Langley Mounties brought together their fellow officers from around the Lower Mainland Thursday to compare notes on how police can help deal with the ongoing homelessness crisis.
Officers from Langley can deal with lawbreaking, but homelessness itself isn’t a crime, said Staff Sergeant Wayne Baier of the Langley RCMP.
“They’re not all drug addicts, they’re not all petty criminals,” said Baier.
He added that the homeless are citizens like any other, and the RCMP have a duty to protect them too.
To improve their approach and to share knowledge, the Langley RCMP has hosted gatherings of officers and outside experts on homelessness every four months over the past two years.
“We know it’s not the same everywhere you go,” said Baier. Surrey had a massive tent city until 2017, Vancouver has the Downtown Eastside, and other communities also have large encampments. Langley has a single large shelter and a population of homeless who are frequently moved around by local bylaw officers, with few tent clusters lasting longer than a few months.
Baier also noted that while the RCMP have a role to play, they can’t be the key to getting people off the street and into housing.
“We’re happy to be part of that, but we can’t be driving the bus,” Baier said.
At the Sept. 27 meeting, officers from Squamish, Chilliwack, Coquitlam, Ridge Meadows, Abbotsford, Langley, and other cities heard an in-depth presentation on how the notorious “Whalley Strip” homeless encampment was dismantled and its residents moved into shelters and housing in June of 2017.
Sgt. Trevor Dinwoodie of the Surrey RCMP talked about the role of the Surrey Outreach Team and the difference in the policing approach from a few years ago.
When Dinwoodie started as a young constable in the early 2000s, he served in the same area of Whalley. His unit busted drug users, getting high arrest statistics. Dinwoodie now says that was a very ineffective approach.
“We’re still dealing with the fallout of that now,” he said.
The crisis for Surrey began after 2008, when developers began buying marginal housing – “crack shacks” – in Whalley for development. The houses were bulldozed.
“All these people flooded the streets, and they had nowhere to go,” Dinwoodie said. “So most of them went to 135A Street and the surrounding parks, and the surrounding ravines.”
The overdose crisis began in 2016, along with a high level of street violence in Whalley linked to drug activity. Dinwoodie recalled the time a man walked into an RCMP office after just having had his ear hacked off over a drug debt.
Foot patrols headed back out into Whalley, but this time with a different plan and a different attitude than the goal of simply arresting people, he said.
“We need to stop criminalizing the addicted,” Dinwoodie said. “We need to go after the guys that are feeding them [drugs].”
They turned to a 24-seven policing model, and partnerships with BC Ambulance, Surrey Bylaws, BC Housing, and the non-profit Lookout Society.
“We wanted to show this community we were all in,” said Dinwoodie.
As the number of tents on 135A grew, they worked to keep the people there safe and alive. Regular patrols checked on the well being of the homeless, and connected them with services. The City of Surrey cleaned away trash on a regular basis, and provided portable toilets to end the problem of human feces being found in doorways.
After the 2017 election, more money for social housing was made available. BC Housing had already been involved, but could now move forward on a plan for modular housing, said Brenda Prosken, regional director of operations for the government agency.
There were approximately 180 people living on 135A Street in the spring of 2017. Between modular housing and other existing shelters and supportive options, BC Housing worked with the many other partners to move all the campers off the street in just three days.
In total, they found housing for about 200 of the approximately 600 homeless people who were living on the streets of Surrey at the time.
“It was focused and it was respectful,” Prosken said of the move. “There were no incidents. There were no injuries. And there were no arrests.”
Although the move took just days, the planning and logistics took months to arrange. Officials on the ground had to decide which type of housing and what level of support was appropriate for each person.
In the end, Prosken and Dinwoodie said the move was a success. The tent city has not returned to 135A.
There has been very little turnover in transitional housing, Prosken said, with 95 per cent of the original residents still housed more than a year later. Some have died, and a few were evicted for behaviour issues.
But of those who remain, some have found part time work, others are going back to school.
The overall approach is similar to what is being tried in Langley, Prosken said, from offering services and help to people while they are still homeless, to eventually the possibility of supportive housing.
BC Housing has put forward a plan to turn the former Quality Inn on 200th Street into a 49-unit supportive housing project, with staff on site.
It will be up to the new Langley Township council elected this October to make a decision on that project. The plan has proven controversial with neighbours, many of whom have raised concerns about public safety in the area.