The Anita Place Tent City council has responded to the city’s rejection of a supportive housing and shelter complex on Burnett Street with its own list of demands.
Last week, Maple Ridge council voted down, by a 5-2 margin, BC Housing’s proposal to build an 85-unit facility at 11749 Burnett St.
Tent city residents oppose Maple Ridge Mayor Nicole Read’s “logic that conflates medical care with housing,” said Alliance Against Displacement spokesperson Listen Chen in a news release on Friday.
”Anita Place was already on the record as opposing the invasive 24-hour staff of the government’s supportive housing model” and instead called for regular apartments with affordable rents, she said.
The release said that people need self-determination over their mental and physical health care and supports, “not re-institutionalization that forces care on low-income people as precondition for getting a home.”
One of the spokespersons for the camp Mama Bear, who lives in Alouette Heights supportive housing on Brown Avenue, but keeps a tent at Anita Place, said that Alouette Heights is already similar to a jail cell. “That’s why I’m helping people here, because I don’t want people to end up in a jail cell without a say in anything.”