'Complete Reversal': CRCHES awarded for two years of ground-level response
Fort St. John walked away with a pair of major honours at the North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA) convention last month, receiving awards for both its cultural landscape and its frontline social policy.
While the City secured the Community Leadership Award for Economic Development for its recent public art initiatives, it was also awarded the top spot for Social Responsibility, a direct nod to the street-level success of Council’s Response Committee on Homelessness and Emergency Shelter (CRCHES) since its high-stakes inception in 2024.
“When I look at where the community was two years ago, what business concerns we were originally hearing when we did our [business] walks to where we are right now, it’s a world difference,” Councillor Trevor Bolin said, describing the first two years of CRCHES efforts to alleviate issues brought to Council’s attention by local businesses in 2023.
Out of a genuine desire to help vulnerable people, and a concern for everyone in the community, CRCHES was formed in September 2024, as a think-tank to determine how to implement Bolin’s July 2023 proposed bylaw against camping in the city.
But as the committee members - Councillors Sarah MacDougall, Gord Klassen along with Bolin and Corporate Officer Bonnie McCue - began investigating what was really behind the homelessness in the city, they learned that the issues were bigger than any of them had imagined, and one bylaw wouldn’t solve things.
“The first one [business walk] was a nightmare of epic proportions as we really learned some of the outfalls of the issues that were in the community that maybe we don’t see on an everyday basis,” Bolin said.
The committee took the bull by the horns, and not only spoke with local businesses, but talked with the homeless people themselves to learn how they came to be in the situation they were in, and what their needs were.
Bolin called CRCHES an action-oriented committee, a real working committee.
“The members of council on this committee have done an excellent job of hitting the streets and speaking to people experiencing homelessness or on the verge of homelessness in our community and seeing where their needs are and addressing those needs through stakeholder engagement,” McCue said.
By the time CRCHES went on the second business walk, a year after the first one, Bolin said it “was a complete reversal of what we’d heard from the first one.”
A third business walk is planned for this year, and Bolin expects it will be even better than the second one.
“I’m excited about it and we will report back to you as we get closer to the fall and start to wrap up this year’s work.”
“This has been a really great committee to work on,” said MacDougall, because the focus hasn’t just been on one aspect or sector of the community.
“It’s really been on the entire community of Fort St. John and how do we make our community better for all residents. It’s been great to do that work.”