Councillors at the City of Prince George have decided to dismantle an encampment of unhoused people at Millennium Park, citing safety concerns for both first responders and occupants.
Residents will need to clear out their belongings by Sept. 9. After that, remaining items will be thrown out and the park will close to the public while “options for remediation” are considered, the municipality said Thursday.
“Throughout August, the situation at Millennium Park has deteriorated significantly,” the city said in a news release.
“Recent reports from the RCMP, Prince George Fire Rescue, and city frontline workers indicate serious safety concerns for both responders and occupants of the park as the result of increased density. These conditions have severely impacted the ability of emergency responders to provide assistance to individuals sheltering on the site.”
In a statement sent swiftly after the municipality’s, B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon slammed Prince George’s decision — reportedly made before adequate indoor shelter options could be secured for all.
“I’m disappointed,” he wrote, urging city council to reconsider. “We had offered Prince George new resources like dedicated encampment response staff and deployment of temporary housing units to the community.
“Despite that, council has chosen not to access those resources to assist people living in Millennium Park to move indoors and to move unilaterally with this decampment – in the absence of appropriate resources.”
The province and Prince George signed a memorandum of understanding in June about the provision of resources and work to house residents in need.
In an emailed statement on Friday, Prince George’s mayor and councillors said they are, “presently investigating the apparent misalignment between the Minister’s perception and that of Mayor and Council and expect to issue a statement early next week.”
Phillip Fredricksson, a volunteer with Uniting Northern Drug Users UNDU’ing Stigma, said the political responses are a “distraction” from the real issues and that 30 or more Millennium Park residents now have nowhere to go, expected to leave on short notice, with colder temperatures coming.
The city’s five shelters are perpetually full, he told Global News, and while Prince George has said the Lower Patricia encampment — Moccasin Flats — is a lawful space for temporary overnight sheltering, Fredericksson said environmental and cultural differences between the two communities have their occupants choosing to live peacefully apart.
The city is encouraging evicted Millennium Park residents to contact BC Housing, but Fredericksson said the Crown corporation doesn’t conduct proactive outreach, and sometimes it’s difficult for folks in need to ask for help themselves.
According to the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, as of 2021, 163 people in Prince George were experiencing homelessness, 82 per cent of whom reported experiencing “chronic homelessness.” Eight-two per cent also identified as Indigenous, while 10 per cent identified as youth 25 or under.
Fredericksson, however, said the number of unhoused people in Prince George is closer to 500, including people who are accessing other services, couch-surfing or the hidden homeless. UNDU is currently setting up a new wraparound social services shelter to accommodate some, he added, but it’s not expected to be open for clients until October.
“(Last) winter, there were more than a dozen people I took to the hospital with frostbite,” he said.
“There was probably half-a-dozen people who lost fingers, toes, limbs. I know one guy lost his hand … the shelters do not have the space to house these people, so we are in a massive crisis.”
In 2022, the City of Prince George apologized for the harm it caused when it took down structures from the Moccasin Flats encampment, stating it believed at the time they had been abandoned.
The municipality had appealed a court ruling that denied its injunction request to close the encampment. When a B.C. Supreme Court judge determined the city “inflicted serious harm on vulnerable people” last March, it withdrew its appeal.
Frederiksson said there are major communication barriers between city staff, outreach workers, volunteers, and unhoused people, with Thursday’s decision being the latest example. No one knew about the eviction prior to the day it was announced, and the Sept. 9 deadline was an extension obtained through last-minute advocacy, he said.
“Whenever anything comes up with this encampment — because there has been a fire there, they did a raid and found some weapons and drugs and all these things are just complete invasions that don’t need to happen — but what happened is the bylaw and the police are the only ones actually privy to the knowledge that this is going to happen,” Frederiksson explained.
“A constant problem that we keep facing is that nobody’s reaching out to the people who actually interact and provide services to these people.”
In July, Prince George said it was working to support unhoused people in Millennium Park in collaboration with First Nations and community partners. It was unclear Thursday how those efforts bore fruit.
Meanwhile, Kahlon said his ministry will do what it can to ensure as many Millennium Park residents are sheltered as possible, but the decision “presents significant challenges.”
Frederiksson said he and others from UNDU will also be at the encampment in the coming days, taking information from residents, finding out their barriers and what supports will be most useful for them, “but mainly, just getting a number on exactly who’s there so that they don’t get completely displaced when they’re dismantled.”
— with files from The Canadian Press