Residents near a homeless encampment on Cliff Avenue are concerned that the city's new homelessness action plan will not adequately address the issues caused by the encampment. The encampment has grown to possibly 70 people, more than the number of homeowners on the street, and has been associated with public urination, harassment of residents, and increased emergency services calls. One resident who has lived on Cliff Avenue for 11 years says the situation is now much worse than occasional homeless campers in the past. While the city's plan aims to remove barriers to housing, a local councilor acknowledges the plan's goal is only to eventually disband the encampment, and that homelessness is a large problem across North America.

1. By Steph Troughton
newsroom@mapleridgenews.com
Cliff Avenue residents
are worried the home-
less action plan, official-
ly rolled out Thursday,
won’t, on its own, rectify
the problems created by
an encampment on their
street the past few weeks.
Vagrancy and crime
have been a problem in
the neighborhood, near
the Salvation Army shel-
ter off the Haney Bypass,
for more than a decade.
George and Pam
Banks, who have a home
on the Cliff Avenue cul-
de-sac, said they want to
see bylaws enforced be-
cause they are not con-
fident the municipality’s
action plan, alone, will
make a difference.
“I am not fully aware
of the content contained
in this action plan. How-
ever, I don’t see how it
will help the situation,”
George Banks said.
A CP Rail mechanic of
36 years, Banks asked if
the hand-delivered no-
tice residents received,
which stated people liv-
ing on the street apolo-
gized for the “inconve-
nience” they had caused,
was referring to matters
such as, “the urinating
on the street out front
of my home, the shop-
ping cart pushed into my
son’s truck, the constant
use of paramedics/po-
lice, the needle exchange
truck ...”
If so, he added, calling
all that inconvenient was
an understatement.
For 11 years, Banks
and his wife, and now
his daughter and two
grandsons (ages six and
eight), have lived on the
same street. In that time,
he’d seen a few homeless
people set up tents and
later leave, but nothing
like the extent it is now.
Although Banks could
not confirm how many
individuals occupy the
encampment, like his
neighbors, he is worried
there could be as many
as 70 – more than the
number of homeowners
on his street.
“The homeless camp is
outnumbering the legiti-
mate residents of Cliff
Ave.”
The whole ordeal be-
gan with a couple of
campers who refused to
leave after being asked to
do so by bylaw officers
and police. Since then
the camp has grown and
indications have been it
won’t disappear any time
soon.
“As long as people are
sticking together for a
common goal, I don’t see
it coming down. I really
don’t,” a resident of the
camp said previously.
The city’s action plan
identifies priorities such
as removing barriers to
get people off the street
and into homes.
Coun. Bob Masse said
he believed one of the
outcomes from the ac-
tion plan would be the
eventual disbandment of
the camp.
He could not confirm
the exact number of peo-
ple living in the camp,
but agreed it had grown
since it first became ap-
parent.Hestressedmany
other municipalities in
Canada and U.S. have
been challenged by the
homelessness, includ-
ing Abbotsford, Surrey
and Vancouver, where
homeless encampments,
or “tent cities,” had also
appeared.
“This problem is not a
Maple Ridge problem.
It’s a national problem
– even North America
problem,” said Masse.
A report on homeless-
ness in Canada pub-
lished in 2013 states the
Homelessness Partner-
ing Secretariat (HPS)
uses the estimate that
between 150,000 and
300,000 individuals ex-
perience homelessness
in Canada every year.
Cliff residents concerned
Have doubts about city’s new action
plan to end homelessness