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.

When "passing" isn't an option

Pixabay - Roninmd

The concept of “passing” has presumably been around since whenever the first person on the outside of the dominant social group of the day figured out they could hide in plain sight because they had the good fortune of looking like they belonged.

You’re a black person in the pre-Civil Rights era, but your genetics gave you light skin and straight hair. You’re Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, but with an acceptably Aryan bone structure as to draw no negative attention. You’re a trans woman using a women’s washroom, but your physical appearance is sufficiently “feminine” that nobody has a thought about that.

You’re a sex worker in a hostile room of those mean kind of feminists who hate sex work, but everybody treats you respectfully because you look like them and they have no idea what you do for a living. You’re LGBTQ in a land that will have none of it, living out your secrets from inside a heterosexual marriage. You’re a daily user of street drugs, but you’ve got a job, a nice house and a good haircut, and no one would think to label you a “drug addict.”

That’s passing. It’s obviously an uneasy place to exist, what with having to hide your true self in order to not be called out, fired, or even killed by the dominant social group. But in terms of how effective it has been throughout history as a means to live without harassment alongside the dominant social group, it brings home so well that decisions about who gets “othered” largely come down to visibility.

Since time immemorial and across all states of stigmatized being, we have always been free to be whoever we are as long as nobody finds us out. The dominant social group’s objections aren’t so much about someone actually being black, Jewish, trans, a drug user, etc, they’re about having to know that they are.

Sex work provides a useful local example. When I first moved to Victoria some 35 years ago, outdoor sex work strolls were common on both Government and Broad streets downtown. Everybody complained about them regularly.

Business owners lamented their presence. Social agencies worried about the vulnerability of the workers. Police conducted undercover operations where they pretended to be customers, in that usual way of pretending that enforcement would clear things up. Many, many media stories were written.

So when was the last time you heard complaints about sex work strolls in the city? So long ago I can’t even remember. That change isn’t because sex work doesn’t exist anymore, it’s because the instant connection via cellphones and online communication has ended much of the need to walk streets so your customers can find you.

A more distant example: Colombia. Not so long ago, it was widely viewed as a dangerous country neck-deep in the cocaine industry and completely unsuitable to visit. Today, tourists love it, and return home raving of its beauty and sophistication.

That isn’t because Colombia wiped out its cocaine industry. It’s because the industry decided to tone down its visibility. Dress a high-ranking narco in a nice suit and he looks no different than any other corporate guy.

Consider the current hubbub about street issues through this lens, and you can see why everyone is so worked up. It’s all so visible at this point. People have always lived sick and impoverished with profound disability, but now it’s fully out there for all to see. The days of being able to hide our social problems are long gone, especially during a housing crisis.

I suspect the fervor around starting up involuntary treatment again is largely related to this high-viz situation. We’re pretending that it’s about getting people the help they need, even if it means shoving it down their throats. But in reality, we’re mostly just craving a place where people we don’t want to look at are locked up out of our sight.

There’s obviously a big human-rights perspective on this issue of “passing,” of course. Someone should not have to blend in with the dominant social group just to ensure they have human rights.

But as a diehard pragmatist, I also see the utility of just reducing visibility so that we can all settle down for a while. Some kind of fast housing solution that turned down the public profile has a lot of potential to calm things down.

In a dream world, we would build some beautiful facility full of support where everyone with all their challenges could find peace, a bed to call their own, and the stability to take a few hopeful steps into a new life.

We’re far from a dream world, however, so how about we figure out a slapdash fix in the meantime? If an earthquake put 100 people onto the streets of Pandora Avenue, we’d scrabble together a hasty fix in a heartbeat. Yet here we are, years into the crisis, paralyzed, grasping at the ridiculous idea of locking everybody up “for their own good” just so we don’t have to see them anymore.

All around the world, people leading troubled lives find a modicum of peace and community in hidden places where they can get out of sight. Slums, tarp huts under the freeway, tent cities, condemned buildings, empty lots – not great solutions by any means, but still better than a filthy square of Pandora Avenue sidewalk amid the endless misery of constant scrutiny and community loathing.

Many big, big problems to sort out on Pandora, and no end in sight of new people falling into high-viz homelessness. But we can’t even get started when we’re this worked up. Making it all a little less visible has to be a priority. Get these poor people a place to live. 

Life's a mess for people on the streets. But at least they've got friends

Bianca van Djyk, Pixabay

I spent a bit of time on “the block” this past weekend, that stretch of Pandora Avenue that is currently one of the city’s most visible hot spots of social crisis.

I hope the city’s big plan works out well for all concerned, and sign me up for helping. But after three decades of watching so many variations of Victoria councils trying to get a handle on this issue, it's obvious that we'll just be moving street problems into someone else's neighbourhood unless we grasp what really creates these hot spots. 

There's a tough little core of maybe 70-100 people at any given point in time in our region who are youngish, hardy, and deep in a late-stage struggle with whatever substance has got them, generally with mental and physical illnesses taking an additional toll. Their chaotic and unpredictable lives place them far outside the many rules, online forms, waiting periods, and service restrictions they face when trying to get help.

Like anyone, they need to get their needs met. So they settle in areas where there's food, washrooms, and a shelter mat in bad weather or some shade when it's hot. The drug sellers follow, and in many cases are the same people, because how else does an impoverished person afford a $50-100 daily habit?

But there’s another factor at play in why this group of people find their way to each other. They are each other’s community. Most everybody else in town either hates them, fears them or views them with disgust, pity, or some mix of the two. On Pandora, the judgment stops.

Get talking to people on the block and it quickly becomes clear that as sad, rough and garbage-strewn that life on a sidewalk appears to be to people like me, there is community on that street. More than one person told me they would be so happy for housing, but that it would need to be big enough for all the people on the street who they consider to be their family.

If you are a sick, struggling person who is spat on, sworn at, and openly scorned pretty much everywhere in the region, it must be pretty nice to have one place you can exist where most people aren’t going to hate on you. Anyone who has known the feeling of being an outsider finally finding their “people” can surely relate.

Can we even fix the multi-pronged social disaster that has been created from decades of neglect? I don’t know anymore. But if we’ve got any chance, it hinges on recognizing that people living homeless don’t just need homes that accept them as they are, they need community. "Don't put us all two by two in a bunch of different buildings where nobody likes us," said one woman. "Let us stay together."

I first encountered this group (not the same individuals, of course) 25 years ago when they were living at Holiday Court, a rundown motel on Hillside Avenue. I was working as a journalist at the time. It was a crazy little scene at that motel, but you didn't have to be there for more than a few minutes before you saw that they were mostly glad for each other's company and assistance. 

Soon enough, the motel scene got too hot for the community to handle, and Holiday Court closed and was torn down. The group moved somewhere else, then somewhere else, then somewhere else, with new people falling into the group at roughly the same pace that others were falling out. They would stay until neighbours or police started howling, then move on.

Eventually there was no place where they were tolerated but the street, where a person has no choice but to live every moment of a problematic life out where everyone can see you. The rest of us make a lot of noise about having to see them, but reflect for a moment on what it must be like on the other side of all our loathing and intolerance.

So many things have changed since the days we dream of returning to, when Pandora's tree-lined boulevards weren't blocked off with ugly blue construction fencing lined with litter. Businesses used to operate side by side with social services that have dominated the block for many years. But that has all changed since the pandemic, when we fully lost control of our weakening social safety net.

Housing affordability, the job market, easy access to medical care, the mood in our communities - all that has changed since the pandemic as well. We definitely weren't doing great before 2020, but we've been doing so much worse ever since. 

Our jails have filled with people with mental illness. Our schools have more and more students who don’t fit into the way we’d like to teach them. Our child-welfare system pumps out half-grown “adults” into homelessness, poverty and substance use disorders. Our street drugs are toxic with fentanyl and more, causing death and chronic health problems at unprecedented levels.

Brain injuries abound, an unintended consequence of bringing people back from the dead in the toxic drug crisis. People with intellectual disabilities are falling into homelessness as “inclusiveness” becomes an excuse to cut services. Mental health issues are increasingly common, even while resources are increasingly scarce.

And now the City of Victoria is setting out to fix things once again with its Community Safety and Well-Being plan. The days of anything resembling an easy fix are long past. I don't want to be a wet blanket, but let's just say I'm moderating my expectations accordingly. 

If we truly want this time to be different, though, then we need to see the problem through the eyes of the people living it. There are many reasons why people end up on Pandora, and feeling like they're finally part of an accepting community is a pretty big one. Is that in the plan?

My radio interview on - surprise! - the toxic drug crisis

Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20, Pixabay

Anyone else like a radio opportunity that gives free range to say whatever you want to sound off about,  but then you listen to it and think good grief, couldn't I have been more eloquent and organized in my thinking?

Ah, but then I wouldn't be me, right? Or that's what I like to tell myself. 

Here I am, blathering on People First Radio this month about the street scene in Victoria. For some reason, I'm listening to it for the first time today, 10 days after it aired. I think that might relate to my reluctance to not want to hear myself talking in random, wandering, no-key-messages fashion. That's my dealio, but that's not to say that I love that I do it that way. 

But all that said, thank you, Joe Pugh, for letting me sound off in my usual stream-of-conscious style, and for including some clips from the speaker series on the toxic drug crisis that I organized in partnership with Peers Victoria earlier this year. 

On the upside, illicit drug deaths in BC fell to 143 in March, from a monthly peak of 241 in December 2023. That's about where we were at in April 2020, though up from February 2025 when we saw "just" 132 deaths. 

But I note that figures on the BC Centre for Disease Control dashboard haven't been updated for  April and May, and I wonder what that means. My connections are telling me that BCCDC communications now have to be vetted by government first. I am really hoping that is not impacting the data they are able to put out. 

Just saw a Conversation piece from a US academic who specializes in communication strategies for resistant audiences. I sent her an email for any advice. All I see is people like me talking like crazy, and nobody listening. 

Lock 'em up: Everything old is new again

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

And just like that, institutionalization is back. 

My head is in a whirl. After untold hours of my early journalism career spent documenting the hard-won battle to banish BC's bad old institutions rife with abuse and civil-liberties violations, the former executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association is now the premier of the province and pitching involuntary care like it's a fresh new idea whose time has come. 

“This announcement is the beginning of a new phase of our response to the addiction crisis," said Premier David Eby in a statement released yesterday in which government outlined how British Columbians could now be held against their will for mental illness, drug use or brain injury if they are making their communities feel "unsafe."

"We’re going to respond to people struggling like any family member would. We are taking action to get them the care they need to keep them safe, and in doing so, keep our communities safe, too," said Eby. 

If it was possible to believe that a return to institutionalization would actually play out that way, maybe it wouldn't feel so damn sad to have us rolling the clock back 50 years. History tells us otherwise, however. The stories of suffering that journalists all heard in those years leading up to the closure of BC's big institutions were absolute heart-wrenchers.

The whole reason we abandoned institutionalization back in the 1980s is because it's a horrible idea that doesn't work, except as a means to shield "normal" people from realities they'd rather not have to think about. 

Like what happens to people with severe mental illness when they don't get help and support. Or, in this latest incarnation of "secure care" (aka imprisonment), the tremendous damage a product can have on its customers in a market totally controlled by the sellers/manufacturers and abandoned by the regulators.

Instead of trying to fix any of that, it appears we're just going to lock people up again so we don't have to see our policy failures in their shattered faces.

As researcher Gillian Kolla noted in The Tyee last week, B.C. is jumping to institutionalization without even trying to see how things might go if we actually had spaces in voluntary, trauma-informed, evidence-based treatment programs for all the people who are desperate for such services. Research and experiences all over the world - much of it right here in BC - have demonstrated time and again that institutionalization does not make people well, and in fact puts them at risk of even more harm.

Sure, temporary secure care might have a role in helping to manage some aspects of the social crisis unfolding in all of our communities. But it's meant to be a last resort, after all other attempts to help a person have failed. Please don't let anyone tell you that the people we're seeing spilling out onto our streets have had every social intervention provided to them already. That is so very far from the truth.

Our current social crises are in fact a result of decades of social needs gone unmet. We haven't even begun to try hard to help people with mental illness, substance disorders and brain injuries. Virtually all of the services we've got are patchwork, disorganized, uncoordinated, short-term and often unevaluated. BC doesn't even have an overarching social policy.

We have orchestrated a disaster with our indifference - and now we're going to "fix it" by finding new ways to hold people against their will? Not a chance. 

As Kolla also pointed out, BC does have the power right now to hold people against their will under the Mental Health Act. If someone is deemed a danger to themselves or others, they can be held. (And that definition includes threats and anti-social behaviour, as my uncle Joseph McCorkell found out back in the 1990s when he fought his own incarceration in the years before Riverview Psychiatric Hospital was fully phased out.)

How low will be the bar be for this new initiative? No details yet, but I'm going to take a wild guess that people who are impoverished, traumatized, unable to maintain paid work and with a lifetime of struggle and hardship will be the first ones in. Interesting as well that these new secure facilities are mostly going to be sited at prisons, not hospitals. 

To see brain injury thrown into the mix this time out just adds to the wrongness. Someone suffers a serious injury that causes behavioural changes that unravels a life, and our government decides the best course of action is to make it really hard for them to get any help, and then lock them up indefinitely when they inevitably fail to recover. 

As soon as I read that Vancouver story earlier this month about one person getting their hand severed by a stranger with a machete in a mental-health crisis and another person dying, I knew where this was going, especially mere weeks before a provincial election. 

Eby has been hinting at a return to institutionalization since 2022, when he was angling to replace John Horgan. BC Conservative leader John Rustad has made institutionalization part of his party's platform.  I suspect both will get plenty of support from the electorate for their positions, because everyone I know is sickened and fed up with the social disasters unfolding on their city streets. 

But the answer to the tragedies we're seeing in the hearts of our communities is not to lock people up. Where is the announcement of preventive measures to slow the flow of people onto our streets? Where are the services that would catch people early in their crisis? Why are we embracing the harshest "solution" first? 

I wonder if I will live long enough to be throwing out a bitter "I told you so" in 15 or 20 years when we are back to trying to undo the damage of this deeply sad return to institutionalization. People, we are making a mistake. 

In case you were wondering: A surfeit of social realities to explain (a bit) about how we got here

Image by Taken from Pixabay

I haven't worked as a full-time journalist for almost 20 years now, but people still pay me to go find things out. I have a habit of finding way more information than the person who hired me wanted, the curse of a curious nature. 

Here's some of the surplus I've accumulated recently from some of that work, all of it related to the multiple layers of social crises we're seeing emerging in virtually every BC community. I drive along 900-block Pandora Street sometimes and am at a loss to grasp just what the hell is happening to us, but when I consider all the snippets of social tragedy below, it makes a very, very sad kind of sense. 

For instance:

We shut down institutions and never really replaced them with much

Riverview Hospital used to be BC’s largest mental institution, housing 4,300 people at its peak in the 1950s. But by the early 1990s, locking up people deemed "mentally disordered" for indefinite periods of time, with or without their consent, had fallen from favour. Riverview had been scaled back to 1,000 beds, and plans to replace institutional care with community care were in their final stages.

But from the start, the political motivations for closing Riverview were as much about cost savings as they were about philosophical shifts in how best to support people with mental illness. Between 1994 and 1998, spending on in-hospital psychiatric units was cut almost in half, and spending on community services for mental health was reduced as well, despite years of political promises to the contrary. 

Riverview was permanently closed in 2012. The long-abandoned promise of community services to replace what Riverview once provided isn't even talked about anymore. We are not going to return to the days of huge institutions, and that's a good thing, but there must be some middle ground between that and the modern-day reality of abandoning people with lifelong psychiatric health issues to figure out a hard life on their own. 

As for BC hospitals' psychiatric units, people pass through them so quickly nowadays that their mental health crisis doesn't even have a chance to stabilize. People used to stay an average 36 days in BC psych units before being discharged, but that fell to 15 days a number of years ago, and 14 days now. Psychiatric admissions between 2005 and 2017 increased 29 per cent, with no increase in beds[3].

People with developmental disabilities used to have to live in large institutions in BC as well back in the day. But deinstitutionalization happened for them around the same time as Riverview was being phased out. 

That population did seem to get better community care for a number of years after institutions like Tranquille, Glendale and Woodlands closed. But over time, the safety net has frayed substantially for them, too. It's not uncommon now to see people with developmental disabilities among the homeless. 

That is such a devastating ending for all the families who fought so hard in the 1960s-70s for the right for their children not to be locked away in institutions. Be careful what you wish for.

We are drowning in poisoned drugs

BC has always had lots and lots of illicit drugs. But what we've got going on in 2023 looks nothing like the relatively straight-forward drug scene of years past. With fentanyl, carfentanil, benzodiazapines and all kinds of other weird additives stirred into the mix now, people are getting sick in entirely new ways, and the death toll from toxic drugs is staggering. 

Since BC declared a public emergency in 2016, there have been 13,000 deaths from toxic drugs in the province, and no end in sight. Annual toxic drug deaths have increased almost ten-fold in the decade from 2012 to 2022, from 270 to 2,342.

For those who overdose on an opiate, prescription drugs like naloxone can save lives when injected immediately after an otherwise-fatal overdose. But people revived after an overdose are at high risk of having incurred a brain injury during the minutes when their brain was not receiving oxygen, and suddenly, a crisis of brain injury among people brought back to life after an overdose is emerging as a new (and almost completely unserved) concern.

Our governments quit building affordable housing

We all know there's a housing crisis going on. The increasing use of housing as an investment is often cited as a primary driver.  But as stats from BC's rental scene make clear, an equally big issue is that nobody has kept up with population growth. 

BC's population grew 34 per cent in the last 30 years. But in that same period, we've added exactly 6,000 more rental units. Our population grew by a third, while the number of rental units increased by a mere five per cent (from 114,129 units to 120,472[4].)

Equally problematic: Rents that are just so far beyond so many people's ability to afford. 

Average rents have increased 250 per cent in the last three decades. But the shelter allowance for those on income assistance was frozen at $375/month for the last 15 years up until this year’s increase to $500 (which still gets you nothing in any urban area). 

Given all of that, it's no surprise that the Lower Mainland's 2023 homeless count noted a 32 per cent rise in homelessness since 2020, with almost 70 per cent homeless for more than a year. We have created a permanent homeless class. 

We do jail differently now, mostly by accident

Even 15 years ago when the social crisis wasn't quite so obvious, people with mental illness or substance use disorders made up the majority of BC inmates, at 61 per cent. But now, it's almost like jail is the new psych hospital. Three-quarters of inmates now have a diagnosis of mental illness, substance use disorder or both. 

They and their fellow inmates churn through the system with unprecedented speed. The median length of stay in a provincial jail these days is 12 days. Almost a third of inmates across Canada are released from jail into homelessness. 

Provincial jail is where you do your time if your sentence is "two years less a day." But the majority of inmates in BC jails don't even have a sentence yet - they're in remand, where a person is held while awaiting trial if bail doesn't work out. People in remand units now account for 67 per cent of inmates in BC jails[7], up 15 per cent from a decade ago and slowly on the rise since the 1980s.

So we have recreated the institution part of Riverview by turning our jails into de facto psych units, but minus the psychiatric services and supports. Things that make you go hmmm.

We're still so far from doing right by Indigenous people

Indigenous people are over-represented in virtually every measure that matters for social wellness, health, safety and well-being. This is particularly true in terms of our jails.

Indigenous people account for six per cent of BC’s population, but make up more than a third of people in custody in the province[8]. In 2020-21, the incarceration rate for Indigenous people in BC was 22 in 100,000, compared to 2.3 for non-Indigenous British Columbians. 

A staggering 90 per cent of Indigenous people in provincial custody have been diagnosed with a mental health or substance use disorder[9]. Grimmer still: A Statistics Canada study released this year found that in the years 2019-21, almost one in 10 Indigenous men in Canada between the ages of 25-34 experienced incarceration[10]. 

We're returning to the days of poverty for some seniors, only this time they're homeless too

More than a fifth of people identified as living homeless in the 2023 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count are ages 55 and up. Nearly half of them became unhoused for the first time after turning 55. People age hard once homeless; those who are chronically homeless have life spans 20 years shorter than the rest of us.

Even comparatively comfortable BC seniors are struggling. BC Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie noted in her 2023 "It's Time To Act" report that seniors in privately run, publicly subsidized assisted-living units are having a hard time keeping up with the array of additional costs that housing operators now charge for every little service, not to mention rent increases of up to 15 per cent a year at some facilities. 

And here's a strange trend: Even though BC's senior population is expected to increase to 25 per cent from 19 per cent over the next 15 years, the number of assisted living units per 1,000 population has fallen 15 per cent in the last five years in the province.

Is that because people don't want to live like that and they're finding other options, or because somebody has quit building that type of housing because they can make more money doing other things? Tune in 15 years from now to find out.

***

Ah, feels so much better to get those unused stats off my chest. I should wrap this up with some pithy conclusion, or a ringing call to action to fix this by doing a, b and c. But seriously, is it even possible to wish for a fix anymore? We are so profoundly late to the game. 

---

[1] https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cnmcs-plcng/cn28441-eng.pdf

[2] BC Ombudsperson report Committed to Change

[3] BC Schizophrenia Society and BC Psychiatric Association joint report

[4] https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=2.1.31.3&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver

[5] https://globalnews.ca/news/10030845/vancouver-homeless-seniors/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe're%20already%20in%20crisis,32%20per%20cent%20from%202020

[6] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prison-mental-health-sfu-study-1.6271915

[7] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2017001/article/14691-eng.htm

[8] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/justice/criminal-justice/corrections/reducing-reoffending/indigenous#:~:text=Indigenous%20people%20are%20nearly%206,and%2027%25%20in%20the%20community.

[9] https://www.oag.bc.ca/sites/default/files/publications/reports/BCOAG-Mental-Health-Substance-Use-Services-Corrections-Report-February-2023.pdf

[10] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2023001/article/00004-eng.htm

The crisis is now

The perfect is the enemy of the good, as Voltaire noted back in the 18th century. His wise words came to mind when I saw the Vancouver Sun's piece last week on the province's plan to fast-track 90 more modular homes in Vancouver for people living homeless.

The article quotes Danya Fast, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use, cautioning that while it's urgent to act fast to create more housing, modular housing complexes can “actually deepen a sense of uncertainty in young people’s lives, especially when they’re temporary.”

Point taken, as are Liberal housing critic Karin Kirkpatrick's comments that the construction of temporary and permanent housing have to go hand in hand or you're really just warehousing people.

But for anyone toughing it out at a packed and noisy Downtown Eastside shelter or trying to survive in a tent on the street, a little warehousing through the worst of winter and beyond might sound pretty good right now.

I still remember one fellow's painfully insightful comments 13 or so years back when the City of Victoria was putting on one of its first big pushes for tackling homelessness.

We were all congratulating ourselves for a newly announced strategy that would see a certain number of units brought on each year with a focus on the hardest to house - until one of the people with lived experience who had been part of the work noted that he'd be on the street for at least another four years under the plan, if he ever qualified at all.

That stuck with me. Easy for us in our comfortable, warm homes to insist that good things take time and it's important to do things right, but what about all the people who need help tonight?

Homelessness is a crisis. We have become frightenly comfortable with the sight of people living homeless in our communities because it's been like a time-release crisis, growing and intensifying slowly over many years. But at this point, it's a full-blown, in your face crisis for virtually every BC community.

We talk about it all the time, but we also hate talking about it. We make plans to do something, but then we forget, or the government changes, or somebody says wait, I think we need to talk about this more so we don't make a mistake.

Compare those kinds of reactions to the one we'd have if 500 or 1,000 people suddenly materialized homeless and sick in our downtowns tomorrow. 

If the homelessness on our streets right now was from a natural disaster - hurricane, earthquake, big fire - we'd have jumped to it like community keeners to ensure everybody was indoors within 24 hours. 

We'd have done our best to not make mistakes but forgiven ourselves when we did, because this was an emergency and the most important thing was to get people to shelter. We'd have been creative and innovative, with stops in the system temporarily lifted so that we could get things done in a hurry.

And then we'd move to Stage 2, where we would carefully do things right. (That includes stopping the endless flow of people into first-time homelessness, which is the elephant in the room that will wipe out even the most brilliant housing strategy if we continue to ignore it.) 

After that would come Stage 3, 4, 5 or however many stages it will take to fix this daunting, multi-layered disaster of people with insecure or non-existent housing that bad policy decisions, changing times, complex societal factors and stigma have helped to create.

But for the purposes of this metaphor, we're at Stage 1 right now. We're imagining that we've just had an earthquake and it has left thousands of people all over BC needing housing tonight and for the foreseeable future. The fact that the housing won't be perfect right off is not something we'd be worrying about at this moment.

None of which is to criticize the UBC researcher for her comments. It makes total sense that feeling like you've got permanent housing is a major factor in anyone's well-being. But 90 modular homes in short order is way better news right now for the people who end up living in them than would be 90 permanent homes ready two years from now.

This is a crisis. We must act like first responders and address the most immediate problem: No place for people to live. Though just as an ambulance doesn't provide life-saving first aid only to dump a person at the roadside, we certainly can't stop there. 

***

Postscript: Voltaire apparently said "the best is the enemy of the good," and cited an old Italian proverb as his source. But a long-ago translation changed best into perfect in its common use.

Homelessness is still a problem. Gee, go figure

Ten years ago now, I was part of a major initiative to address homelessness in Victoria. The Mayor's Task Force on Breaking the Cycle of Mental Illness, Addictions and Homelessness brought together some of the most informed, passionate people in the country to look into the issue of people living on our streets and what needed to be done about it. 

In four intense months, the task force put together a comprehensive report, packed with thoughtful, meaningful research, strategies and findings. What lands people into homelessness in these modern times turned out to be quite a complex series of things, starting with people's own personal crises, health issues and inability (for all kinds of reasons) to manage the major problems and stressors of their lives, and then deepening into shifting priorities at all levels of government, systemic failures, flawed decision-making, disconnects and deep funding cuts across the existing system of support, and a general failure by our society to grasp how much effort and investment is needed over a very long time to try to address an entrenched social problem.

The key message repeated over and over again in that report was that while we do indeed need much more housing and social supports, we will always have homelessness unless we address the root causes of it. Without that, you are simply housing those who are homeless right now, even while new people fall into homelessness behind them.

A decade on, we have built some more housing. We have added more outreach. We have shifted thinking in the judicial system to the point that judges now routinely make much more humane decisions when confronted with cases that so clearly come down to homelessness and poverty rather than criminal intent.

We have also talked and talked about the root causes of homelessness, so much so that I'd like to think that virtually everyone now understands much more that homelessness happens not because someone is too lazy to work or reluctant to "pull up their bootstraps," but because of things like mental illness, poverty, disability, catastrophic injury, substance issues, a lifetime of disadvantage, and the lack of any kind of personal support system to fall back.

But while public awareness may have improved, the strategies that might staunch the flow of people into homelessness have never come about. That explains why we are still talking about homelessness like nothing has changed, and why there were a thousand or so people living homeless in Victoria when the task force got underway in 2007 and still is. And why there still will be 10 years from now if we keep doing things in the same ineffective, reactive way.

A new report was released last week confirming that the majority of homeless youth in our country are survivors of the foster system. Children from families investigated through Canada's child-welfare system are almost 200 times more likely to end up homeless at some point in their lifetime compared to children with no involvement in the system.

Shocking. But we knew that already 10 years ago. We've heard about it repeatedly in the intervening years from former BC Children and Youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond, who penned report after report pointing out this tragic statistic. Yet here we are, still being shocked. Still doing nothing effective in response.

We also knew 10 years ago that discharging people from our provincial jails with no plan also fed into homelessness, not to mention led some of them to instantly commit another crime to get themselves out of their dire economic situation. We knew that discharging people with chronic mental illness from hospital without a solid plan did the same. As did relentlessly wearing down social supports to the point that people on the edge began to fall into the cracks.

So yeah, it's a bummer to still be talking about homelessness all these years later. But until we get serious about why we can't seem to get on top of it, it will remain a heartbreaking example of societal failure and wasted human potential.