Police have confirmed what downtown business owners were finding out firsthand.
There is a wave of criminal activity at the street level in Prince George, but instead of it being familiar suspects, the perpetrators are mostly newcomers from the northwest region.
The onset was slow but became noticeable to the store owners in the retail and business core of the city over the last few months. The rate of open drug dealing, vandalism, vagrancy, and other malfeasance has gone up to levels not seen since the installation of the Prince George RCMP's Downtown Enforcement Unit.
Local proprietors told The Citizen their impression was that these new faces were from Hazelton, Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Terrace and the smaller communities of the northwest.
"No. It's not their imagination," said Prince George RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig Douglass. "We have taken notice of that as we deal with people and gather their home information. We have long said that people we deal with are often transient, and for a long time Prince George has been a hub for the north, but typically the northwest tends to stick to its own and the Peace-region tends to stick to its own. Now, which goes against usual practices in the past, they are finding their way here. We do not know why, although we are looking into it and we have some working theories."
The main assumption being explored is housing pressure in the northwest pushing out undesirable tenants or those who can't afford the higher prices.
Due to the sustained upsurge in construction activity on the west coast, the region's small-town vacancy rate has evaporated and the big-town rental prices have climbed beyond the reach of many in the low income strata. Reports include rents jumping from $400 to $1,200 dollars per month for a common apartment or basement suite.
"We haven't checked with everybody, but we are definitely hearing about housing getting difficult in the Kitimat / Terrace area and people coming to Prince George looking for a better way," said Active Support Against Poverty's shelter manager Doug Price who has additional expertise as a past employee at Baldy Hughes Recovery Community and as head of security at University Hospital of Northern BC.
He said during this summer the shelter at Bridget Moran Place has consistently been at or above core capacity. The anecdotal impression was that, on top of local people in need, the population of those in a housing pinch was bigger because of those fleeing the costs in the industrial boomtowns.
Price said there was also a bit of the reverse reaction – people from other regions coming here in hopes of catching on with a boomtown employer, but finding this difficult.
"The police are dealing with one part of it, but we are dealing with another part, and it's not really the same people, but it is similar because of the probable cause – all the housing pressures in those places," Price said.
"There are a number of consequences being felt. We aren't naive, but the ones who are connected to the crime parts of this are usually living in low-rent places, they aren't the shelter crowd. The people we are seeing are really without a home for a number of reasons."
"I see the homeless people, and I see the criminal element," agreed one shopkeeper near Third Avenue and George Street where a number of street-involved people have tended to congregate in recent times.
"I'd call the homeless people pretty harmless, and we've gotten familiar with them over the years, the locals, and to be honest they are often the victims of these others – the new ones who are here trying to sell drugs and steal things to make a quick buck. But it's the worst I've seen it in a long time around here."
Douglass said initiatives were underway even before this new wrinkle emerged, but he was confident the policing aspects of this multi-faceted problem would have an impact.
"We've been working with Downtown Prince George and City Hall to improve the downtown, in any event," he said.
"Even if it was great, we would want to make it greater, so that's ongoing, but this escalation from other towns is one of the concerns that have come up. It certainly is a priority for us, we do notice the trends, and we have strategies to try to improve that."
