Editor, The News:
Re: Six-month anniversary of Royal Crescent homeless housing.
I live at Royal Crescent Gardens, which is the apartment building right next door to the modular housing shelter.
My balcony directly overlooks the facility’s entrance and parking lot and we see and hear almost everything that goes on there.
Unfortunately, no one seems to be talking about what really goes on outside the facility, and no one is talking about the large number of emergency response vehicles sent to the shelter.
Outside the facility, for whatever reason, staff appear to do nothing to control the residents on their property once they leave the building.
We constantly see residents on or near the property, openly injecting themselves or smoking something. We also see daily residents on and leaving the property who seem high on something.
We also frequently observe what appears to be drug dealing in the parking lot.
Additionally, we frequently observe residents acting out and yelling in the parking lot.
A few days ago, we saw a female resident dressed only in a halter top and yoga pants outside in the cold, pouring rain.
She was rapidly walking back and forth in the lot gesturing and loudly talking to ‘someone.’
She kept this up for over three hours.
While all this goes on, the staff sit inside and do nothing about it.
Should not the staff of the facility be doing something to control what occurs in their parking lot and on the property immediately adjacent to their facility?
For whatever reason, no one ever reports on the large number of emergency response vehicles responding to the Royal Crescent shelter.
Several times each week (and sometimes two or three times a day) we see a variety of fire rescue, ambulance, and police vehicles attending the shelter.
As a case in point, six RCMP vehicles responded to a call at the shelter. Not many situations usually require six cruisers.
On several occasions, we have seen the RCMP take someone away in handcuffs.
Numerous individuals have been removed on stretchers.
On one occasion, we saw a person being administered CPR while being wheeled across the parking lot to an advanced life support ambulance.
This used to be a quiet idyllic neighbourhood. Allowing shelters like this to be placed where they cause this type of disruption to a neighbourhood is a travesty.
I am anything but a NIMBY. The people in these shelters need help.
However, the obvious lack of supervision and control exercised in a facility like this is not helping these people or the neighbourhood. It only enables them.
Ed Lineham
Maple Ridge