What is the will of the people?
Rally
TIn May of 2014, BC Housing’s official count identified a total homeless population of 84 in Maple Ridge.
This included those sheltered by the Salvation Army, as well as those “living rough” in the outdoors.
We all know the distressing story of Cliff Avenue and the Rain City temporary shelter. Most of us have wondered about the accuracy of city hall talking points.
How could all these people be “ours”?
How could they all be from Maple Ridge?
Today, we no longer wonder.
In the period between June 2015 and October 2016 we took more than 700 people off the streets.
Some of them are living at local shelters, others are in supportive housing. The bulk of them---most of them practicing addicts--live in subsidized rentals scattered throughout residential Maple Ridge.
Next Tuesday, MLAs Doug Bing and Marc Dalton will deliver your long-awaited opportunity to have input into the $15 million shelter and supportive housing facility to be built by BC Housing in Maple Ridge.
Don’t squander this opportunity to be heard.
| Description Of Service Provider | Count | Source |
| CURRENT SNAPSHOT OF SHELTERS | ||
| Rain City temporary shelter | 40 | Sept.19, 2016 report to City of Maple Ridge |
| Salvation Army (including cold weather beds) | 45 | Provided by executive director Salvation Army |
| MOVED TO SUPPORTIVE HOUSING | ||
| Alouette Home Start: Moved from Cliff Ave.and Rain City temporary shelter to Alouette Heights. (June 2015-Aug. 2016) | 19 | Sept.19, 2016 report to City of Maple Ridge |
| MOVED TO SCATTERED HOUSING | ||
| Alouette Home Start: Moved to scattered housing located throughout Maple Ridge (June 2015-Aug. 2016) | 59 | Sept.19, 2016 report to City of Maple Ridge |
| Alouette Addictions: Moved to scattered housing located throughout Maple Ridge. (June 2015-October 2016) Excludes clients moved to Alouette Heights supportive housing. | 167 | Provided by executive director, Alouette Heights |
| Rain City temporary shelter: Moved from shelter to housing in undisclosed locations. (We have confirmed that these numbers are exclusive to Rain City and that clients were not transferred to Alouette Addictions or Salvation Army. (June 2015-July 2016) | 35 | Sept.19, 2016 report to City of Maple Ridge |
| Salvation Army Shelter: Moved to scattered housing in Maple Ridge and surrounding communities. (June 2015-Oct. 2016) | 232 | Provided by executive director Salvation Army |
| Salvation Army Shelter: Relocated to shelters outside Maple Ridge. (June 2015-Aug. 2016.) | 80 | Provided by executive director Salvation Army |
| Atira Resource Society, based out of Surrey Eight women moved from Cliff Avenue | 8 | Sept. 19 report to City of Maple Ridge |
| TOTAL TAKEN OFF THE STREETS AND HOUSED/ SHELTERED | 685 | |
| LIVING ROUGH, CAMPING/ COUCH SURFING IN MAPLE RIDGE | ||
| Located in various camps around Maple Ridge. July 2016 | 66 | Sept.19, 2016 report to City of Maple Ridge from Maple Ridge outreach workers. |
| TOTAL ALL CATEGORIES TO DATES PROVIDED | 751 | |
| Note: Not calculated in this table: mental health, detox and rehabilitation placements. | ||
We started Cliff Avenue with 39 living in tents and 45 at the Salvation Army shelter. Right now, Maple Ridge has three low barrier facilities operating at capacity to provide 125 beds. An additional 316 homeless have been placed into 'scattered housing' throughout the community.
Add to this, the 60 individuals still living rough in ravines and wooded areas. We are doing more than other Lower Mainland community. How many homeless are we expected to house? The proposed BC Housing plan will add an additional 50 low barrier beds.
Maple Ridge
Population
Current # Of
Facilities
Current #
Of Beds
Proposed # Of Beds
Per 1000 People
Times The
Local Average*
Its easy to talk about delivering a robust community engagement process and a different matter entirely to deliver one. Citizens were promised input into the location of the proposed shelter. It didn’t happen. Instead, the city purchased the property with no public consultation. When the property purchase was announced, residents were kept in the dark for weeks as the city worked behind closed doors creating print media ads, a social media forum and a website to promote its biased conversation.
Late Friday afternoon, the city announced the offical rollout of sheter details for ten am the following Monday, ensuring citizens would have no opportunity to attend.
Click here to see more »Maple Ridge has always been a caring, compassionate community. We are already providing more low barrier shelter accommodations than any community outside Vancouver.
We are far outpacing neighbouring cities with much larger populations—some offering zero low barrier beds. Coquitlam, for instance, has one low barrier shelter for a population of 144,668. Ninety beds are offered in Coquitlam. Our three existing low barrier facilities, Rain City, the Salvation Army and Alouette Heights, offer total accommodation for 120. Our population is around 80,000.
Click here to see more »The 90-bed low-barrier, permanent shelter proposed for Maple Ridge contains a longterm supportive housing component. You have experienced the impact of the Rain City shelter downtown, now consider the addition of accommodation for an additional 50 residents in supportive housing. Information obtained through a Freedom of Information request put forth by The Tyee states that over a five year period 85 people have died in supportive housing; 25 percent of them lay dead in their rooms for more than two days (Source: BC Coroners Service). Everyone needs to have an opinion about this project, about its Lougheed Highway location next to a veterinary hospital and a daycare, adjacent to our city cemetery and in the midst of residential neighborhoods.
Get The List Of Contacts »Action Maple Ridge is a non-profit, non-partisan group of Maple Ridge residents who advocate for “The Will of the People”. For many of our members, passions have been ignited through first-hand experience in dealing with loved ones and friends who have fought, and in some cases lost, the battle of addiction.
Having seen first hand how enabling perpetuates the cycle of drug abuse, we do not support low barrier shelters or housing without a pathway to treatment on demand. These models fail to act as catalysts for better outcomes. Like the thousands of people who have signed the petition against the low barrier shelter/ supportive housing proposal being driven by city hall...
Read More About ActionMR »The new BC Housing Proposal will add an additional 50 beds to our current 125 bed capacity bringing the total to 175 beds. At this point our numbers will soar to 2.6 beds per 1000 residents.
Not included in the statistics are a minimum of 316 individuals housed in 'SCATTERED HOUSING' throughout Maple Ridge. Also excluded are the 60 homeless currently living rough in tents around the city.
The 2014 GVRD homeless count indicates Maple Ridge had 84 homeless in May of that year---39 of which were living rough. Effectively, we started with 84 and ended up with close to 500.
| City | Population | Low Barrier Facilities |
Total Number Of Beds |
Beds Per Residents |
| Maple Ridge | 82,861 | 3 | 125 | 1.50 |
| Surrey | 516.650 | 3 | 78 | 0.15 |
| Abbotsford | 141,498 | 2 | 54 | 0.38 |
| North Vancouver | 136,412 | 1 | 45 | 0.32 |
| Coquitlam | 144,668 | 1 | 90 | 0.62 |
| New Westminster | 71,665 | 1 | 55 | 0.76 |
| Chilliwack | 86,857 | 1 | 47 | 0.54 |
| Mission | 38,711 | 1 | 44 | 1.13 |
| Burnaby | 238,209 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Langley | 131,915 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Port Coquitlam | 60,264 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Port Moody | 32,975 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| West Vancouver | 44,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Pitt Meadows | 19,652 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| White Rock | 19,399 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
