Tent city or affordable housing?
A recent letter to the editor maintains that Victoria should support a tent city in our parks or elsewhere on public land. For me, it’s just another expensive band-aid that does nothing to address a housing crisis or the challenges facing the homeless. It’s a million dollar project that would divert badly needed funds away from the longer-term solutions we’ve committed ourselves to.
Victoria, like other municipalities, is facing a growing infrastructure deficit and a seemingly ever-expanding list of responsibilities downloaded from senior governments facing their own fiscal challenges. Spending on temporary fixes steals resources from less immediate but more durable investments in housing and support systems that more effectively meet the challenges of homelessness and housing.
Securing hundreds more affordable housing options around downtown is part of our latest initiative. Bidding on Travelers Inn properties currently in receivership is a bold move for the city. The money we are investing is significant, enough to keep a tent city running for a few years, but ultimately a much more effective deployment of our limited budget. It’s just the latest of choices we’ve been able to make because we’ve resisted the tent city model.
For a fraction of that cost, the more immediate needs of our street population are getting another boost with extended hours at “Our Place”, where many end up after our camping bylaws arouse them from their sleep at 7 a.m. It’s something we’ve been working on for some months and a welcome, if a long time coming, contribution from the province signals a renewed interest in helping deal with a challenge not of our making. A few blocks away, a new downtown health centre is providing much needed services for the street population and others with addictions or mental health problems. Connecting people to those two options are also better investments than a tent city.
Victoria has to deal with homelessness and housing issues, like other cities and our own municipal neighbours, but the causes and distribution of the problem make it more than our issue alone. The federal government abandoned their role in funding housing in the early ‘90s and in BC, the erosion in buying power of our most disadvantaged citizens has been accelerated by income support programs that haven’t kept up with inflation.
It’s compounded by a minimum wage that hasn’t changed in a decade. Many in need of better housing are working, but don’t earn enough to secure stable and appropriate housing. The solutions must include a bigger role for both the federal and provincial governments at both the program and policy levels.
Over the year since our new look council took office, the number and diversity of housing options, approved, finished or in progress has exceeded the efforts of any previous council in the city’s history. We’ve been partnering with BC Housing, the Capital Region, the Coalition to End Homelessness and an able non-profit sector to take advantage of an economic downturn to assemble a varied portfolio of new projects to tackle homelessness and create new rental and affordable housing stock
In Victoria alone, several million dollars have been invested, spurring small projects to house women in need, supportive housing for those with addictions, accessible units for people with
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