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A group of demonstrators will descend on city hall Monday to voice their opposition to a proposed city bylaw that would make it illegal to sit or sleep on sidewalks overnight.
The bylaw change would mean anyone caught resting on city sidewalks overnight could be slapped with a $50 fine. Last week, Kelowna City Council gave the bylaw its first three readings, bringing it one step away from being officially accepted.
Right now in Kelowna it is illegal to sit or lie on a sidewalk from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Should it pass its final reading, the new bylaw would extend that ban to overnight, with a $50 penalty for anyone caught.
Katrina Plamondon is one of the driving forces behind Monday’s planned demonstration. She said she began thinking about the event after hearing council’s decision to move the bylaw forward.
“I was immediately shocked and angry that our city council had such a neutral and benign reaction to something that seems to me to be a clear targeting and discrimination [of the city’s homeless population],” she said, referring to council’s unanimous support of the the bylaw through its first readings.
She also thinks levying fines against some of the city’s most vulnerable populations is “ridiculous.” Almost all of the people who would get hit with these tickets, she said, wouldn’t have the means to pay it anyway.
In an online letter posted earlier this week, Mayor Colin Basran defended the bylaw,
"I want to be abundantly clear that the City of Kelowna is not targeting people sleeping on our streets with the purpose of harassing or incarcerating our most vulnerable residents,” he said. "The purpose of this bylaw is to prevent people from obstructing sidewalks and preventing accessibility for residents."
Robert Mellalieu is also involved planning Monday’s demonstration. He doesn’t buy Basran’s explanation, saying that the fines “will affect nobody but homeless people.”
He said he sees council talking a lot about trying to help the city’s homeless, but their actions and policy decisions don’t often reflect those words.
“They’re not addressing the problem, they’re addressing everything but the problem,” Mellalieu said. The sidewalk sleeping bylaw is just one more example of that.
Plamondon said she applauds council for the works it is doing, on a large scale, to better understand the city’s housing challenges, but says bylaws like the ban on sidewalk sleeping are acting against that work.
“I think that, despite whatever efforts the city is making in a more comprehensive strategy, when they make this bylaw a priority they send a message that the comfort of people accessing business and restaurants is more important that the lives of the people who are sitting on the sidewalks,” she said.
“It troubles me that they are making that effort while also supporting this bylaw, because they are very contradictory messages. When I hear that kind of contradiction, what I don’t know is where the true intention is.”
Monday afternoon, Mellalieu says demonstrators plan to gather on the sidewalk in front of city hall with sidewalk chalk, petitions and possibly even a game of street hockey, in an effort to demonstrate that sidewalks “should be a public space.”
Mellalieu says he hopes demonstrators’ presence will create more discussion, or even prompt council to reconsider its support of the bylaw.
To learn more about the demonstration, visit the Facebook page promoting it. For more detailed information on the sidewalk bylaw, check out the Nov. 28 council agenda.
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