‘No justice served’: Downtown Kelowna restaurateur feels powerless against petty crime 

Eric Lee, like a lot of business owners in downtown Kelowna, feels powerless when theft and overdoses affect his two restaurants.

Lee owns Yuzu Bowl and Bistro as well as Sushi Sai, both on Ellis Street in downtown Kelowna. He said in the last year crime and homelessness in the downtown core have gotten much worse. 

At one point, he came into work to get ready to open the restaurant and found a man overdosing behind the building receiving CPR. Lee stepped in to help by calling an ambulance, and paramedics arrived to save the man’s life. 

Shortly after the paramedics left, Lee said the man who had overdosed started using drugs again nearby.

“I was really shocked because that’s what made him almost get killed. And he’s doing it again,” he said. 

Lee said people try to do drugs in his washrooms almost every day, people dine and dash every week, and overdoses outside happen often. 

“If somebody dines and dashes, there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. 

Kelowna has a Downtown On Call team who patrol in red jackets. Lee said they’re helpful for dealing with people impeding business by loitering, but they can’t do much when people break the law.

“They’re doing great, but it’s just like a bandage to cover up the problem. Their job is to ask them nicely to move their stuff, but they can’t enforce anything,” he said. “Then if they don’t listen, they call RCMP, which will take like two or three hours.”

It’s only been a few years since Lee opened his restaurants, but he’s seen crime and homelessness get significantly worse in Kelowna in a short time frame.

“Everybody is afraid to break the law, but there are some people who have nothing to lose and when they break the law, there’s no consequences. There’s no justice served. This is a big problem for us,” he said. 

Kelowna’s crime rate and severity dropped in 2024, but Lee said that’s because minor crimes don’t get reported. 

“These people are not punished. That’s why,” he said. “These people get to get away with everything. My next door neighbour, they got their windows broken like three times or something.”

Lee said the crime problem downtown is treated like a natural disaster, like people can’t do anything except react and repair.

He expects the problem to get worse since the economy is struggling and the job market is getting tougher with Kelowna’s unemployment rate recently hitting 11 per cent. 

“I am still empathetic to the people who are having problems right now,” he said. “People with no education and nothing to do. They can’t really survive this economy.”

He thinks there are things the government should do, like increase RCMP patrols in the downtown core, but the community shouldn’t just wait for a solution to appear. 

“When something happens, report right away instead of neglecting the problem or leaving somebody else to do it. In general everyone should work together, not just the government,” he said.