the broken typewriter

Here we are, at the moment you’ve all been waiting for – either for me to stop dragging it out and just tell you what the top story is already or you’ve been eagerly awaiting the result. Whichever it is, I thank you all for reading all these articles again, as part of the countdown.

The top story of 2024, as I said before is a hot-button issue, one that continues to frustrate residents, businesses, local politicians, the homeless and those who are trying their best to help them. While there’s probably no perfect solution, no one measure that will address all the needs, this article details one of the things the city is trying to do, to balance the needs of residents and businesses with those who are unhoused.

#1 – Draft bylaw aims to manage people, activities on public property

City of Fort St. John staff has put together a collection of best practices and consolidated those into a suggested draft Parks and Open Spaces Bylaw, to deal with the issue of temporary overnight sheltering on public property in the city.

“It’s a human issue. Nobody wants to be unhoused,” said Mayor Lilia Hansen. “The right to shelter is why we’re looking at consideration of this bylaw.”

In July 2023, when council first looked at options to manage soft-sided temporary shelters in the city, the province and the Human Rights Commission strongly objected to the city’s plans. However, staff went ahead with their research into both the city’s current bylaws and how they can be used to manage these shelters.

“Staff did a deep dive into our current bylaws, and the current bylaws really weren’t adequate to address the requirements of this Notice of Motion,” Robert Norton, the city’s Director of Public Safety and Fire Chief told council on August 26.

After coming to the conclusion that the existing bylaws weren’t the best tool for this application, staff looked at other communities that have had success managing temporary overnight shelter and sought a legal opinion as to Fort St. John’s responsibilities as a municipality.

What they came up with was a suggested Parks and Open Spaces Bylaw, which attempts to address all sides of the situation and provide the city with tools to address community concerns and the needs of vulnerable people in the community.

The intention of the bylaw, Norton said, “is to regulate, prohibit and impose requirements respecting persons, property, things and activities in relation to public spaces.

“Typically, these bylaws that we’ve see that have success, prohibit temporary overnight sheltering in specific areas where there’s absolutely no overnight shelter,” he said.

Deputy Chief Administrative Officer, Darrell Blades said, “We need a bylaw so that if we do end-up with a larger encampment, and we need to move it and we’re going to the court for injunctions to help us disassemble a camp, then we need a bylaw of some sort.”

Many of the bylaws staff looked at impose hour restrictions, so that people seeking overnight shelter can only do so between certain hours, such as 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

This poses challenges for city staff, who would have to go around all the areas where temporary shelters have been set up to make sure everyone is packed up and gone by the designated hour.

Norton said it’s also important to include provision for storage of collected belongings, if the city has to do a clean-up, instead of discarding the belongings, there would be a mechanism in place to enable people to collect their belongings.

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Thanks again for reading – I hope you all have a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2025!