The City of Penticton is attempting to make the downtown area more secure with the addition of new lighting systems in strategic areas.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/City of Penticton

PENTICTON - Homelessness has become a major problem in Penticton as people with nowhere to go find themselves forced to sleep wherever they can, says the city's chief administrative officer.

Peter Weeber made the comments while updating city council yesterday, July 17, on the progress of the city’s new downtown security working group.

Made up of members of city staff, the Downtown Penticton Association, and the Chamber of Commerce, the working group was formed to turn into action the city’s declaration last week "the party was over” for those who were intent on causing criminal or social issues in the city’s downtown core.

Weeber showed numerous photos of people using city infrastructure to sleep on including building alcoves, entrances, city benches and bank vestibules as he explained the overriding need for most of the visible homeless in Penticton was a roof over their heads.

“We’re targeting behaviour not people,” he emphasized. “If you’re doing things downtown that aren’t acceptable, like sitting in Nanaimo Square having a few drinks and passing around a joint, that’s not what we want to see downtown.”

Weeber said RCMP and city bylaw officers, along with the city’s private security team, have been working to “keep people moving.” Summertime noon hour music events in Nanaimo Square have helped to keep that area user-friendly, he noted.

“The new normal is a term we’ve used where people feel so comfortable in our community that they’ll break out a case of beer and roll up a joint at the skateboard park... people get quite upset when others take over a part of the community,” he said.

The city has also installed special bins for discarding smoking material.

“It’s kind of obnoxious, people using the city for an ash tray,” he said, showing a photo of a public bench with several discarded cigarette packs underneath.

The city has also removed benches and trimmed foliage along downtown pathways from areas where congregations occur to smoke or use drugs. The city has also brought a variety of new lights to the downtown area in order to make it brighter. 

Cobra head lights have been installed in the 200 and 300 blocks of the east and west lanes of Main Street, while dusk-to-dawn lights have been added behind 363 and 224 Main St. Another 40 poles in the 100, 200 and 300 blocks of Main St. have been wrapped with LED rope lighting, and light globes at Nanaimo and Main Streets have been upgraded.

“It's costing us a lot of money that could be used in other places,” Weeber said.

The next phase of the working group’s efforts will include securing downtown back alleys.

There are currently 108 homeless people in Penticton according to the latest count by B.C. Housing council heard. Weeber said hopefully the majority will find shelter when roughly 100 units of new housing come into play early next year, adding there is still work to do assisting homeless people to bridge the gap between now and when the new housing is available.

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