Since cutting power to a notorious house in Penticton, a neighbouring landlord is calling for the city to step up enforcement after a “significant increase in unacceptable behaviour.”
Matt Taylor wrote the city last week to address council in the April 3 meeting, making note of a number of issues at the house at 377 Winnipeg Ave., which has been in the spotlight for months.
“Drug users on our property… drug paraphernalia left behind poses significant health/safety risk to my tenants and their pets,” Taylor wrote, adding people have been “observed ‘shooting up’ by cell phone light.”
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As well, Taylor said people have been found sleeping both in the parking lot and in the building, posing “a serious safety risk to my tenants attempting to exit the building and/or access vehicles.”
“These individuals are not drawn to the area surrounding Winnipeg and Wade by the numerous seniors homes in the immediate vicinity or the fire hall less than a block away. They are drawn by the access to drugs or cheap accommodation at the subject location,” Taylor wrote.
“Occupants are living in what is essentially an uninhabitable building — using portable kerosene heaters for minimal heat and a portable gas-powered generator for power during limited periods of the day.”
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Taylor said the behaviour will continue on this track unless council stops it. He added that, from the public’s perspective, the city “would seem increasingly complicit in the problem and responsible for allowing it to continue as a highly visible example of what is acceptable for other landlords and occupants to mimic.”
The property has been the subject of torrents of online shaming for months, with people calling out drug use and unverified claims of stolen property at the house.
The city beefed up its enforcement bylaws in December by targeting properties with numerous calls for bylaw enforcement with an “excessive nuisance abatement fee.”
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The house also came up at the policing forum held last July, where Supt. Ted De Jager, still only a few months into his position with the Penticton RCMP, packed a room in the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre to field questions.
The public question period ran 40 minutes over its allotted time, as residents took the city’s top cop to task over the city’s property crime issue.
Crime in the downtown core in general was also the topic of a February delegation to council’s committee of the whole, with Downtown Penticton Association president Ryan Graham, owner of Clancy’s Liquor Store on Main Street, claiming RCMP was not doing enough to engage in the downtown area.