Few things visualize the impact of the pandemic and the sad slide of social wellness in Greater Victoria quite so pointedly as the 2022 Vital Signs survey results.
Take a look at these charts highlighting findings from the Victoria Foundation report.
What caught my eye was the one that compared 10 years of survey data where participants grade a dozen "key areas" that together make up a healthy community - things like belonging, arts and culture, the economy, health and wellness, standard of living, etc.
Straight As are a lot to ask for, but a B grade ought to be achievable for a Canadian city of privilege and wealth in 2022. Respondents are asked to give a B grade if they think a particular key area is good but could use some improvement. In years past, a majority of Greater Victorians responding to the survey ranked most of the key areas at B or higher.
But that was before. Vital Signs 2022 compared B grades across 10 years' worth of surveys, and what is revealed is a community that fell hard in the pandemic and has yet to find its way back out. Scores for every one of the 12 indicators fell significantly in 2020, and most are still falling.
Sure, we're talking a global pandemic. Excuse us if we're not back to normal yet. But take a moment to mull over that decade of numbers and you'll notice how little improvement we were seeing in any of them since well before the pandemic got us. We've been "good but needs improvement" for years on key measures of community wellness, and now we're not even achieving that.
If you've lived in Greater Victoria for any length of time, your own eyes have probably been telling you that for some time now. Mine certainly have. It's disturbing to see that housing has consistently scored poorly at least back to 2013, and yet each new year comes and goes in worsening crisis.
So yeah, could be it's the pandemic messing with our community wellness and things will be good again soon. Or not.
I pulled out five key areas to highlight in this graph below. They've seen the most dramatic decline, and yet are such necessary components of a healthy community. Belonging, getting started in the community, health and wellness, housing, safety - those are the foundations of a good life. These falling indicators are telling us that all is decidedly not well.
1 comment:
Nothing gets better if you ignore it.
My take on it is, in the beginning it didn't impact the working/middle class, etc. and those who died didn't matter to a lot of politicians and others, i.e. voters. They went on with the circuses.
Recently was speaking with younger adults and they started discussing the homeless situation in B.C. I pointed out this is a 40 year crisis in the making. Back in the 1980s, I think it was, the Vancouver Sun wrote a series of articles about homelessness in Vancouver. One of the articles focused on services First United was providing and how they got there. They informed the reporter the Church was opened because it was so cold outside people would die, so people were welcomed to sleep on the pews. Governments did nothing, One of the quotes of the time came from a homeless man: if you're not crazy when you hit the streets you will be when you've been on them for a year. People need to remember that. For those who wonder why people do drugs, who live on the streets, go and give it a try yourself, so how you feel and how you'd like some oblivion.
Look forward to your next post!
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