Earlier this month, city council started the process of moving to a centralized approach to homelessness and overnight sheltering.
A group of UNBC students have planned a protest against the decision, calling the strategy “brutal, ineffective, and uninformed,” and will be gathering outside the courthouse on Saturday (April 1).
“I think it is a fundamentally violent plan,” said Ryan Kalsbeek, one of the protest organizers. “It lacks foresight, nuance, and empathy.”
“The issue is about hiding homelessness and crime away from the downtown core, the city is willing to compromise the health and safety of the most vulnerable people in our city… by forcing them into an area that has no sanitization services, no running water, and no electricity,” he said.
“I am opposed to this because it is continuing Indigenous displacement, it is continuing colonial violence toward our primarily indigenous homeless population,” Emma VanDinter, another organizer, told My PG Now.
In 2021, 70% of Prince George’s homeless population was Indigenous.
“What this is doing is herding them like cattle into a specific location, hiding them from other people.”
Instead of enforcing the centralized plan and increasing police presence downtown, VanDinter said she would rather see the money required go towards “resources they can use to better their lives, like heating, water, sanitary products, and washrooms.”
“I feel like what is happening is the city is concerned about the health and wellbeing of the people of Prince George, excluding the people that need the help the most – which is our homeless population,” she said.
Kalsbeek said he would like to see another shelter open near Moccasin Flats – “it isn’t ideal, but it is far more ideal than people sleeping in burnt down tents,” he said.
He referenced the report on downtown that was presented to the city at Monday’s (March 27) council meeting, which painted a bleak picture of the current state of the area.
While the survey is a valuable resource, Kalsbeek said there are plenty of other resources the city could be using to learn more from that they are not.
“There are already people that are interacting with the folks downtown every day, and they have extremely high resolution data that is not being listened to by the city and council,” he said, adding that he would want to see the city give some of these groups funding.
The protest is planned for Saturday afternoon at 2:00, but it will not just be university students in attendance outside the courthouse.
“I am excited to see the people of Millennium Park (a smaller encampment on first avenue that would be forced to move) participating in this, having the power to use their voice and their bodies to protest against this government that is supposed to be helping them,” VanDinter said. “They don’t get to have a voice… this is going to allow them to speak their minds.”
Kalsbeek echoed that sentiment, saying he hopes the protest, and other backlash the city has received on the decision, is enough to make them walk it back.
“There aren’t just two bad options in Prince George (centralized vs decentralized), there is a lot of nuance,” he said. “City staff just has to listen.”