B.C.’s youth advocate has added her voice to the growing chorus calling on the government to shut down Victoria’s tent city.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, said she knows of up to 13 kids associated with the encampment on the lawn of the city’s courthouse.

And now that the camp is becoming more entrenched with running water and toilets, she fears more youth will be attracted to it.

“This is not a safe place for young people,” Turpel-Lafond said Wednesday. “I’ve been sharing my concerns with the ministry, bringing that information forward. But again, the government officials that are lead in this area need to act. The ball is in their court.”

She said youth spending time at tent city are exposed to open drug use and potentially non-consensual sex – and she wants the province to push the courts to shut it down before a scheduled injunction hearing in September.

“I am very uncomfortable with leaving this until September. I think that those numbers are going to swell, and I feel somewhat as though they’re just waiting for a fatality and that’s not an acceptable stance,” she said.

She said the government is able to apply earlier than that for a temporary injunction to dismantle tent city if compelling new information arises – such as the presence of kids there.

The province is “equally concerned” about young people living there and tent city as a whole, said Stephanie Cadieux, Minister of Children and Family Development.

But the government is only aware of one youth living in the encampment and potentially a few others who come and go from the site, she said, adding the government is powerless to force youths out.

“Tent city is no place for youth, and we’re doing what we can to support them as they may come in or out of that site,” Cadieux said. “We do not have the ability to forcibly remove or confine a youth outside of tent city either, so our job is to make sure we’re there and work with the partners to ensure safety as best as we possibly can.”

She said social workers are on site seven days a week to engage with any youth who might frequent the site and try to encourage them to seek support elsewhere.

In January, CTV News talked to a 16-year-old foster child who said she’s bounced around group homes and is now living in the encampment.

As a youth who is technically still under the government’s care, she cannot be identified.

That same teen is still living at tent city and said Wednesday she doesn’t know of any other minors there.

She maintained that the encampment is a better environment for her than group homes.

“People don’t realize this is a safer place for me," she said. "This is where I feel safest because I know there’s people that who would protect me."

She said the mood has grown slightly more “grumpy” at the camp in recent months, but “there are still a lot of good people here.”

Turpel-Lafond said there’s a reason other youths aren’t identifying themselves at the camp.

“Some of the people in tent city are covering for the fact that they don’t want to identify who the young people are, and people aren’t telling who they are because they don’t want the monitoring,” she said.

“We can fight about the numbers…but that really detracts us from the key point. I don’t care if there’s one, or 13. That situation could grow to 30 and no one would be able to control it at this point.”

A B.C. Supreme Court judge ruled last month that campers can remain at tent city through the summer.

The province has applied for a permanent injunction hearing to evict campers from the lawn. That hearing is scheduled for Sept. 7.