A task force on homelessness and community safety was a key campaign priority for Wayne Price while seeking the mayor's office during the last local government election cycle two years ago.
Two years after his successful election, that task force recently submitted a final report with recommendations that suggest action items for the immediate, short-term and long-term future.
From a jurisdiction standpoint, housing is the responsibility of the provincial government. However, decades of neglect and underfunding have downloaded those challenges onto local governments, which operate on more limited financial resources.
So why a task force and what meaningful action can it take to respond to the crisis within the City of Cranbrook?
According to Price, one of the main benefits of a task force is that while it includes representation from the city, it is a separate entity with membership from RCMP, Interior Health, local social services non-profits, and local businesses and more.
That allows task force representatives to identify gaps or overlapping mandates and collaborate to fill a need without the city — as a corporate organization — to "own" a particular response, particularly ones that may potentially come with legal liabilities or ramifications.
"The city does not own this," said Price, during a recent interview alongside Marcel Germer, the city's Social Development Coordinator. "We've brought a group of people together, a group of agencies, a group of concerned people in the community, so I'm actually happy that we have found a way of navigating through the recommendations and taking some of these tasks on so that the city does not own them.
"The city is not taking the lead on any of these programs and that's why everybody in that room had an equal voice and everyone's input was received at an equal level."
The report and recommendations
The task force was established early this past year, with membership by invitation from the mayor, meeting once every two weeks at city hall from Jan. 30 to July 17.
"Truthfully, I didn't know what to expect when we started," Price said. "I just knew that some form of coordinated action was better than what was happening."
Through those meetings, the task force examined Cranbrook's social environment and the strengths and gaps of the local social network in terms of services provided by government sources and non-profit agencies.
While homelessness isn't a new issue facing municipalities, it is exacerbated by the current affordability challenges, toxic drug crisis and limited supply of housing options across the spectrum within the city.
The task force developed five recommendations that include immediate action items such as the creation of a Temporary Outdoor Living Space, development of a day-pay and employment readiness program. Longer-term items, to be up and running in less than two years, include a community engagement and communication strategy and a 24-hour drop in centre.
Another recommendation also included developing a common intake form and process for clients in order to standardize screening and reduce duplication of services.
All task force recommendations — save for the common intake form — were developed organically through collaboration by task force members, as opposed to borrowing ideas or strategies piloted from other municipalities.
The Temporary Outdoor Living Space — known as "Common Ground" — is already in place on vacant land near Moir Park. While not a sanctioned encampment, the space is intended to serve as a place where unhoused citizens can have a safe and stable community living space through a rights-based approach that adheres to recent rulings from the courts upholding the right to camp in public spaces if no other shelter space is available.
Common Ground also serves as a centralized point of contact for outreach and social services.
"There is a distinct difference between an outdoor living space and an encampment," said Price. "We have tried to stay away from the term and whole concept of encampments.
"With an outdoor living space, we still have some control, where an encampment, once you get to an encampment stage, the control of the agencies and the community is extremely limited.
"We have our support agencies in there every day at the start of the day. Our bylaw visits there every day. The RCMP are there every day when the have the manpower, just do to a walkthrough, so it is quite different."
The last point-in-time count in 2023 identified 116 individuals who are experiencing homelessness — a figured that doubled from the 2020 count. However, point-in-time counts have limitations in that they are often undercounts due to being a 24-hour window of data collection, while also missing individuals in untenable housing situations such as youth who are couch surfing.
In that same count, 63 per cent of respondents indicated they were living with an addiction, while 70 per cent of respondents indicated two or more health concerns.
While that information is collected by local service agencies on behalf of BC Housing, the task force and the city is also stepping up their own data collection efforts.
"I would say that was not a 100 per cent accurate count," said Germer. "My worry is that, that is what they counted last time. We're out there all the time, I do not believe our numbers have expanded by very much. I think we have sustained our numbers pretty accurately but this time...I think they want to find a way to count those youth and other seniors that they missed and I'm afraid it's going to conflate our numbers and show that we've expanded so much and I'm not seeing it, not on the ground, but we didn't count those numbers last time."
Germer noted one of the main challenges in Cranbrook is that there's not entry point into the housing continuum, which is defined as the range of housing options in communities across a spectrum that include emergency shelters to permanent non-market and market rental and home ownership.
"We really need to close that housing gap, we need to create an entry way back in and we're working really hard on that," Germer said.
In Cranbrook, there is currently a women’s shelter and a temporary shelter. The temporary homeless shelter is a combination of 45 longer term rooms and 17 overnight rooms. During the winter months, the shelter expands from 8 to 17 overnight rooms.
There is also an overnight shelter that provides life-saving spaces during extreme weather events that came about through a partnership between the City, BC Housing, ANKORS East and Christ Church Anglican. From November 4 to April 15, the shelter can be activated when the temperature is forecasted to reach -15 Celsius or below in a 24- hour period.
A longer-term recommendation from the task force is the creation of a 24-hour drop-in centre that can provide essential and crisis services, particularly during evening and weekend hours. That will be a separate initiative from the permanent shelter currently being developed by BC Housing adjacent to the offices of the Community Connections Society of Southeast B.C.
Beyond just the challenges that encompass the factors around homelessness, the task force also navigated elements that surround public safety. Indeed, during recent city budget surveys, "homeless, crime, and safety" was the top issue identified by respondents.
On the subject of public safety and crime, Price said the city is currently developing a plan to be rolled out in the next six months that will provide some deterrents to property crime.
Initially, the task force was set to be decommissioned this past July, however, the group agreed to continue for another year. The provincial government will receive a copy of the task force report, as the concept of a localized task force has been well-received by previous cabinet ministers, Price added.
"Certainly going forward, we're adapting," said Price. "We're looking at what's out there. Every opportunity we see, we're watching. We're adaptable. That's one thing about this group, and one thing about our bylaw and the City of Cranbrook, is that we're very adaptable."
Germer concurred.
"Homelessness is not new. And if all we had to do was sit back and wait for provincial government to come in and solve our problems for us, they'd all be solved," she said. "If that was what worked, cities wouldn't have homelessness, but that isn't what works anymore.
"So the more the city — from a bit of a distance — still provides the leadership and guidance that shows the way forward for things like the task force that are working on how to solve and mitigate these problems, I think our success rate will be higher."
