By Two & Out

Vernon shopping cart ban rolls homelessness problem down the road

Jul 27, 2018 | 12:44 PM

IMAGINE BELIEVING you can do something positive for your community by banning shopping carts.

That’s just what Vernon did this week, after a business coalition came to council with a suite of recommendations on how to better handle the homeless population in the city.

The head of that business coalition told our colleagues at Beach Radio in Vernon that the city needs to turn around its reputation as one that turns a blind eye to bad behaviour associated with homelessness.

Here in Kamloops, we’ve had our own shopping cart wars.

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Last fall, RCMP went on a shopping cart seizure spree, returning the buggies to the grocery stores that rightfully own them.

It’s not exactly a ban, but the message was essentially the same: find another way to store your stuff.

One of those carts belonged to Michael O’Shea, a staple of the downtown.

Through the kindness of a local business, O’Shea received another, custom-made cart in which he could transport his belongings.

The city has tried to help the street population by opening up a storage facility for their personal items, but it hasn’t been well subscribed.

Many simply don’t trust that, if they leave their stuff in one spot, it will be there when they come back.

They’ve seen it before.

Public spaces they thought were sufficiently out of the way are “cleaned up” by police or bylaw services staff.

At least this phase of the City of Kamloops approach acknowledges that street people have belongings, and should be able to secure them.

The City of Vernon approach amounts to little more than harrassment, under the guise of “getting tough,” as a jurisdiction might do on crime.

But homelessness is not a crime.

It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances, often buttressed by health problems and other issues beyond the person’s control.

Criminalizing behaviour related to homelessness may give bylaws staff something to do, but it will do little more than move the problem out of sight.

Out of sight, out of mind, out of luck if you’ve fallen on hard times.

In other words, get that problem out of our community, and let someone else deal with it.

Under that model, no one deals with homelessness; it just gets shuffled around.

Far from a responsible approach.

Shuffling problems around, procrastinating — it’s what we teach our children not to do.

It’s time for Vernon — and other cities harrassing their homeless populations — to grow up and address the problem, rather than pushing it down the road.