Drone footage of the Fairview Road encampment in Penticton.

Image Credit: YouTube/PentictonExposed

The mayor of Penticton and Penticton-Summerland’s MLA had a bone to pick with each other last week over a controversial homeless encampment in the city, now a town hall meeting is planned where local residents can have their say.

BC Conservative MLA Amelia Boultbee is having a town hall to discuss the encampment at Fairview Road and Highway 97 next to Ellis Creek as well as the broader issue of how to handle homeless camps. The event is at the Seniors Centre on Main Street at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 5.

Boultbee said a big part of the issue is a lack of clarity on what specifically is being done to address the camp and support the people living there.

“There's a lot of information and misinformation going around, so I think it's important to give people the opportunity. . . to have their voice heard,” Boultbee told iNFOnews.ca. “The other thing that I think is really important is just to continue to put pressure on the city to let them know that they need to hold the province accountable to actually step up and solve this problem.”

Last week, Boultbee made a post criticizing how the city has handled the encampment and the fact that it hasn’t been working closely with her to address it. She said the city didn’t consult with her when she offered to help, there are no porta-potties or garbage disposals at the camp and other issues.

Mayor Julius Bloomfield responded and said that progress is being made to clean the site up and provide the people living there with support.

Boultbee said it’s hard to tell what progress is happening because the city hasn’t been communicating.

“If progress is going so great, then why can't you tell us what's been done? What is this progress that you speak of? I personally have not been able to get a straight answer out of the city,” Boultbee said.

100 More Homes led a cleanup of the encampment last week, and Boultbee said she hasn’t been able to get concrete information about how it went either.

The City of Penticton and the Penticton Indian Band issued a press release on May 13 about the plan to deal with the encampment.

The provincial HEART and HEARTH programs are stepping in to provide more robust outreach and service connections, funding for a temporary winter shelter, transitional housing options and environmental clean up and restoration resources.

READ MORE: Why Kelowna's treatment of homeless encampments has changed over the years

The band said the land is unsurrendered sylix Nation Territory and used to be reserve land.

In the 1950s, the land was appropriated by the federal government and then transferred to the province in 1955 for flood control and infrastructure.

The land was supposed to revert to reserve status but the government never followed through. Since the provincial government still owns the land, it's responsible.

The city has cited the complexity surrounding the camp’s jurisdiction as a reason why it has taken time to address the situation, but Boultbee said she’s been told otherwise.

“I had my last meeting with the city, they were singing a completely different tune, and they said, no, there's no jurisdictional issues,” Boultbee said.

There are encampments all around the province but Boultbee said she wants to work on a solution for this site herself.

“I started involving myself primarily related to the volume of complaints that I was getting from constituents and the city wasn't answering their questions. They didn't know what was going on,” she said. “Don't loudly announce that it's an issue of provincial jurisdiction. Come and tell me that someone's going to get hurt and then be surprised when I do something, you made this my problem.”

The YouTube channel PentictonExposed released some drone footage of the camp on May 10.

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