kelowna Association.
The 53-page report said that the overdose prevention and outreach centre on Leon Avenue in downtown Kelowna is causing havoc with nearby businesses.
Among other things, the survey said that most respondents have experienced verbal assault and threats of violence; that one in four has experienced a physical assault; and that one in 10 has been assaulted with a weapon.
Kelowna’s mayor Tom Dyas said the survey results reflect the RCMP’s data that showed a 12.6 per cent increase in calls for service in the downtown from 2021 to 2022.
“What we see playing out on our streets across Kelowna including downtown is not acceptable,” he said.
He added that more needs to be done with “those struggling with the effects of untreated and complex health, mental health and substance use issues, and that more needs to be done to address the resulting social disorder we see on our streets.”
In an interview earlier this week, Interior Health officials said they are listening to businesses downtown and are working with the city, bylaw enforcement officers and police.
“We share the concerns of our neighbours around people who are sheltering outdoors and surrounding both at the clinic as well as the neighbourhood surrounding the clinic. In working with the city and the RCMP we’ve seen some good results,” said Danielle Cameron, executive director of clinical operations community.
Cameron says in front of the health centre isn’t the only place there are more unhoused people, as it is a growing trend in Kelowna.
“I think we’re seeing the number of people sheltering outdoors increasing throughout our city. In that neighbourhood but also in other areas of the community,” she said.
– with files from Global News’ Jasmine King