Kelowna Can You Spare a Dime?

Big drop in begging preceded Kelowna's homeless crackdown
CATHRYN ATKINSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 17, 2007

A supporter of Kelowna's bylaw amendments that would allow the jailing of aggressive beggars and impose huge fines for vagrants, says carrot-and-stick initiatives have already reduced the number of trouble-making homeless.

John Perrott, the executive director of the Downtown Kelowna Association, said patrols by a Downtown Enforcement Unit, a six-member security team funded by local businesses, had assisted the RCMP in identifying the worst offenders in recent years. This approach was backed up by support offered by social services, he said.

"On the one hand, you've got the tremendous work done by our social services that try to get [the homeless] into the right services and programs, and prevent them from falling into the cycle of panhandling, and, on the other hand, there are the efforts from an enforcement perspective to make people aware of the types of behaviour we'd like to see in our community," he said.

The result, said Mr. Perrott, was that the problem has virtually disappeared.

"I know the number of calls to our downtown security patrol has gone down dramatically in the last year or two," he said. "And even out on the streets, where we used to have six or seven people on a regular basis, we're down to just one or two regulars who understand the rules of accepted behaviour."

The amendment to Kelowna's panhandling bylaw would see repeat offenders jailed for up to 90 days. The change to the parks and public spaces bylaw means that once evicted from a location, those who try to return within 48 hours can be fined up to $10,000.

Both amendments are expected to become law within weeks.

Mr. Perrott said the bylaw changes took three years of co-operation between the police, the local business community and the city council, and provided officers with "the right tools to do the job."

"I don't see the changes as being mean-spirited. I see them as being an additional tool that is there if needed. People realize that if you end up in Kelowna, if you come there thinking it will be easy to be an aggressive panhandler, it doesn't really work that way," he said.

Ian Graham of the Central Okanagan Poverty and Homeless Action Team said he was disappointed with the bylaw changes.

"I don't walk around looking for panhandlers, but I feel that there are many fewer today than there were," he said.

"I understand the frustrations of business and of the council members, but we have to find housing for these people.

"It's moving too slowly. We want to see the criminally inclined off the street, but we are concerned these kinds of laws trap other people who don't deserve to be thrown into the categories they're looking for."

He agreed that many of the worst offenders of previous years were no longer on Kelowna's streets, and said the bylaw changes were directed at a very small minority.

"When a councillor told me last week that the amendments would take care of the worst offenders, I found myself saying, 'What, both of them?' " he said, laughing.

Mr. Graham said the support for the amendments had been unanimous in council.

"We're trying to kill flies with a baseball bat. I think the community has to realize that homelessness attracts the kinds of issues that some other people don't find appealing.

"Until we can get the homeless into housing and give them some hope and training for the future, we are going to constantly face these kinds of problems."

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