Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly Recommendations: Communication, Housing, and Continued Advocacy

Over the last little bit, I’ve been posting about Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly on Community Safety, including about the Assembly and their first recommendation, their second recommendation, and their third recommendation. This is my last post on their recommendations.

The Assembly also made four supporting recommendations. The first supporting recommendation is to improve how Langley City communicates with residents and businesses, and how residents and businesses can communicate with the City. This means information from the City should be proactive, consistent, accessible, in plain language and available across multiple mediums (online, print, in-person). It also means that residents and businesses should have a one-stop shop for connecting with the City and service delivery partners.

The Citizens’ Assembly members felt strongly that housing is the foundation for safety and well-being, and that a Citizens’ Assembly on Housing would add value by focusing on practical options to deliver affordable housing in Langley City. The members also felt that it would help build community consensus around delivering housing, as it can be divisive at the neighbourhood level today.

The Assembly members also recommended that the City continue to advocate to the province for a Mobile Integrated Crisis Response team for Langley, where a police officer and a health care professional work as a team for certain calls. The Assembly also recommended that the City continue to advocate for the federal and provincial governments to fund the construction of affordable housing in the community across the housing continuum.

As the next step, City staff are working on an implementation plan for the Assembly’s recommendations. Council will then have the opportunity to discuss and potentially approve the implementation plan to put the Assembly’s recommendations into action.

Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly Recommendations: Balancing Community Safety Prevention and Visibility

Today, I’m continuing my series on Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly on Community Safety’s recommendations. You can read more about the Assembly and their first recommendation, as well as their second recommendation. Their third recommendation is Balancing Community Safety Prevention and Visibility.

Right now, our public safety system is more reactive than preventive. We all know we get better outcomes when we focus on prevention. This means that we need to shift our safety system so that people can access resources earlier.

A good example of shifting upstream is Project Black Feather, a joint program between the City, Township, and Langley School District, that reduces the likelihood of young people going down a dangerous path of gang and gun violence. Another example is improving how buildings and sites that are slated for redevelopment are secured to prevent fires.

Combining prevention with visibility is one of the Assembly’s major action items. The City and its partners would use data to proactively go to areas in our community with higher social needs or negative activity, working with RCMP, Bylaw, Fire, and other partners to increase visibility while also offering outreach, including housing stability, social support, and health options for all people in those areas. This would be meeting people where they are while also ensuring that parts of our community aren’t under- or overpoliced.

My next post will outline the Assembly’s supporting recommendations and the next steps.

Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly Recommendations: Advocacy & Service Navigation

Over the next little bit, I’ll be posting about the recommendations from Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly on Community Safety. You can learn more about the Citizens’ Assembly and their first recommendation on creating Resilient Neighbourhood Networks in a previous post.

What is Langley City's Citizens’ Assembly? Select the image to enlarge.

Their second recommendation is to create an Advocacy & Service Navigation Framework. People face a fragmented system when seeking safety services. When you need help, you may need to reach out to multiple departments, services, or agencies. You might not even know where to start, get bounced around, have Department A say it's Department B’s problem, only to have Department B say it is Department A’s problem. Service providers may not follow up with you.

A simple example at the City level is knowing whether a safety issue is bylaws or the building inspection department; you might have to make two calls. At a higher level, a 911 call for a domestic situation may have been handled differently if people had been referred to a service provider that delivers family support earlier.

Based on the existing work in our community on coordinated services for people experiencing homelessness, this model of providing a one-stop shop entry point with trained service navigators, who provide proactive follow-up and warm handoffs, should be expanded to all people who need to use safety services in our community. This would reduce overall calls for service and be more effective.

Next up, I’ll be posting about the third recommendation.

Langley City’s Citizens’ Assembly Recommendations: Resilient Neighbourhood Networks

Community safety has been at the top of mind for many Langley City residents and businesses for as long as I’ve lived in this community. While it is important that we continue to invest in basic public safety resources such as police and fire, it is clear that we need to do something different to help move from a reactive to a more proactive public safety model. Council wanted to do this in a way that directly involves our community, giving them the resources they need to develop a made-in-Langley-City solution to create a safer community.

Langley City convened a Citizens’ Assembly on Community Safety. 29 people were selected to serve on the assembly via a lottery process that also ensured the assembly members were a representative sample of our community's demographics.

What is Langley City's Citizens’ Assembly? Select the image to enlarge.

Over the last year, they got to work and presented their recommendations on Monday night, which Council endorsed. The Assembly made seven recommendations, and I wanted to outline them over the next week or so.

The first recommendation was to stand up Resilient Neighbourhood Networks (RNNs). Safety starts at the neighbourhood level. People need to both be safe and actually feel safe. Strong neighbourhood-level connections between people are a proven way to build trust, reduce fear, and foster a sense of ownership in their community. When people come together, it also gives them the opportunity to actively improve their neighbourhood's safety, whether through emergency preparedness, first aid training, neighbourhood safety walks, learning from first responders, or social gatherings to build neighbourhood cohesion. This helps shift towards a more proactive safety model.

The City will support the creation of the RNNs and will pilot them in several neighbourhoods this year, starting now. The City will be sending out information on how people can get involved.

I will be posting about the next recommendations next week.