‘Sleeping scared:’ Downtown residents fed up with increased drug use and crime

“We’re seeing overdoses, we’re seeing graffiti, needles in different areas, there’s an in-flooding of people just prowling around the area. Just garbage, crap that’s lying around, yelling, cursing, and swearing its definitely taken a toll on this neighborhood,” one resident said.

The issues have made it even more challenging for those raising kids.

“I’m not comfortable letting my kids walk to a nearby park. I’m not comfortable when my kid walks home after their shift from work. There’s something wrong with that. We live in Medicine Hat Alberta,” said a resident,

Like most, they all fell in love with the idea of living close to everything nearby, but they say the sharp appeal of choosing to invest in a home in the downtown area has diminished due to the extent of the issues.

(submitted photo/ CHATNewsToday)

“ There are so many times when we would find needles on our property and I’ve had to ask the kids not to go near it and we have had to call the police station and, they are like ‘okay we will send someone out to go clean it, and honestly I have someone from Alberta Health coming on a regular basis to pick up needles off our property, and I’m not the only one,” a resident said.

Property values have also decreased, according to residents, leaving many feeling stuck.

“ The value of our home has probably been cut in half. You reach an age when you start thinking about retirement and you can’t because how can you get out to downsize, and you know have retirement income that you would normally get from the sale of your home. We can’t. We can’t even get out,” said one resident

“The thing is, this whole thing affects us in so many ways not just because our houses are worth nothing, but it affects us physically because we are scared,” They added.

According to residents, the downtown core experienced a shift, and began to noticeably deteriorate three years ago when the province took ownership of the former Toronto Street apartments, which are now operated by the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society. There is also a nearby nuisance property that has since been shut down.

A nuisance property in the downtown core which recently had tenants evicted(submitted photo/ CHAT NEWS)

(submitted photo/ CHATNEWSToday)

“It’s like they cover it up, and pretend that everything is all good, and you know somebody once said, ‘are you, good neighbors? and that really stuck with me because let’s ask them, Medicine Hat Housing Society are you, good neighbors?”’ asked one resident.

In response, Jaime Rogers with the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, deflected questions around if the facility has been a positive contributor to the area, and instead noted the facility has worked to provide housing to those who would otherwise struggle.

“ I would say it is our responsibility to make sure that people have a safe place to live, and that’s all residents. Again attributing drug use, increase needle debris, overdose, and increased criminal activity just to a property is again inaccurate. I think there’s a lot of criminal activity that’s going on in community whether that’s the downtown core or Crescent Heights, or other different areas of the community, so attributing it to just one property, it’s interesting, I get the level of frustration from residents but again that’s just inaccurate information,” Rogers said.

One of the two permanent supportive housing facilities in the downtown core that is operated by the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society ( submitted photo/ CHAT NEWS)

The two permanent supportive housing buildings are staffed 24/7 with a minimum of three staff members on site. The facility also provides programming to its residents that range based on their needs.

“It’s well-staffed. They’ve got great programming, and to that end, they also provide a lot of community resources, so there’s a lot of community partners and support agencies that actually go to the building to support the folks,” she said.

In 2016, prior to the opening of the supportive housing unit, Rogers said consultation with the public did occur.

“ We actually had open communication with those that were in the building, and what that transition would look like, we actually held it open to the public as well and that was held at the Library,” she said.

But homeowners CHAT News spoke with disagreed and said they were not properly consulted.

“Absolutely not. In fact, we had to go all over the place to figure out what had happened, and there were so many different stories there was no clear cut, who was responsible, who do we go to? We went to the city, we went to the provincial government. When we went to the city they sent us to the back to the government. We never did find out, and then we were told this is low-income housing for women, children, poor people basically, people maybe who had some addictions, but that was not the major focus and it turned out that was absolutely incorrect,” They said.

The situation has residents bearing the brunt calling for change to happen.

“ Honestly, that apartment needs to be shut down. It needs to go back to being regular housing. That’s the only way it is going to drive up our values in this area and increase downtown again, and I know everyone deserves a house and everyone deserves a home and I get that, but at the same time, we live in Medicine Hat Alberta people, and I’m sleeping scared.” a resident said.

The Medicine Hat Police Service Responds

The Medicine Hat Police Service says despite the complaints, calls to service to the permanent supportive housing facility are relatively low.

“We’ve been to 31 calls there in the past three months, so about 10 calls a month which is relatively low. The greater area there’s been more, but the stats aren’t higher than normal. We get more calls to different areas of the city than we do there.” Insp. Brent Secondiak said, noting there have ‘undoubtedly’ been overdose calls to the area but was unable to provide any numbers, instead referring CHAT News to Alberta Health Services.

The police service also maintains they have ‘a very positive relationship’ with the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society.

“It’s strong, they have a board with community member groups, I’m actually on that board, and I think we bring issues up to them when they come up and they are very quick to respond to any criminal activities from our perspective” Insp. Secondiak said.

To address some of the issues in the downtown core, the Medicine Hat Police Service has created a new downtown patrol unit, that will bring an additional three members to the area.

Currently, there is one patrol officer assigned to the downtown core. Secondiak is optimistic that the addition of more boots on the ground will be sufficient enough to patrol the area spanning from North Railway to 3^rd Avenue SE, and River Road SE to SE hill.

“We have looked at the data. It’s a relatively small area to have three members in. It is also going to be augmented by a Canadian mental health member which is a member of our addictions crisis team. We’ve scheduled their hours of work really when our call volumes are high, in our peak call volume time, so we have a relatively small area that can be patrolled by foot or a vehicle,” Insp. Secondiak said.

The new downtown patrol unit is set to start come October.

by Tiffany Goodwein

‘Sleeping scared:’ Downtown residents fed up with increased drug use and crime

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