A commentary by a Victoria city councillor.
I appreciated reading “Victoria’s neighbourhoods need protection,” the July 25 letter from Lynn Andersen on behalf of the Stadacona Centre Strata Council.
Andersen’s first-hand account is important for all members of council to read, as community safety is one of the most pressing issues our city faces today.
I want Andersen, the Stadacona Centre Strata Council, and all of Victoria’s businesses and residents, both housed and unhoused, to know that I hear their stories and I understand how this issue has led to tremendous disruption in their lives over the past several years.
Andersen expressed frustration that anecdotal stories related to crime and disorder were not being validated. I am aware of how upsetting and frustrating that must be for her and others in her position.
I apologize to her and others who were concerned about these comments. I was trying to convey the point that using only anecdotal evidence is a not a comprehensive way to create effective policy.
However, anecdotal stories are evidence, and they provide an important starting point for researching integrated evidence-based solutions.
During several conversations with VicPD patrol officers during the election campaign, I was told they spent almost all their time on calls involving homelessness.
This information was disconcerting, so after I became a councillor, I wanted to try to help our community by easing the call load placed on our police department and to simultaneously help the unhoused and neighbourhoods affected by sheltering.
In January, two of my council colleagues and I asked VicPD for call data to test a hypothesis based on first-hand accounts. Did interim shelter solutions — for example, Tiny Town beside Royal Athletic Park — decrease crime in neighborhoods where they were located?
The data confirmed that police calls were dramatically lower for Tiny Town compared to calls to parks, streets, and boulevards where unsheltered homelessness occurred.
This is why we began to advocate for more interim shelter solutions like Tiny Town, or The Village in Duncan, where there has been an 18 per cent decrease in crime in the surrounding neighbourhood.
We also compared police call data between supportive housing facilities considered problematic, to those which were considered not nearly as problematic, to research why some supportive housing facilities function better than others.
Again, this work was grounded in first-hand accounts from community members.
VicPD asked us to keep the call data confidential, and we respected their wishes.
The City of Victoria is hiring a parks relocation coordinator to work with the province to help find housing, or better sheltering options, by Nov. 1 for people residing in Stadacona, Topaz, Regatta Point, and Hollywood parks.
Should the province not have appropriate housing options available by mid-September, I am prepared to move that staff be asked to set up an interim sheltering site by Nov. 1, so the four parks can permanently prohibit overnight sheltering.
I hope this will start an avenue to ending unsheltered homelessness everywhere in Victoria and reduce the accompanying problems in neighbourhoods where it exists.
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