Image Credit: M. Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: Solution to disappearing shopping carts remains elusive

Feb 13, 2021 | 7:50 AM

GOING ON FOUR YEARS after shopping carts became a high-profile issue, there’s still no solution.

In 2017, Kamloops RCMP embarked on a crackdown on shopping-cart theft, seizing carts from the homeless and returning them to their rightful owners.

It seemed like a proper approach. Police were getting a clear message from businesses. A shopping cart costs about $250. Taking one off the store property is a crime. Such theft costs merchants a great deal of money.

So, between June and September of that year, 33 carts were returned to local businesses. It was intended as a good-news story but public reaction was very different from what was expected. People were outraged by such treatment of homeless people.

Social media went ballistic. It even came up at City council. Police backed off. Everything returned to the way it was before. Today, shopping carts keep disappearing from parking lots and turning up in the darndest places, just like they always have.

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This brings me to a very interesting post by North Shore BIA executive director Jeremy Heighton on the association’s website. Heighton correctly identifies the challenges in resolving the shopping cart problem.

First, he points out the importance of shopping carts to the homeless, who use them as mobile storage lockers. Second, he notes the significant financial impact to businesses of shopping-cart theft. One merchant told him it costs his store about $7,000 a year.

“Both sides are right,” Heighton writes.

He candidly admits he doesn’t have a solution, at least not yet. He’s been discussing the issue with other community leaders over the past few weeks.

“What we all agree is that there are positives and negatives on both sides of the issue. However, like so many of our social issues at this time, there is no clear solution.”

The City is working on providing more storage space for the homeless while the NSBIA looks at education programs and is talking to business owners about such things as locking systems for the carts.

Incidentally, remember having to carry a quarter to plug into a cart so you could unchain it from the rest? It’s much less common these days but new technology removes the need for coins.

When the cart issue came up in 2017, I proposed that, instead of taking shopping carts away from the homeless, a program should be developed to give them shopping carts. Give, not take.

“Instead of being judgmental, let’s be logical and compassionate,” I wrote. “This is a cause waiting to happen for some community social-welfare society. Instead of taking shopping carts away, why not give them away?”

That would involve finding the money — perhaps through a joint effort of a community organization and businesses — to buy carts and offer them to the homeless.

I concluded, “There are better ways of doing things than getting police involved. Kamloops could grab hold of the issue and push to find its own solution, instead of setting up a confrontation.”

As Heighton confirms, the solution remains elusive. And the issue certainly isn’t unique to Kamloops.

At the time the whole debate was going on in 2017, there was talk of inventing special carts for the homeless — well-designed, easy-to-roll, secure carts in which possessions could be properly organized.

Engineering students at the UBC Okanagan campus came up with an elaborate design for a battery-powered cart complete with GPS and hand brakes that made it to the prototype stage. Somebody in Victoria designed a shopping cart-sized tiny house.

None of it has gone anywhere, to my knowledge, though some fundraising was done to provide one prominent Kamloops street person a new cart.

Just as the issue isn’t particular to Kamloops, neither is it new even in the last few years. In the 1980s, an industrial designer-turned-artist named Krzystof Wodiczko began inventing carts for the homeless. Wodiczko had moved to Canada from Poland and then to the U.S. and was appalled at the conditions in which homeless populations lived.

His cart enhancements ranged from simple canvass canopies to recreation vehicle-style bump outs, enabling them to become sleeping units. They were never mass produced; he didn’t want them to be for fear they would become too desirable and incite violence among the homeless.

So, the issue lingers. Resolving shopping-cart theft, and providing those who steal them with alternatives, won’t fix homelessness. Providing proper shelter, food, clothing and healthcare remain major challenges.

But if we could figure out the shopping cart conundrum, stores wouldn’t be losing their carts and life for the homeless would be just a little bit better.

As Heighton says, “… by working together we can seek solutions which can positively affect community for all.”

Exactly, but that’s the challenge — taking ownership of the issue and being creative about answers. It’s still a cause waiting to happen.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.