GUEST COLUMN – A once-pleasant neighbourhood is now under siege

By LYNNE STONIER-NEWMAN
Guest Columnist

SIRENS BLARING, three fire engines, two ambulances and two police cars arrived shortly after 11 p.m. last Sunday night.

Lynne Stonier-Newman here, one of the residents in the 49- unit apartment building at the corner of 3rd and St. Paul Street. Our building’s incessant efficient fire alarms were screeching, demanding, “Get out of your bed now.”

We hustled into warm clothes and got outside, managing to get me and my walker down five floors. Joined our fellow residents huddling near our building’s illusion of shelter or gathering in the DoubleTree’s parking lot. All of us in a weird selection of throw-on clothes and many not at all dressed to withstand winter’s cold and wind for long.

Our neighbours are interesting and diverse, professionals to uniformed workers, international students, a few elders, some disabled and little children including a three-day old baby … and include fellow tenants’ treasured dogs and pampered cats.

Many reported smelling smoke and while firemen took charge, we exchanged, “What now’s?” This wasn’t our first fire-alarm gathering but our third. And a year ago because of an internal flood, we were out for one and a half hours in the below zero November midnight.

Back to the official story for Nov 12/23 – details not yet released by our management company. And even more strangely, why wasn’t this emergency reported on any of our Kamloops’ media?

We could see the haze of smoke. And certainly could smell it as we watched the firemen’s teamwork as they efficiently took over our building, checked all its many nooks, crannies and the many stairwells.

Meanwhile, most of us shivering spectators probably pondered as my mate and I did, “Where can we go if we have to?”

The fire team returned and put much equipment back into the firetrucks, then hooked up long hoses and attempted to blow most of the smoke from hallways and elevator.

It helped but the smells lingered.

And at midnight, we cold and relieved residents were told the emergency was over and we were allowed in and directed that we can again return to our homes.

We do hope we’ll eventually hear about the police and fire investigation. Perhaps even learn whomever set that fire was apprehended?

Since, the most popular rumour shared in the elevator is that a small carryall bag was smouldering and burning against the entry staircase door off the back alley.

It apparently had been placed there — and probably lit on fire some hours earlier. Because for the quantity of smoke that had seeped through the poorly sealed door into the six floors of stairwells could not have happened in 10 minutes.

We who live here are even more apprehensive and discouraged about our neighbourhood. After all, it is only four months since six of our vehicle owners had to fork out $300 to ICBC to replace maliciously damaged car and truck windows in our supposedly securely locked and gated underground garage.

Our vehicle had its windshield and three side windows punched with many holes. A challenge as it took us over three weeks to have that glass replaced.

And we do mull the totals of this savage destruction’s overall costs to us and to ICBC. An RCMP attended, took details; to my knowledge, not one of we owners of the damaged vehicles have heard anything further yet.

In our four years of living here, the formerly pleasant downtown neighbourhood has radically changed. I don’t sit in the nearby park anymore and no longer risk walking for a block before bed … despite us living beside a major downtown hotel.

I do greet Kamloops’ homeless in the daytime. Sometimes I have granola bars to share as we chat for a moment. And I try to hide my angst of how do we expect change to happen for those poor people who now are having to urinate in dark corners and put cardboard down to sleep on cement, often covering his or her head with a tarp?

I also wonder, if my luck changes, how would my homelessness be shaped? Would I overfill a grocery cart with my bare necessities and treasures? Or would I be one of the struggling formerly employed, carrying one small carryall, trying to appear that I’m keeping some of my rights and dignity?

And I probably would spend some of the scanty stipend our inadequate social assistance grants on a mickey of scotch, trying to ease the pain caused by losing my identity and becoming one of the ‘No Fixed Address’ groups.

Our system is so wrong, in my opinion. Each person is an individual and for us to be lumping his or her personal, health and employment history into our labelling categories is mis- management. Do you believe what we’re doing currently is working?

As our all-too-few hard-working professionals and care aides give assistance under this system, I give full kudos and thanks.

But you and I also have to take way more responsibility — or it might be you out of bed to alarms at midnight

What many of we Kamloopsians are doing is reluctantly teaching ourselves to ignore those men and women who are our homeless. We’re teaching our children and teenagers that the man or woman lying on a sidewalk is … what?

Sick or worthless? Or not quite as human as we are?

I don’t have answers but I do have many questions:

My primary rant:

Why do our elected Kamloops and B.C. officials and their powerful administrators — yes, those who are elected ARE supposed to be in the drivers’ seats — believe sheltering some homeless people between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the winter months is a logical or caring solution? Where should those needy individuals go between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.?

As I’ve said before, wouldn’t we think our well-paid officials were crazy if a similar solution was considered for animal shelters?

My next rant:

It’s a question. How beneficial was the recently released stale-dated sociological study titled ‘Kamloops Count of the Homeless’? Are the questions even being evaluated for relevancy? A report that there is a homeless crisis with a 52 per cent increase is not action … it is one more report.

I want to know ‘what is working?’

And where … and why … the increase. How are we failing to have room for the needy within our society? Are we adequately evaluating how we utilize human and financial resources?

We are Kamloopsians. Let’s be leaders in managing this massive challenge of our homeless. Even though it is a worldwide and growing problem, we need to find better local solutions for our growing numbers of ‘sad people.’

Consider how efficiently our city and regions supported so many people displaced by the severe forest fires. Why are we not using those same skills and resources so our city isn’t cluttered by poor folks lying on our streets or trying to shelter in a doorways?

Do accept that if we don’t act now, there are also increasing numbers of the displaced who are malicious, angry or mentally ill and will set a burning carryall against an apartment building’s door. Are we waiting for a big disaster?

And where is the cost of calling out three fire engines, two ambulances and two police cars calculated into the City of Kamloops’ HOMELESS EXPENSES or under miscellaneous?

People lying without shelter for 24 hours — or 12 hours daily is not ‘normal’. It is crisis time and we need crisis management.

Please, fellow Kamloopsians and our elected and administrative officials, both for us, the residents, and for those currently surviving in winter conditions without his or her own door, start doing more.

Lynne Stonier-Newman is a resident of Kamloops. She’s a social marketing and communication consultant, and a B.C. historian and author. Lynne is a frequent guest columnist on ArmchairMayor.ca.