At a Goldstream Provincial Park barricade protected by B.C. Parks rangers and West Shore RCMP officers, tensions flared Thursday between people who defended the arrival of homeless campers and others who wanted them to leave. Yelling and swearing ensued.
Homeless campers moved into the park on Tuesday night after they were ordered to leave encampments in Saanich.
Some residents of Langford, adjacent to Goldstream, came to the park in hopes the campers would leave.
Liz Willman, a Langford resident for about 30 years, said the campers should make their point about homelessness at the B.C. legislature, not at a provincial park.
“I’m done with this,” Willman said. “I won’t stand for it.”
Darryl Wasilenkoff threatened to go into the camp and tear down the tents himself if the police weren’t going to.
“They are leaving today,” Wasilenkoff said. “I have sympathy for the homeless but this group has to go.”
More than a dozen residents supporting Langford Mayor Stew Young’s hard line on removing the homeless campers from the provincial park came to see what was happening.
Resident Rachel Goodine yelled and swore during the heated exchange but she distanced herself from her Langford neighbours.
She said they lacked empathy and their concerns about increased crime, drug use and public safety were inflated.
“I think we need to show empathy for these people. Where do they go? What are we doing about homelessness?”
Goodine said the mayor is wrong in his approach, saying he wants to boot out the campers, and is inciting discord and fear by overstating the criminal element associated with the homeless campers.
“It’s all about what can I do for myself and my people and a lack of regard for the wider community and that’s the politics of Stew Young and his supporters, I guess,” Goodine said.
West Shore RCMP spokesman Const. Matt Baker said earlier in the day that while there are good people at Goldstream as part of the tent city that moved from Regina Park and Ravine Way in Saanich, some come with a history of police involvement.
“We have received reports of criminal activity outside the park — reports of stolen vehicles, reports of drug use within the park, also recovery of an individual who had a warrant for arrest, reports of vandalism in the area and reports of drug use within the area.”
No suspects were identified and Baker said he could not attribute the reported “uptick” in crime to the homeless campers. All reports will be individually investigated and nothing to date has been proven, he said.
But some residents said they know who is to blame.
Jamie Thomson, who has lived in a neighbourhood near Goldstream for over 20 years, said he doesn’t want his provincial park policed and that such an encampment doesn’t belong.
Thomson said he doesn’t want governments to spend millions in taxpayer money to remediate the park after it’s inevitably destroyed if the campers are allowed to stay indefinitely.
Resident Brian Clouter said he believed the mayor was responsible for B.C. Parks’ since-halted efforts to shut down the park to all new campers and remove everyone by 11 a.m.
“At least Stewey nipped her in the bud right off the top. … Stewey’s a tough cat.”
However, Clouter said he regrets that tourist campers were kicked out.
In the early afternoon the province reversed course and extended the campers’ 24-hour reprieve to an indefinite stay.
Clouter acknowledged there’s a genuine homelessness problem and hopes the province finds shelter for everyone without a home but believes the homeless campers at Goldstream are looking to make a political statement rather than find lodging.
Communities are divided over how to deal with issues of mental health, addiction, poverty and homelessness — there are intense feelings on all sides, said Michael Prince, Lansdowne professor of social policy at the University of Victoria .
“The nature of the problem is so interconnected and complicated, and involves deep morals and values — it can divide communities,” he said. “Social-policy wise, we can’t build affordable housing fast enough,” Prince said.
Because the issue has now landed in B.C. Premier John Horgan’s community, it will have to be managed in part through his office.
“Like any wicked problem, everything is in hurry-up mode to solve it,” Prince said.
“It seems like it can’t all come soon enough and be co-ordinated.”
