Proposed homeless shelter angers Maple Ridge residents

MAPLE RIDGE (NEWS 1130) – Maple Ridge residents are fuming at the city’s plans to build a new homeless shelter just blocks from the site they rejected last year.

The city has agreed to buy a $1 million plot of land at 21375 Lougheed Hwy, sandwiched between the Ridge Meadows Hospital and a cemetery. BC Housing will build the $15 million shelter.

The plan has been praised by those who advocate for the homeless, but hundreds of residents like John Szogi have taken to social media to voice their anger. “I think it’s a slap in the face to everybody that protested the original Quality Inn location.”

The controversial plan to turn the Quality Inn into a shelter was scuttled by the province this past spring when the public rallied against it. Last year, a tent city popped up on Cliff Avenue. The current temporary shelter run by Rain City Housing was then opened to last through the winter and had its lease extended in June.

A recent poll on the Facebook group Protecting Maple Ridge asked local residents whether they were in favour of a permanent shelter in their city and more than 350 people responded ‘no.’  NEWS1130 has received dozens of emails from concerned residents who say low barrier shelters promote drug use, describing the new plan as “ludicrous.” They say the proposed shelter is too close to residential areas, schools and daycare centres.

“These street people do not want help,” resident Jeff Boudreau writes in an email. “All you have to do is ask them. The real homeless suffer by getting nothing out of fear of utilizing these low barrier shelters because they get robbed of what they may have.”

An online petition has been started to oppose the location.

The public, Szogi says, doesn’t feel like they are being consulted on the issue and that Mayor Nicole Read doesn’t care what they want. “It’s almost like they’re rubber stamping it,” he says. “I understand the pressures on her to get this done because our shelter right now is supposed to close in nine months so she’s got to find something, but she’s not listening to the people at all.”

He adds Rain City promises to keep the temporary shelter drug-free have failed, that he finds needles and condoms strewn about the streets in that area every day and has on multiple occasions caught people trying to steal things from his yard. Multiple residents reported similar incidents and blame low barrier shelters for increasing crime throughout the city.

Building a shelter that backs onto a cemetery would also disturb those who want to visit loved ones, he says. “My father will be rolling in his grave because some drug addict will most likely be shooting up next to him on a daily basis.”

There are no easy solutions to homelessness, Szogi concedes, but says the city should consider putting the shelter outside central areas. He also blames the closure of the Riverview Hospital’s psychiatric facility for putting many people in need on the street.