Rising intimate partner violence rates are just one of the many canaries in our coal mine

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. We are a long way from done. 

The line on the graph looks like a dip in the road – downhill for a few years after 2009, then slowly climbing back up over a decade starting in 2014.

It tracks the number of police reports in Canada related to intimate partner violence. For a while, things were improving. But that’s over now, with violence rates (54 per 1,000 for Canadian women) now back to the levels of 15 years ago. Similar trends are evident in the US, where aggravated domestic assaults have risen to heights not seen in more than 20 years.

What were we doing right for those good years? What did we start doing wrong? When the issue is something as deeply in the shadows as intimate partner violence, a clear answer is hard to come by. With 80 per cent of people experiencing IPV not even reporting the crime to police, any trend line is only ever scraping the surface.

But the rising stress of daily life on Planet Earth can’t be ignored. Trend lines tied to family well-being on so many fronts are headed in the wrong direction. Yet our country lacks even the most basic of plans for dealing with the multitude of issues feeding into our growing social crisis.

It isn’t just intimate partner violence that’s increasing. Police-reported violence against children and youth in Canada has hit historic highs, having risen 32 per cent since 2018.

Financial worries are increasing: 42 per cent of Canadians in a recent FP Canada survey say money is their top source of stress. The housing crisis rages on, with two-thirds of Canadians reporting they’re unable to comfortably afford a monthly mortgage payment of more than $1,700 a month even while the mortgage payment for an average-priced Vancouver condo is almost three times that much.

Business insolvencies are on the rise after their own brief dip in the road came to an end in 2020. The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in a decade. Poverty rates are rising, as are stress levels; almost a third of Canadians ages 35-49 report feeling very stressed every day.

Families with children are under even greater stress, as are their children. More than a quarter of the cohort of young Canadians followed in a national study tracking mental health perceptions reported in 2023 that their mental health wasn’t good, which was twice as many as four years earlier during the first wave of the study.

School absentee rates are up, with some Canadian school districts reporting as many as two-thirds of elementary-age students absent at least 10 per cent of the time.

All of those trends are known to have an impact on the incidence of family violence. Stressors like household finances, job insecurity and poor mental health are known risk factors for increased violence within families.

Life pressures are mounting in all directions. A rise in family violence is too often the result.

Family violence causes harm long after the act is done and gone, both to the person experiencing the abuse and to any children in the home who see it happen.

The direct victims of an act of violence are at major risk of brain injury if the abuse involved impacts to the head, shaking, or strangulation. At least 65 per cent of victims of intimate partner violence end up with a brain injury.

A child who witnessed the violence may have their own health and economic opportunities negatively affected long into adulthood, or end up with a brain injury themselves if they’re also targeted for abuse. So many people living with a brain injury from abuse won’t even know they have one, even as it complicates their health, relationships, parenting, and ability to function at work.

We have talked for decades in Canada about the urgency of ending intimate partner violence. But reducing family violence can’t be achieved in isolation from work that strengthens Canada’s social safety net and supports a strong, equitable economy.

On that front, the trend lines are equally alarming. The gap between Canada’s richest and poorest citizens hit a historic high earlier this year. The top 20 per cent of wealthiest Canadians now accounts for two-thirds of our country’s total net worth, while the bottom 40 per cent accounts for just 3.3 per cent.

The rise in intimate partner violence is a red flag across multiple indicators of social health. We are not doing well. Worse, we have no actionable plan for doing better.

We have been winging it for far too long. With so many social indicators going in the wrong direction, the question that hangs over all of us is how much worse we’re prepared to let it get.

The cruel, pointless belief that we can address a social crisis with enforcement

Scrambling to pack up as bylaw gets ready to close in

In days gone by, I'd be out talking to people living homeless and hearing mostly about police. These days, it's all about City of Victoria bylaw enforcement.

The city's bylaw department and many new bylaw hires have been given expansive new powers to seize people's stuff. The Streets and Traffic Bylaw lays out all the places where impoverished people aren't allowed to sit, stand or lie down, but it's the 2023 Property in Custody Bylaw that really gives the muscle.

I'd like to share some sections from these bylaws, in hopes that someone who understands civic law might have ideas on how to push back against them. It's hard to believe that they could possibly be legal given the grand misery they are causing to people, none of whom have the capacity or the knowledge to stand up against them. As noted by one young fellow out there I spoke with, Michael, "maybe one per cent of the people out here know their rights. That doesn't leave people with enough courage to stand up to police or bylaw."

The Streets and Traffic Bylaw lays the groundwork with a number of sections prohibiting people from being on sidewalks, medians and boulevards in the downtown area between the hours of 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. (Of course, people with money sipping a latte or having a hearty meal at a sidewalk cafe are exempted.)

Section 102 (1):

- A person must not place, or cause or permit to be placed or left, any of the following items so as to occupy, obstruct, or cause a nuisance on any part of a street, sidewalk or other public place: 

(i) any property or thing, or

(ii) a sign, as defined in the Sign Bylaw.

- A person must not place or cause or permit to be placed on, above or in a street, sidewalk, or other public place waste matter of any description, including without limitation, litter, rubbish, garbage, offal, filth, or any noxious, offensive or unwholesome substance or matter;

102 (3)

The Director of Engineering, a person authorized by the Director of Engineering, a bylaw officer, or a police officer, may remove, seize, and impound or cause the removal, seizure or impoundment of any property or thing that unlawfully occupies, or has been unlawfully placed or left in, a street, sidewalk or public place, and such item will be dealt with in accordance with the Property in Custody Bylaw

103 (1)

Without limiting the generality of section 101, a person must not obstruct a sidewalk by squatting, kneeling, sitting, or lying down on it between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. of the same day if the sidewalk is located at any of the following locations: (a) (b) (2) in the area that is bounded by Cook, Pembroke, Store, Wharf, Government, Superior and Southgate Streets; abutting or adjacent to those parts of Cook, Pembroke, Store, Wharf, Government, Superior and Southgate Streets that form the boundary of the area referred to in paragraph (a).

103A 

(2) A person must not place, construct, erect or cause or permit to be placed, constructed or erected any structure, tent, object or thing that encroaches on, obstructs, or otherwise occupies a boulevard or median without first obtaining written permission from the Director of Engineering.

(4) The Director of Engineering, a person authorized by the Director of Engineering, a Bylaw Officer, or a member of a police force, on behalf of the City may cause the removal, detention or impounding of any structure, tent, object or thing found on a boulevard or median in contravention of this section, and the portable sign will be dealt with in accordance with the Property in Custody Bylaw.

(5) Between sunset of one day and sunrise on the next day, a person must not: (a)  (b) occupy a median by squatting, kneeling, sitting, or lying down on it;  stand or walk on a median except while lawfully crossing a street.

So that's the bylaw that provides the foundation for enforcement. In 2023, the City brought in the Property in Custody Bylaw, which is the one that gives power to bylaw officers to seize people's goods if they're found anywhere in the no-go zones and hours defined by the Streets and Traffic bylaw.

In theory, seized goods that aren't deemed "rubbish" are to be held for 14 days (it used to be 30 days) in a mysterious location that the City won't disclose. Word on the street is that between the difficulty of the process to get something back, the lack of a proper chain of custody, and the distance that a person without a car is expected to travel to get their goods back from wherever they're held essentially means nobody gets anything back. 

Here's what is required to get something back. Please take a walk down 900-block Pandora and try to imagine who among the sad, sick people stranded out there could make this happen:

Claiming and Disposal of Retained Property

5 (1) (2) (3) (4) Within 14 days of the date of removal, seizure or impounding, owners of retained property may attend at the property return facility to claim and request the return of the retained property, after which the City will endeavor to return the retained property within 48 hours.

Any retained property that is not claimed pursuant to subsection (1) may be immediately and permanently disposed of without notice or compensation to any person. Permanent disposal of unclaimed retained property may be made to a landfill, recycling facility, or other waste disposal facility or, with the permission of the Director, to a registered charity. Notwithstanding subsection (1), the Director may provide any retained property to the police if they believe that such property may be stolen, may have been used in commission of a crime, or may be misplaced or lost.

6    (1) (2) (3) (4) For each removal, seizure or impounding of any property or thing under a City bylaw, the owner of that property or thing must pay the fee prescribed in Schedule A to the City.  Retained property which has been seized shall not be released without payment of the applicable fee. 

(The fee is waived for a first seizure in any given year, $50 for a second, $100 for a third.)

Notwithstanding subsections (1) and (2), no fee is payable for return of retained property to a person experiencing homelessness where in the opinion of the Director (of bylaw services, or authorized delegate) such item is a life-supporting item such as a tent, sleeping bag, medication, medical device, cell phone, personal identification, or waterproof or winter apparel.  

6 (5) 6 Persons claiming retained property must, as a condition of claiming such property, execute a compliance agreement in a form prescribed by the Director stating that the claiming party will not repeat the unlawful behaviour.

7 - Nothing in this Bylaw shall be construed to impose a private law duty of care on any City employee, agent of the City, or police officer with regard to the removal, seizure, impounding, return, disposal or donation of any property or thing pursuant to this Bylaw or any related statutory authority. No Liability 8 No City employee, agent of the City, or police officer shall be liable to any person or entity for the application of this Bylaw.

Perhaps more importantly than any of that, the definition of rubbish under the bylaw is so broad that it's likely most of the 10 tonnes (!) of stuff being seized every week by the city is immediately garbaged. Whether the person who actually owns it thinks that it's rubbish - well, that makes no difference. It's totally the bylaw officer's decision. 

4) Any property or thing that is removed, seized, or impounded may be immediately and permanently disposed of without notice or compensation to any person if it is rubbish, hazardous material, or a bulky item.

Definition of rubbish:

includes any item that, in the opinion of a City employee: appears to be of no resale value, or negligible resale value, is damaged or soiled to the extent that it appears it cannot reasonably be used for its intended purpose, was manufactured for single use, appears to contain an unidentifiable, noxious, or hazardous substance,  is perishable,  was manufactured for the purpose of packaging a product or thing, including food or beverage, or was part of a cart, bicycle, machine, or other similar item, including wiring and other small parts;

Definition of bulky item: 

includes large, heavy, unwieldy or irregularly shaped items, such as furniture, sheet plywood, lumber, heaters, fencing, structures, and includes a shelter, unless such shelter is lawfully temporarily placed, secured, erected, used or maintained by a person experiencing homelessness in accordance with Parks Regulation Bylaw;

Now let's say you're not one of those people who cares much for human rights for people living homeless, and you just want your damn streets to not look like such a mess. I do get that, because the truth of the current situation is that it's a lose-lose for all of us. 

But here's the rub: Enforcement only works if there's someplace for people to go. If you want to force people from building messy structures and keeping all their worldly possessions with them on the sidewalks of our downtown, then there needs to be some other place where they can relocate. 

I'm definitely seeing people relocating to try to escape the seizures, which are killing them (sometimes literally - I heard tell of a fellow who died of an asthma attack after he couldn't get into his taped-off tent to get his inhaler). But they're just relocating to other people's neighbourhoods. It's not like there's some magical housing where they can all disappear into if we just keep chasing them hard enough. 

So yeah, the seizures are cruel, almost certainly illegal if tested in a court of law, and completely pointless to boot. If the baton-carrying bylaw teams in their anti-stab vests are ever successful in clearing out the downtown core, that just means that pockets of visible homelessness are building up elsewhere. How is that a win for anyone?

What to do about it? It's absolutely essential to identify someplace where it's OK to be homeless. That doesn't mean accepting homelessness; a wealthy country like ours should never do that. But there is just nothing to be gained by this cruel and pointless pursuit of people who are barely surviving and now having to endure the added misery of running from bylaw twice a day, and the government-sanctioned theft of their possessions.

Some of the people living on our streets have been outside for years. It's going to take a lot more services, support and housing than we currently have to address the complexities of their highly individual situations. 

But there is no question that there is nowhere near enough low-income housing for the people who need it. If we don't want homelessness in the downtown core, OK, that can be arranged. But not without designating some other area where people without housing can exist in peace.

Shoving a few of them into "supportive housing" for a few weeks under prison-style rules won't do it. Nor will this insubstantial pipe dream of involuntary treatment, which not only lacks any kind of evidence base but has no plan that I'm aware of for housing people post-treatment, or the massive expansion in social supports that would be needed to ensure all the disabilities and traumas underneath people's substance use are addressed as part of their treatment. (And if we were actually committed to creating such a system, why wouldn't we just make it voluntary?)

Surely no one still believes that homelessness is a problem of wilful people determined to live "free and easy" on the street so they don't have to work for a living. If anyone still thinks that, I'd invite them to come walking with me one day and meet some of the people who are stuck out there. They break my heart with their stories of trying so hard, in many cases since they were children.

Or maybe just wait until a day not far down the line when bylaw chases people into your neighbourhood. Then you can ask them yourself. 

Word volley on the social crisis from the local newspaper, in order

Wal_172619 Pixabay

If words in a newspaper could solve the social crisis on our streets, we'd be on our way with the back-and-forths that have been happening in the Victoria Times Colonist since a Sept. 24 column by Les Leyne kicked things off. 

But things have gotten confusing on Facebook what with the ridiculous fight between Meta and the Canadian government that has left us unable to share newspaper links in Canada. So here's all four parts of the back-and-forth laid out in order - Les's piece, then my response, then a comment piece by retired nurse Barbara Wiggins, then my response to that.

Hope this helps for those trying to follow all of this. And while there are some differences in opinion throughout, it's really heartening to see the TC devoting all these column inches to this issue.

Les Leyne column in the Sept. 24 Times Colonist that started things off:

B.C. has slid into an attitude of “endless accommodation” of antisocial behaviour by desperately ill people on downtown streets, says the man at the epicentre of the epicentre of Victoria’s downtown decay.

Julian Daly, CEO of Our Place, the agency most directly involved in the drug-infused mental-health crisis most obvious on Pandora Avenue, told municipal leaders at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention that the balance between compassion and enforcing expectations has been lost.

The ongoing “what to do” debate has flattened into an overly simple artificial choice between compassion and enforcement, he said, but both elements and a lot more are needed to make a difference.

One camp, which the B.C. government endorsed for years, focuses on empathizing with drug addicts. It stresses that addiction is a health problem, not a choice, and concentrates on the sufferers.

On the other side are people suffering the consequences of the disintegration of social order and losing patience.

But reducing it to that choice is a mistake, said Daly, who has spent his career caring for the marginalized.

“We’ve slid into what sometimes feels like endless accommodation of behaviours on our streets that … frighten people and make them feel unsafe, including other homeless people.

“In our desire to be compassionate, we have sometimes lost the balance for accountability.

“When ‘anything goes,’ it really does.”

Our Place is the largest provider of free meals on Vancouver Island, but Daly said “many people who desperately need our food … are simply too frightened to come into our building … because of what’s happening outside.”

Meanwhile, the charitable donations the organization relies on are dropping because of disgust at the situation outside their doors.

“Long-time generous donors have told me bluntly they’re no longer giving because they associate us with the disorder … They believe wrongly that we are somehow responsible …”

Daly said that while the desperately ill are being demonized by some, the compassion-first stand is also problematic.

The NDP’s disastrous decriminalization effort, which disintegrated as an official policy within months, was well-intentioned, Daly said, but had unintended consequences.

It gave people permission to use drugs openly and took away police leverage to discourage drug abuse.

“What was once hidden is now everywhere at the same time.”

The firmly established catch-and-release process in the judicial system has reduced police morale, Daly said.

Police want to maintain order, but when the legal system doesn’t impose consequences for criminal behaviour, they shy away from enforcement, and there is no fear of repercussion on the street.

“It may sound harsh to say, but sometimes well-meaning interventions can end up feeding the problem.”

Once-shocking scenes of misbehaviour have been normalized now and are a routine part of city life, Daly said.

People just walk on by, which fosters complacency.

The government spent millions buying motels for homeless people, and housed 800 of them in the region in recent years. But many of those still on the street today were in safe housing. They lost it because of their continued addiction and mental-health problems, he said.

An all-encompassing strategy of housing, treatment, recovery and enforcement is needed.

He said involuntary care is controversial, but has to be part of the solution. Leaving someone to die on the sidewalk — with their liberty intact — “is not compassion, it’s abandonment.”

“Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do is intervene.”

After years of dithering, the NDP government took the first tentative steps toward secure involuntary care last year. It was telling that they had to hire an outside special advisor — psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Vigo — to chart the rationale for doing so.

Daly said the New Roads recovery programs are showing real results.

He urged more targeted enforcement by police. Not to criminalize addiction or poverty, but to attack predators within the street population who exploit homeless victims.

“Enforcement used wisely is not the enemy of compassion. It is a tool of protection.”

He also stressed the need for prevention, by way of immediate interventions before the cycle gets entrenched.

That means stepping in “when the first tent goes up” in order to start solving the crisis instead of just managing it.

It feels like the province has adjusted its stance over the past year or so, partly in the general direction that Daly advocates.

But the government drifted a long way from the balance he stressed is needed before the course correction came.


My response to Les Leyne’s column, which ran as a comment piece Sept. 27:

Everything about Les Leyne’s Sept 24 column filled me with rage, most especially Our Place CEO Julian Daly’s stunning misrepresentation of problems at the core of this social crisis burning in the hearts of our communities.

To take the tragic situation that is happening on our streets and blame it on our “anything goes” attitude and “endless accommodation” – I don’t even have words for the fury that evokes in me after decades of observing how this four-alarm social crisis came to be. We simply must quit listening to people speaking from the comfort of their nice, non-impoverished lives and get a grip on this tragic humanitarian crisis from the point of view of the people living it.

Medical triaging treats the sickest people first. Social triaging works in the opposite way – you must prove yourself to be sufficiently ready, worthy and stable enough to get help like housing and treatment. What that approach has created is a situation where the absolute sickest people are the ones left without care.

Imagine if cancer patients had to prove themselves “ready” to qualify for support. Still smoking? Not eating enough greens? Overweight? No care for you. Unable to fill out dozens of forms that you don’t even know exist while maintaining a polite, pro-social façade despite being racked with pain and anguish? Back of the line, buddy.

As if. But that’s what we’ve done here. We set up rules that only the healthiest of a sick population can possibly achieve, and blame the ones left behind for not trying hard enough. We dangle the promise of housing like a carrot to be had if someone can sufficiently demonstrate that they’re worthy of it. We tear apart encampments as if we expect the people living in them will vanish.

This is the criminalization of poverty and disability. We are sectioning people under the Mental Health Act as risks to themselves or others and then sending them, still sectioned, into the community to live homeless. We are walking all over people’s human rights, every single damn day.

This is not “endless accommodation” – this is brutal, socially sanctioned neglect of extremely ill human beings, who are viewed with something far from compassion.

None of this is about drugs. Any of us would be using drugs if left in this situation. The drugs are the top layer on people’s multi-layered problems, but they’re the symptom, not the cause.

Why does this deepening social crisis never respond to any of our actions? Think about that. They’re the wrong actions. The sickest people are being shut out of support. That’s not “endless accommodation,” that’s just stupid, inhumane policy that leaves the very visible flames of a four-alarm social crisis to burn unattended on our streets.


Next, retired nurse Barbara Wiggins responds to my piece with her own comment Oct. 9. She has a degree in health ­informatics from the University of Victoria:

I am pleased to see several letters and opinions recently on our urban crisis of addictions and social disorder.

It is worthwhile to revisit the theories that our policies are based on and determine if ­evidence supports those ­theories.

With any social policy, ­evaluating our efforts and ­determining whether we are making a difference, whether we could do better and whether our policies are creating new problems is imperative.

Jody Paterson wrote an impassioned commentary from which I inferred she believes that compassion is the ultimate guiding principle.

I believe that she and many others employed in this sector are both sincere and committed to their noble cause.

But there is a key element to her argument that needs to be examined.

She contends that in medical triage, the sickest are treated first, whereas in social triage, they are treated last. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

Medical triage was established as a means of streaming the injured into similar groups in a mass-casualty event.

The first group is the walking wounded and those whose treatment can safely be delayed. Their treatment is delayed.

The second group is those who need immediate, usually intensive, intervention to survive. This group receives priority care.

The third group is those who are terminal — either dead on arrival, or whose condition is so dire that death is inevitable. This group gets little or no intensive treatment, as the efforts to revive them will be futile, and comfort measures may be the best that can be offered.

Furthermore, the efforts of caregivers are better spent on those outcomes that can be improved by medical interventions. This system, far from being heartless, is born of both compassion and logic.

I am not advocating a harsh “let them fend for themselves” approach.

But I will support the notion that some individuals are in the unfortunate overlap of brain injury, addiction, mental health disorders and criminality, who are not only not benefiting from our social programs, but who make it more difficult to provide effective service and care to those who have a chance of being helped.

Also, some of these individuals may victimize those clients for whom the programs were created.

Unfortunately, there is so little hard data or program evaluation to guide decision-makers one way or the other.

But it has become clear that we have an unmanageable, expensive, inefficient, illogical, heartless mishmash of programs.

Can we at least agree that the state of unresolved addiction is a hell we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy?

If we can agree on that, then perhaps we could all get off our ideological soapboxes and start planning and funding programs based on the likelihood of success in helping people transition back to a non-addicted life, where it is possible to have a healthy life with healthy social connections.

And we provide compassionate care to those for whom recovery is no longer part of their care plan, as long as their programs don’t increase the risk of harm to others.

And, for those who perpetually victimize the most vulnerable, we need to have the courage to incarcerate them using the prison system.

If this smacks of heartlessness, it is anything but.

Out here in the homes and neighbourhoods, we live with and witness the damage done by the addiction/social disorder crisis.

We witness our children, the children of our friends and the friends of our children fall victim to this mass casualty event. We see that not all approaches work for all people and that some are lost despite massive attempts to help.

We have a vested interest in this problem that goes way beyond our role as taxpayers. We have skin in this game.

One definition of madness is to endlessly repeat the same action and expect a different outcome. It is time for a fresh perspective.


And my Oct. 16 response to Barbara Wiggins'  piece. Last in the series, so far....:

Thank you to Barbara Wiggins for her informed commentary on Oct. 9, which clarified that medical triage actually has three groupings: Help these ones right away; these ones can wait a bit but must be prioritized for care; and the group that is essentially the walking dead, who need medical help the least because there’s no chance they’ll make it.

The social triage is similar but different: Easiest to help so pick them first; these ones next because at least they’ve got an advocate; and the final group, essentially the “dead man walking” group noted in the medical triage description. The people who the system decides are not worth helping.

But while this group takes care of itself neatly in the medical world — they just die — that’s not how it goes with social crisis.

The people deemed “hopeless” don’t die, they end up living hard, sick, poor, ­incredibly stigmatized lives in ways that are not only cruel, wrong and expensive, but that annoy the hell out of the neighbours, ­business owners, city councils and every colour of government.

Wiggins rightly points out that the hopeless group at least get comfort in medical triage. In the social triage, this group is treated as harshly as possible.

They live in dystopian ­conditions — chased from place to place, personal items freely taken from them, rounded up for forced injections and then released to the street.

A young man is shuffling his feet ­endlessly on Pandora right now, affected by a major side-effect of the psychiatric drug he has to be on and is helpless to ­challenge. More importantly, the people we’re talking about are only looked at as hopeless cases because they’ve been left for years without the support they need.

In medical triage terms, a lot of them would have been in the “priority care” group once, born into challenges and with ­disabilities, but they were left in line so long that now they’ve come to be thought of as beyond help.

They’re definitely not. But they also don’t fit in our boxes. We keep pushing them in and they keep falling back out.

That’s not an unsolvable ­problem. But it is if you continue to view the problem from the perspective of the people ­wanting it gone, not living it.

Can we be (Instagram) friends?

 

Bylaw sweep is on in Victoria and this man
has to run to get to his stuff before it's gone

A communications strategist living through a social crisis of unprecedented magnitude right here in her own province spends a lot of time mulling how to shift the conversation to the advantage of all the people living the crisis. 

So I'm testing something new on Instagram, #streetstoriesvictoria. If you're familiar with Humans of New York, my little test is taking the lead from that fine feature. My aim is to be a pair of eyes out there and tell some small stories - no opinions, no casting blame, just seeing. 

I've only just begun so currently have a mere seven posts, but stick with me and I'll get those numbers up fast. After 40 years of observing all the factors that have gotten us to this tragic place, I am seeing people - the public, policy makers, most definitely the politicians - getting things so wrong on so many fronts, and I think much of that is because people have somehow convinced themselves that those living hard lives on our streets are not human beings. I want to see if I can help with that. 

I don't expect that my little stories will be the magical fix to turn that around, but the first step on righting all that's wrong is to rehumanize people. Hope you'll come on over to #streetstoriesvictoria and have a look. 

Pump up the volume on the social crisis

Gerd Altmann, Pixabay

I wrote a letter to the editor to the Victoria Times Colonist that they ran Sept 27 as an opinion piece, which I then posted on Facebook, where it got major traction primarily among people who aren't my "followers." 

I'm saying all of that because it has led me to conclude that those of us who think like this about the social crisis burning on all of our communities' streets need to be way more out there in public spheres with our thoughts. There is more support than we might think, and governments that only ever hear from the highly active lock-em-up types need to know that. 

Let's take a leaf from the populist playbook and get loud at every opportunity. (Ideally by pointing out the reality rather than just shouting angrily at the "other side" that they're idiots, though I admit I came pretty close to doing that in this particular rant, didn't I?) I fear that some of us in this fight have concluded that it's hopeless to openly push back against the current dominant narrative around the social crisis, because nobody's listening. I think we're wrong about that. 

Here's the piece: 

Everything about Les Leyne’s Sept 24 column filled me with rage, most especially Our Place CEO Julian Daly’s stunning misrepresentation of problems at the core of this social crisis burning in the hearts of our communities.

To take the tragic situation that is happening on our streets and blame it on our “anything goes” attitude and “endless accommodation” – I don’t even have words for the fury that evokes in me after decades of observing how this four-alarm social crisis came to be. We simply must quit listening to people speaking from the comfort of their nice, non-impoverished lives and get a grip on this tragic humanitarian crisis from the point of view of the people living it.

Medical triaging treats the sickest people first. Social triaging works in the opposite way – you must prove yourself to be sufficiently ready, worthy and stable enough to get help like housing and treatment. What that approach has created is a situation where the absolute sickest people are the ones left without care.

Imagine if cancer patients had to prove themselves “ready” to qualify for support. Still smoking? Not eating enough greens? Overweight? No care for you. Unable to fill out dozens of forms that you don’t even know exist while maintaining a polite, pro-social façade despite being racked with pain and anguish? Back of the line, buddy.

As if. But that’s what we’ve done here. We set up rules that only the healthiest of a sick population can possibly achieve, and blame the ones left behind for not trying hard enough. We dangle the promise of housing like a carrot to be had if someone can sufficiently demonstrate that they’re worthy of it. We tear apart encampments as if we expect the people living in them will vanish.

This is the criminalization of poverty and disability. We are sectioning people under the Mental Health Act as risks to themselves or others and then sending them, still sectioned, into the community to live homeless. We are walking all over people’s human rights, every single damn day.

 This is not “endless accommodation” – this is brutal, socially sanctioned neglect of extremely ill human beings, who are viewed with something far from compassion.

None of this is about drugs. Any of us would be using drugs if left in this situation. The drugs are the top layer on people’s multi-layered problems, but they’re the symptom, not the cause.

Why does this deepening social crisis never respond to any of our actions? Think about that. They’re the wrong actions. The sickest people are being shut out of support. That’s not “endless accommodation,” that’s just stupid, inhumane policy that leaves the very visible flames of a four-alarm social crisis to burn unattended on our streets.