Victoria鈥檚 spiralling housing crisis is now pitting neighbourhoods against each other as residents battle to ban or limit the size of homeless camps springing up across the city.
The Victoria Downtown Residents Association entered the fray Wednesday by calling on the city to reverse course and bar people without homes from pitching tents in Centennial Square.
City staff recommended a similar ban last week, but councillors ignored the recommendation and voted 5-3 to permit a limited number of tents in the square once it reopens following a period of remediation. An earlier encampment was shut down due to entrenched criminal activity.
Coun. Geoff Young opposes all-day camping, but argued that it makes more sense in Centennial Square than other places because it has 24-hour washroom facilities, security and limited green space.
Mayor Lisa Helps countered that allowing tents in the square would put too much pressure on businesses already struggling due to the pandemic.
Council will revisit the issue Thursday, but if its decision stands, the square could reopen to camping under new size and spacing restrictions that would permit up to six structures. The previous encampment had 38 tents at its height.
Sandra Severs, who chairs the downtown association鈥檚 urban livability committee, said people shouldn鈥檛 be forced to camp outside at all, but the square is a particularly poor location, as there is no access to cooking facilities, heat or showers.
鈥溾�楾here needs to be options for people to be inside where they have access to food, and they have access to heat,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 would not put my dog out in the yard over the winter and I think it鈥檚 inhuman that we would actually consider this as a solution for this coming winter, even in light of COVID.
鈥淭he whole idea of pitting neighbourhoods against each other about who鈥檚 going to deal with this situation is really appalling. It needs to go back to B.C. Housing for the financial resources to find adequate and healthy sheltering models 鈥� inside, not in a nylon tent on a piece of lawn in a public park.鈥�
Until that happens, however, the North Park Neighborhood Association says the city needs to do proper analysis and come up with a plan that allows all neighborhoods to share the load.
Sean Kahil, who sits on the association鈥檚 board, said the city appears to be playing 鈥淲hack-A-Mole鈥� with encampments, allowing them to grow too large and out of control in one neighbourhood, then shutting them down, only to have them pop up somewhere else.
The North Park association says the closure of Centennial Square to campers led to a near doubling of tents at Central Park near a children鈥檚 playground.
Kahil said Centennial Square, adjacent to city hall, should be left in the mix as part of a distributed model that would see all neighbourhoods have smaller, more manageable encampments. He called it hypocritical for Helps to vote to ban tents outside her office, while other neighbourhoods deal with the fallout.
鈥淟isa is literally saying: 鈥楴ot in my backyard,鈥� 鈥� he said.
Severs said she agrees with the need for a distributed model, but that, ultimately, it shouldn鈥檛 be up to neighbourhoods to fix the problem.
鈥淭he pressure needs to be put on the provincial government for the funding,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e are in the middle of a crisis that鈥檚 40 years in the making.
鈥淭his is not a surprise that people don鈥檛 have access to housing. We鈥檙e year after year watching rental costs increase, and very little housing made for people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. So we are creating a situation in which people flow into homelessness.鈥�