City council committee hosts open discussion with homeless individuals

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – The City of Fort St. John council’s Response Committee to Housing and Emergency Shelter hosted a free lunch event, with food provided by Pita Pit, to speak with homeless people in the city. 

Councillor Trevor Bolin, a member of the committee, stated the lunch was an opportunity to speak with individuals being impacted by homelessness. 

“This was a free lunch for anybody who is homeless, especially geared towards those in an encampment or living in a tent, to really have a conversation about why they’re in this situation, what they’ve been doing [and] the roadblocks that they have found,” Bolin said.  

“It wasn’t about, ‘what can you do tomorrow,’ it was about ‘where are you today.’”

In a Facebook post, Bolin explained that the committee has been compiling statistics and data on housing in order to understand the challenges facing homeless people in Fort St. John. 

“One of the models currently being used with some success is the “Housing First” model.

The basic underlying principle of Housing First is that people are better able to move forward with their lives if they are first housed,” Bolin wrote. 

Bolin explained that some of the individuals the committee has spoken with, either at lunch or during visits to encampments, are able to afford housing but have been unsuccessful in applying to leasing companies in the city. 

He also spoke about possible avenues moving forward with BC Housing, getting unhoused individuals established, working on the problem before the temperatures dip. 

“We’re not going to fix the problem overnight, this is not going to be an immediate fix, but this is going to start to chip away at some of the issues that they’re facing and, in turn, everyone faces,” Bolin said.

“At the end of the day, this is our community, and we need to be able to make sure that we’re able to do everything that we can to make it a safer, more inclusive, and more welcoming community where families grow, and businesses flourish.”

The committee is currently seeking information from BC Housing about residences in the city, and will be returning to city council with an update in a future council session.