A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

My journalism career coincidentally tracks the rise in homelessness in BC, from the days before anyone even used the word, to modern times when virtually every community in the province is profoundly affected by it.  I wrote for the Victoria Times Colonist for more than 20 years, full-time for the first 15 years and then as a weekly columnist. Homelessness was an issue I came back to over and over again. I have been part of adding to the public record for all the years starting from when that word first described maybe 10 or 15 men with alcohol problems, to the current time, when hundreds of people with immensely complex health issues are stuck on our streets. I was no longer a journalist when I sat on the mayor-appointed committee that dove into the issues for the still completely relevant 2008 report Breaking The Cycle of Mental Illness, Addictions and Homelessness , but by then was working in social services and   felt a real responsibility to help open people's eyes to the...

Nothing quite like talking to 140 or so people living homeless to get a clearer sense of what's really going on out there on our streets. I thought I knew a fair bit before I started into my little Instagram project five months ago to give voice to people living homeless here in Greater Victoria. But wow, the things I've learned. In no particular order, here are a few of them:  People are really, really sick out there. This is a major health crisis, plain and simple. People are enduring terrible infections, raging and highly contagious bacterial illnesses, bone-destroying weirdness from toxic drugs, and completely unsupported bouts of severe mental health crisis. They're dying at an astounding rate - at least 15 people dead just since early December, and those are just the ones that the street community has been able to keep track of. Meanwhile, our community's primary response has been to crack down harder on them for the "street disorder" caused by the jury-...

  What’s underway in Canada and the United States right now is the manufacturing of new classes of people who can be discriminated against legally. Both our countries have been here before, but I’d always thought I was in the generation that would end all of that awful business, not lay the groundwork for more. The latest target for discrimination and harassment in the US are people with first- and second-generation immigrant backgrounds from the ever-changing list that the government keeps of countries that it doesn’t like. In Canada, the target is people living homeless. I’m not going to suggest that anyone’s wearing balaclavas and shooting people dead yet on Victoria streets. But that’s not to say there aren’t some striking – and disturbing - comparisons between ICE raids in the US and what’s happening for people living on our streets. The principles are certainly the same: Identify a group of “undesirables” whose vanquishing can be politicized, and make life hell for them...