VPD veteran says province must renovate 18 single-room occupancy hotels
Mike Howell
Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
CREDIT: Photo-Dan Toulgoet
Makeshift shelters, including Mark Tobiasson's lean-to in Oppenheimer Park, populate the Downtown Eastside.
A senior Vancouver police officer says homelessness in the Downtown Eastside is the worst he's seen in his 23 years on the job.
Supt. Warren Lemcke, commander for the north part of the city, said the dire situation won't change until the provincial government renovates the 18 single-room occupancy hotels it purchased over the last year.
Mike Howell
Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
CREDIT: Photo-Dan Toulgoet
Makeshift shelters, including Mark Tobiasson's lean-to in Oppenheimer Park, populate the Downtown Eastside.
A senior Vancouver police officer says homelessness in the Downtown Eastside is the worst he's seen in his 23 years on the job.
Supt. Warren Lemcke, commander for the north part of the city, said the dire situation won't change until the provincial government renovates the 18 single-room occupancy hotels it purchased over the last year.
But Lemcke warned the hotels need proper management and support
services for them to be effective. The city's commitment to build 12
social housing sites will reduce homelessness, but those buildings are
years away from opening, he said.
And there's more bad news.
Although the majority of shelters in the Downtown Eastside now operate 24 hours a day, Lemcke has not seen a reduction in people sleeping on the streets. He expects to see more people on the streets once the good weather arrives.
He said many people choose to sleep outside because of the horrible conditions in many of the hotels in the Downtown Eastside. Bedbugs, rodent infestations, fire code violations and drug dealers are among the problems in the hotels. Lemcke made his comments at a Vancouver Police Board meeting June 18. "I'm down there almost every morning--5:30 in the morning--and I drive around and it is a tragedy what's going on there," Lemcke told the board, which includes Mayor Sam Sullivan, who is its chairman.
Having a bus service police officers could call at any time to transport homeless people to shelters might help, Lemcke said. But with all the shelters full, the bus would likely have nowhere to go, he added.
Lemcke attended the board meeting to respond to a letter Pivot Legal Society sent to Sullivan that raised concerns over police targeting the homeless. Pivot requested police place a moratorium on ticketing people sleeping outside for obstructing sidewalks or constructing shelters on city property.
Lemcke said the city prosecutors' office told him that a charge has not been laid for constructing a shelter on city property since 2004. He added that prosecutors laid 139 charges of "obstructive solicitation" in 2007 and another 16 this year.
"These are all related to panhandling issues," Lemcke said. "First of all, it's not targeting the homeless, although some of those people might be homeless."
Added Lemcke: "It might happen when it's a health and safety issue, when somebody has got themselves in a situation where they just can't be set up there, and we have to move them. We would take enforcement action in those cases, but it just hasn't happened."
Pivot's letter, written by lawyer David Eby, requested the VPD cancel the part of its 2008 business plan that calls for a 20 per cent increase in charges under the Safe Streets Act and Trespass Act.
The VPD's plan is to target mainly aggressive panhandlers and people using squeegees in traffic. In 2007, police recommended 243 charges under the Safe Streets Act and 95 under the Trespass Act.
Eby asked that tickets under the Trespass Act only be issued when a property owner complains and if the person in question returns to the property after being asked to leave.
Lemcke pointed out that police cannot simply go into a premise and charge a person under the Trespass Act. So, he said, police are following the law just as Pivot requested.
The letter cited a recent report that suggested on more than 40,000 occasions, between April 2007 and January 2008, people were denied access to emergency shelter in the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
The statistics show Vancouver's "turnaways" were the highest at 67 per cent--and that didn't include statistics from the Triage shelter on Powell Street.
Pivot lawyer Laura Track attended the meeting. Questioned by board member Terry La Liberte about Lemcke's claim that police weren't targeting the homeless, Track admitted the anecdotal reports Pivot is getting regarding homeless people being told to pack up and move along relates more to private security guards.
Track told the Courier after the meeting that she was pleased the prosecutors' office hadn't laid any charges in three years on people constructing a shelter on city property. "It's not the moratorium that we were looking for, but it seems to be if not quite a policy, at least something that hasn't happened over the last few years."
© Vancouver Courier 2008
Copyright © 2008 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
And there's more bad news.
Although the majority of shelters in the Downtown Eastside now operate 24 hours a day, Lemcke has not seen a reduction in people sleeping on the streets. He expects to see more people on the streets once the good weather arrives.
He said many people choose to sleep outside because of the horrible conditions in many of the hotels in the Downtown Eastside. Bedbugs, rodent infestations, fire code violations and drug dealers are among the problems in the hotels. Lemcke made his comments at a Vancouver Police Board meeting June 18. "I'm down there almost every morning--5:30 in the morning--and I drive around and it is a tragedy what's going on there," Lemcke told the board, which includes Mayor Sam Sullivan, who is its chairman.
Having a bus service police officers could call at any time to transport homeless people to shelters might help, Lemcke said. But with all the shelters full, the bus would likely have nowhere to go, he added.
Lemcke attended the board meeting to respond to a letter Pivot Legal Society sent to Sullivan that raised concerns over police targeting the homeless. Pivot requested police place a moratorium on ticketing people sleeping outside for obstructing sidewalks or constructing shelters on city property.
Lemcke said the city prosecutors' office told him that a charge has not been laid for constructing a shelter on city property since 2004. He added that prosecutors laid 139 charges of "obstructive solicitation" in 2007 and another 16 this year.
"These are all related to panhandling issues," Lemcke said. "First of all, it's not targeting the homeless, although some of those people might be homeless."
Added Lemcke: "It might happen when it's a health and safety issue, when somebody has got themselves in a situation where they just can't be set up there, and we have to move them. We would take enforcement action in those cases, but it just hasn't happened."
Pivot's letter, written by lawyer David Eby, requested the VPD cancel the part of its 2008 business plan that calls for a 20 per cent increase in charges under the Safe Streets Act and Trespass Act.
The VPD's plan is to target mainly aggressive panhandlers and people using squeegees in traffic. In 2007, police recommended 243 charges under the Safe Streets Act and 95 under the Trespass Act.
Eby asked that tickets under the Trespass Act only be issued when a property owner complains and if the person in question returns to the property after being asked to leave.
Lemcke pointed out that police cannot simply go into a premise and charge a person under the Trespass Act. So, he said, police are following the law just as Pivot requested.
The letter cited a recent report that suggested on more than 40,000 occasions, between April 2007 and January 2008, people were denied access to emergency shelter in the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
The statistics show Vancouver's "turnaways" were the highest at 67 per cent--and that didn't include statistics from the Triage shelter on Powell Street.
Pivot lawyer Laura Track attended the meeting. Questioned by board member Terry La Liberte about Lemcke's claim that police weren't targeting the homeless, Track admitted the anecdotal reports Pivot is getting regarding homeless people being told to pack up and move along relates more to private security guards.
Track told the Courier after the meeting that she was pleased the prosecutors' office hadn't laid any charges in three years on people constructing a shelter on city property. "It's not the moratorium that we were looking for, but it seems to be if not quite a policy, at least something that hasn't happened over the last few years."
© Vancouver Courier 2008
Copyright © 2008 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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