This was one of my favourite pieces that I've done so far among the seven I've now done for the Times Colonist this year, as I top 22,000 words on homelessness since January. This piece ran today, July 26. It was just so nice to spend all those hours out talking to people who so rarely get talked to, if you don't count being yelled at.
Link is here, where you can enjoy a nice layout. Words and a few photos of mine are below:
One city block. So many heated opinions.
Mayor Marianne Alto called it “a hive of misery.” A pastor at a downtown church told media that while it troubled him to go against the gospel by shutting out the people who live there, he’d rather do that than let them in.
A place of “rampant public disorder, open drug use and filth,” filled with “violent addicts” needing to be locked up.
A place so bad that the “chaos spiraling outward” from it would soon destroy Victoria’s entire downtown, as the Globe and Mail phrased it last year in a particularly inflammatory piece.
But that’s just the surface noise, say the people living homeless on the now-infamous 900-block of Pandora Avenue. That’s just the “5 o’clock news version.”
Sure, a first glance might suggest that everyone on the block is “a bunch of heathens,” says one long-time resident. And yes, most of the 150 or so people living and socializing there have experienced more than a few hive-of-misery moments.
But it’s their hive. And it feels like home.
Some parts of the life on Pandora are sweet and lovely. Old guys playing a dice game. Somebody with a guitar singing Hey There Delilah to friends.
People petting each other’s dogs, or sharing blankets, food and kind words with someone who got hit hard in the latest bylaw raid.
People responding to overdoses like skilled medics in a war zone.
Other parts are ugly and mean.
Fights. Domestic violence. Garbage cans spilling over with piles of waste from people whose whole lives have to be lived outside, whose clothes have to be thrown away when they get dirty enough because they have no place to do laundry.
Psychotic episodes. Death. People who view an overdose as a chance to go through someone’s pockets, a controversial practice within the street community known as “farming.”
Life on Pandora can be kind, cruel, caring and ruthless, sometimes all at the same time.
Acts of empathy and generosity abound. So do thefts and assaults — both at the hands of other block residents, and by housed people stoked on hatred and media headlines.
“It’s a whole different world,” says Bunny, 28 and homeless on Pandora for a year now. “We call it the Pandora Portal. You have to learn quick once you’re out here. It’s not something everyone can do, and it ages you really fast.
“But this is our community. It’s where we go shopping, have friends. Try to take us to the family dinner at Thanksgiving, not so good. But out here, we’re not the black sheep.”
Rules of the street
People living on Pandora are expected to adhere to three simple rules, says Bunny: “Don’t be a thief, don’t lie, stay loyal. So simple, but so difficult.”
Some people take real pride in adhering to those rules. Others, not so much.
Anyone who gets too far out of line will be singled out for street justice — a beating, perhaps, or possibly exile to a less favourable part of town. Calling the police isn’t an option in the criminalized environment of homelessness, so differences have to be settled internally.
“It’s a community within a community. Nobody’s your friend, but they’re your companion,” says Karen Mills, who lived homeless in Nanaimo for eight years and now runs Peer2Peer Indigenous Society.
“The person you’re sitting with today could knock you out tomorrow and take everything from you. When I look back on my own time, I was just surviving.”
Life is raw and unforgiving when you’re homeless. Sickness, disability and death are constants. Basic human rights are virtually non-existent.
If a person isn’t getting their worldly possessions seized by bylaw officers, they’re having their backpack searched by police and their money and drugs taken. Outreach workers now caution people to hold onto their income-assistance stubs once they cash their monthly cheques, because they’ll need that as proof if police seize the money as likely proceeds of crime.
“So much of my day is packing up, putting everything in bags, moving. I try to stay up at night so I don’t fall asleep and wake up in a panic having to hurry-scurry to get to a different location,” says Mar. “It’s a full-time job trying to stay ahead of it.”
Finding housing on a $500 shelter allowance is virtually impossible for anyone out there, something that Mills notes as a big change from her own time homeless. “People are stuck,” she says. People live in a near-constant state of high anxiety.
“I’ve got an engineering degree, but I have to pee in a bush every day. People lock their car doors when I walk by. That gets to me,” says Toni. (Names have been changed for people who requested anonymity.)
Yet there’s friendship. There’s laughter, and warm moments that resemble the kind of community street scene that planners are always enthusing about — people calling out to old friends, sharing food, catching up on the latest gossip. “The most real people you’ll ever meet live on Pandora,” says Toni.
Members of the newly formed chapter of the Crazy Indians Brotherhood have begun showing up in their black leather vests, hosting barbecues and looking for people ready for change. “I’ve done a lot of dirt on this street, so it feels good to be here giving back,” says Bullet, who is two years sober.
To the untrained eye, the 900-block of Pandora looks like a place of extreme danger. But for the people who live there, it feels far safer than camping in an isolated park, or trying to sleep mere inches away from strangers in a noisy shelter.
“Of course, there are people who hate each other, but all in all, they’re watching out for each other,” says Correne Antrobus, who regularly takes food and other supplies to her homeless daughter and friends at their favoured spot on Princess Street.
Women know to find a partner pretty fast once homeless, or to get taken under the wing of somebody with enough “street cred” that it provides a measure of protection, says Antrobus.
Bunny’s strategy has been to find two other people who she halfway trusts not to pick a fight with her or steal her stuff, and then stick with them. On this particular day, she’s the designate guarding everybody’s possessions while they’re off eating, sleeping, or finding a place to pee. Later, it will be her turn to do the same.
But those friendly arrangements have their limits, says Nihal, who has lived homeless with her partner and his three siblings on Pandora for the past year. When people ask her to watch their stuff, she reminds them that if bylaw shows up while they’re gone, she’ll be moving her stuff and not theirs.
Most of Pandora’s “OGs” — street slang for Original Gangsters — are dead and gone now. The lifespan of someone living homeless in Canada is 30 years less than the average person.
But a few hang in. Godzilla is a fixture on the block, 72 years old with a homeless history that dates all the way back to the Apple Tree Gang in the 1980s.
He has lived in many of the places where people like him have been pushed out over the years — at the foot of Fisgard back in the Streetlink days, Cormorant Street, Speed Street, Holiday Court.
But people will always go where they can get what they need, he says. And these days, they find it on the 900-block of Pandora.
“I come to Pandora because I have friends here, or if I need to score and the usual person I score from isn’t around,” he says. “It used to be you’d come down here to score and leave again. Now, you just stay.”
Opioid users on one side, stimulant users on the other
Not everybody living homeless uses substances. But a lot of people do. Pull up a stool on Pandora for a while and pretty soon it starts to look like a scene from any typical bar: Servers passing through asking if anyone needs topped up, people socializing.Typically, opioid users sit on one side of Pandora, and stimulant users on the other. People whose primary drug is alcohol are somewhere else entirely for the most part, like Centennial Square, or along the Gorge.
Socializing while using drugs is common in any neighbourhood. The City of Victoria alone has more than 100 pubs, bars, cocktail lounges and tasting rooms, and 30 licensed cannabis retailers. But while drinkers and cannabis users can access regulated drugs and clear information around recommended dosages, the unregulated drugs bought and sold $5 at a time on Pandora are wild cards.
Fentanyl is the most deadly of the bunch, but also one of the cheapest. At $10 a point — 0.1 grams — it’s 40 per cent cheaper than crack, says Jimmy, a familiar face in the street community. These days, it’s the dominant opioid, and frequently cut with animal tranquillizers and sedatives to give it the “legs” to extend its effect.
Fentanyl’s rise in B.C. started around 2012. Outreach worker Dave Keeler has a vivid memory of people lining up 40 at a time 10 years ago when the city’s first sanctioned overdose-prevention site opened in the courtyard at Our Place, “terrified that they were going to die.”
These days, the sophisticated overdose-prevention site run by Island Health on Pandora serves more than 350 people a day. But the possibility of death is still ever-present. Everyone on the block has lost more friends than they can count.
Bunny says that between Pandora and her old haunts in Campbell River, 17 of her friends have died. She knows her own drug use keeps her dad awake every night with worry. “That kills me. I wish my dad didn’t have to see me this way.”
People try to stay safe by buying from people who they know well, and hope that the people they’re buying from are doing the same. Seth says the most conscientious suppliers will add food colouring to their fentanyl, so that people can see how much of it is in the mix.
While the outside world imagines the drug market as one of predatory dealers exploiting vulnerable homeless people, the reality is that people on the block are typically both sellers and users – “maintainers,” as Mills calls them.
Yet amid all the deaths, there are people on Pandora who have used street opioids right through the fentanyl years and have still never overdosed. Some of them see the hand of God in their survival, as though they’re being saved for some future purpose.
“I’ve always minimized my use, and tried to be careful. I’ve never overdosed, never needed Narcan,” says Nikki, 47 and off and on homeless for most of her life. “I’m so aware of how many people would be hurt by my death, so that’s part of it. But I also believe there’s somebody looking out for me. I really feel that if I try to do my best, it helps to keep me alive.”
High infant mortality rate on the street
Pregnancy is a worrying reality for women out there. One couple lived quietly at Gonzales Beach for many months over this past winter during the woman’s pregnancy, watched over by at least a few concerned neighbours.
Outreach workers do their best to get women connected to HerWay Home, an Island Health service for pregnant women and new moms who are using substances. Ultrasounds can be done right from the Cool Aid mobile health van.
Still, the infant mortality rate is 25 times higher than the Canadian average for women living homeless. Children who survive only to be taken into government care risk becoming the next generation of people living homeless. More than a third of the 1,749 homeless people documented in Greater Victoria’s 2025 Point-in-Time count first became homeless straight out of government care.
Union Gospel Mission’s Arrow Home opened in the region in 2024 specifically to fill a housing gap for pregnant moms at risk. It provides treatment and communal living for up to six moms and their babies for two years, with ongoing support after families move out. Eighteen high-risk moms have found a place to live with their babies at Arrow Home since it opened, including five who came directly from the street.
“We probably don’t see as many pregnant women as there actually are out there, because they stay hidden to stay safe,” says Union Gospel spokesperson Sarah Chew. “I can’t even imagine how it must be to be pregnant on the street — always on the move so your things don’t get taken, always transient, no place to sit as your pregnancy advances. We want them to know there’s a soft bed waiting for them at Arrow Home.”
The Vancouver-based charity doesn’t yet have the full continuum of housing and support in Victoria that exists at its more expansive Vancouver facility, which has a daycare and staged levels of supported and independent housing where moms and children can live for years. But that’s the dream for Victoria as well, says Chew.
“One mom at Arrow Home slept on the floor for the first while because she’d been homeless for so long, she couldn’t get used to sleeping in a bed,” says Chew. “But having a baby and raising a child can be a huge catalyst for change. We’re seeing women experience this change alongside their babies.”
But women wanting a place at Arrow Home have to stop substance use, notes Carley, an outreach worker with Peers Victoria. Aligning things in a system where nothing is aligned adds challenges. Waits for detox are up to six weeks. Access is restricted to people with opioid or alcohol dependencies, and a guaranteed place to go to after detoxing.
“You could invent the most perfect solution, but it’s not going to fit every need,” says Carley. “I try to walk beside women whatever their choices. The most important question to ask is: ‘What do you need?’ ”
Few of the moms Carley works with get to keep their babies. The Ministry of Children and Family Development generally gets flagged quickly any time a woman living homeless is pregnant, though it can’t act until after the child is born.
One woman confessed to a bylaw officer she was pregnant in hopes that they wouldn’t take all her stuff, recalls Carley. They took her stuff anyway, and called the ministry.\
A fleet of white city vehicles
Everyone with history on the block agrees living there now is nothing like what it used to be. Seth recalls a time of “abundance” when he moved to Victoria from one of the Gulf Islands three years ago, back when the boulevard was “chock-a-block” with tents and good moods prevailed. Fights and thefts were a rarity.
“Now, it feels like the people who own the buildings are the only ones who influence police and the city. They don’t want us here,” he says.
The constant bylaw enforcement and property seizures — which intensified significantly after that Globe and Mail piece last summer — are the single biggest misery for people.
Bylaw and maintenance workers in a fleet of white city vehicles time things with police to arrive first thing in the morning, then two or three more times throughout the day. Only a few people are targeted in any given enforcement, but there’s no predicting who.
Opinions abound on what a person needs to do to avoid bylaw seizures. Some believe that if they keep their area very tidy, they won’t be targeted. Others try to be helpful, working alongside city workers to clean up garbage in hopes of garnering favoured status. Others pick spots where nobody else is camped, having noticed that larger camps attract bylaw officials’ attention first.
Fred keeps everything he owns in a single suitcase, and mostly wishes he could live in the bush. Graham seldom seems to have any possessions at all, noting that he’s “always been a minimalist.”
A few people seem to get targeted for extra attention, like the young guy with ADHD who looks and acts so “normal” that he says police are convinced he must be a major dealer pretending to be homeless. He has had his possessions confiscated more than 150 times.
Mar and Butch post their own heart-wrenching videos of their stuff being taken on a Facebook page that Mar started a few months ago: “Homeless in Victoria Bylaw Experiences.”
Bylaw officers seem to have a particular fondness for seizing Mar’s brooms, which she likes to have for sweeping the sidewalk around their encampment as a way to calm down from life’s many stresses.
Sheltering on any street at any time of the day or night is prohibited in the City of Victoria, but people could once count on being left alone in the evening, or by keeping their stuff in tidy, tarped piles.
Those days are over. One mom says her daughter was ordered out of her tent near Rock Bay Landing at 10 p.m. on a recent night, with bylaw confiscating the tent, blankets and a bag of perfectly edible buns.
Mar says the mere sight of a flashing orange light or a white truck “triggers my PTSD.” Seth says his gets triggered by the beep-beep of a truck backing up. Some of the bylaw officers try to be kind, but there’s no kindness that stops them from taking away people’s sole possessions.
“There’s one named Kevin who is quite nice,” says Billie. “But then there’s a guy who is an asshole and says if I can’t clean up my stuff in three minutes, it’s gone. And it is.”
Many people mention the need for some clear direction from the city on where they’re supposed to go. Bylaw officers and police direct them to parks and green spaces that the city has designated for sheltering between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., but there’s no place where they’re permitted with their gear in daytime hours, and no place to leave their gear behind.
“Bylaw wants everyone to go to parks, but then they take all the carts or things with wheels that help you get to the park,” says Nihal. “The nearest park you’re allowed to be at is Blackwood, but it’s a 20-minute walk and has no washrooms. So then you walk 20 minutes back to Our Place for breakfast, but you can’t take your stuff in if it’s got wheels, and you can’t leave it in the park. And if you leave it outside, bylaw is going to take it.”
Nikki takes comfort from her community on Pandora, but says she’d happily welcome a lower-profile neighbourhood minus the bylaw enforcement if such a place existed.
“I see that it’s unfair to the business community that we’re all out here. But at the same time, there’s always going to be addicted people who aren’t going to be able to fall into line,” she says.
“People like me don’t fit in the box they want me in. I would be more than happy to not be here, where my daughter can drive by and see me. But there has to be somewhere. We’re not all just going to disappear.”
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