MAPLE RIDGE, B.C.—Sitting on the back deck of the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans club, a group of old friends discuss an issue that’s become central in this city: homelessness.

“The homeless people are everywhere,” Amy Klassen says.

“There’s a lot of break-and-enters,” says Terry Eistetter. “My truck has been ransacked a few times.”

“They don’t need a welfare cheque, they need help,” Val Lafrance chimes in.

Whether they realize it or not, the group is parroting many of the same talking points favoured by the city’s polarizing mayor, who has — since his election in October — repeatedly locked horns with the province of B.C. over how to handle the homelessness that’s increasing in his city and the Lower Mainland.

Two years ago, about 60 people set up a tent city in Maple Ridge, dubbing it Anita’s Place, which became ground zero for that debate.

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Last month, Mayor Mike Morden came under fire for his comment that homeless people were “raping and pillaging” the city. Anti-poverty advocates said Morden’s choice of words encouraged prejudice against some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, including those with mental health issues and those who use drugs.

In March, the city evicted almost all the tent city residents over what it called fire safety concerns and many are now staying at the temporary Salvation Army shelter. A spokesperson for BC Housing confirmed that its lease on the building ends in June and that the 40-bed shelter will be forced to close at that time.

Many former tent city residents told Star Vancouver last month they felt abandoned by the very city they call home.

Nearby, at the Army, Navy and Air Force club, people float the usual well-meaning ideas on how to help people who are homeless.

What if we just put them all on a work farm, someone suggests. How about a barge parked in the river where they can all pitch their tents, so they’re all in one place and social workers can have easy access, someone else says.

Then Eistetter pipes up: “Why don’t they try some of those container things like they did in Vancouver and other cities?”

Dianna Beck nods. And what if they included addictions treatment, counselling, maybe even job opportunities — somewhere that people could get housing and a suite of supports all in one place, she suggests.

“You mean like modular housing?” someone asks.

“Yeah, exactly.” Beck replies. “That would be great.”

Around the porch, everyone nods in agreement. Modular housing would be a great idea.

“If they want to go there and do the work to get clean, I say go for it,” Beck says. “As long as they’re getting the right supports in place.”

It’s a more controversial idea than any of them realize.

Morden has loudly opposed the province’s strategy of building temporary modular housing throughout B.C. to address growing homelessness. But the province’s housing ministry went ahead anyway and opened one set of modulars in Maple Ridge in October 2018.

Construction has now started on a second modular project in the city. A bulldozer and excavator arrived in early May on Burnett Street, dumping gravel fill and levelling the ground. Two modular trailers have already been delivered. More are on their way.

A small group of protestors greeted the construction workers on the first two days of work. One Facebook post called for people to gather and show support for those protesting the project, and even suggested using cars to impede access for the gravel trucks.

“I’ve been here since 6:30 a.m.,” said Terry Asunma, 69. He sits on a lawn chair with a maple leaf stitched on the back, watching the excavation. He vowed to return every day throughout the summer.

“I’m all for treatment and clean housing, not a low barrier shelter. I don’t believe low barrier works,” said Asunma, who lives one block down the street. He, like many opponents to modular housing, believes social housing tenants who use drugs should be forced to enter addictions treatment as a condition of living in the building.

Since the province’s modular housing model is low barrier, meaning it does not mandate treatment for its tenants, the project should be located somewhere else, away from his neighbourhood, he said.

“I know all the services are here but I do believe the services can be brought to the shelter.”

Asunma says everyone on the first floor of his apartment building has already had belongings stolen from their front yards — everything from patio furniture to propane tanks to entire barbecues. He blames it on drug users who live in the area.

In Vancouver, modular housing has been around for years. One such project in the city’s Marpole neighbourhood raised the ire of residents who worried children at a nearby elementary school would be put in danger. But more than a year after tenants moved into the modulars, Vancouver police have repeatedly said the volume of calls at that building is not unusual compared to other apartments in the area.

In Maple Ridge, residents and workers near the tent city remain concerned about crime, even though only a handful of people are still living at Anita’s Place.

Many houses in the neighbourhood have signs indicating there is an alarm system on the premise.

Nearby apartment dwellers have even set up chain-link fences, razor wire and security cameras to deter thieves.

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“We increased our security to the point ... where we have built ourselves into a prison,” said Ed Chester, who manages a low-rise apartment building about one block away from the tent city.

“The people out there are not in a prison — we are,” he said.

Doug Simpson works in an office up the hill from the tent city. He said the neighbourhood changed drastically when people started setting up camp two years ago.

“You’d get the daily riff raff wandering in,” he said, adding it has quieted down since the city evicted the majority of tent city residents in March.

“There were needles, there were drugs, there were a lot of people who are not of sound mind wandering around, and that’s disturbing,” he said.

“You have to ask yourself, do you want it in your neighbourhood or next door to you? The answer is going to be no.”

Beau Sears, 68, lives with her daughters and grandchildren in a two-storey house across the street from Anita’s Place. She says she has never had anything stolen from her property.

“These people are better neighbours than some of the haters in this town. I lost my partner 16 months ago and I was having trouble doing the yard work and that.”

Two tent-city residents offered to help and spent three days cleaning up Beau’s yard.

“How many neighbours do you have that would do that?” she asked.

Beau says she gets along with her neighbours, including those who live in the tent city, because she treats everyone “like human beings.”

The same principle applies to people living near the two modular housing sites in Maple Ridge, she said.

“Bottom line is, we all got to take care of each other.”

Wendy Olsson grew up in Maple Ridge during the ’60s and moved into a low-rise apartment up the street from a vacant lot in the downtown area in 2013. Then, two years ago, people started camping overnight in that lot, turning it into the tent city.

Olsson’s partner has since had his truck broken into multiple times and they see drug deals happening in front of her apartment frequently. Once, she was sitting on her porch when a man walked by. She said he stopped to look at her, then yelled, “I’ll bash your skull in.”

But Olsson doesn’t plan on moving.

She tries her best to make the neighbourhood feel like home and proudly motions to the dozen pots of brightly coloured flowers by her front door. Then, something catches her eye. She turns her head and calls to a neighbour, “Mackenzie, you left your key in the door!”

Olsson believes neighbours need to take care of each other — and neighbours who are homeless count, too. The government should have started building modular housing a long time ago, she said.

“I just hope it’s gone for good,” she said of the tent city.

“Everything has a way of working out.”

Back at the Army, Navy and Air Force club, it’s clear people want the problem of homelessness dealt with, but it’s equally clear there’s a lot of nuance involved in how people think that should happen. Dianna Beck and Terry Eistetter understand that nuance better than most.

They’ve both experienced homelessness.

“We lived in a tent for two years in the Okanagan,” Eistetter says, recalling the time he and Beck lived rough many years ago in the warm, semi-arid valley of the B.C. interior.

Eistetter says he worked on commercial fishing vessels as a younger man, and during that time, he was seriously injured in an accident with a hydraulic lift.

He was prescribed opioid pain killers, but eventually that wasn’t enough. One day a friend gave him a taste of heroin to combat the pain and that was it, he says. He was hooked.

It took him years and four tries in rehab to finally get off heroin. He later developed a cocaine addiction, which also took years to kick. The last time he got high was 11 years ago, he says.

“I’m so glad I beat it,” he says. “Once you get wired to the opiates, it’s really hard to kick. It’s a physical thing, it’s not mental.”

Though Eistetter managed to bring his addiction under control and stabilize his life, many people in Maple Ridge are struggling to do the same.

Across the street from the Salvation Army shelter, a woman is unconscious on the ground. Half a dozen paramedics and firefighters work quickly and carefully, responding as they always do to a suspected overdose.

A fast-acting passerby administered Naloxone and called 911. After a few minutes, the woman wakes — groggy at first, then slowly becoming more alert.

The paramedics strap her onto a gurney and load her into an ambulance.

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