A commentary by the 14th Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Islands and Inlets.
Sleeping on a mat in a church basement should have a 10-day exit clause.
As Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Islands and Inlets, I recently signed a three-year agreement with B.C. Housing. The agreement commits the lower hall of St. John the Divine Church, which is one block from Pandora Avenue, to be used as an overnight shelter for the next three years.
We are grateful for the incredible work of Solid Outreach who will be operating and staffing this shelter.
However, I must admit the decision to use our church for this purpose was done with some reluctance.
For along with the B.C. Housing contract for this shelter, we also recently received a letter from B.C. Housing turning down our proposal to add 74 new units of affordable housing at another of our church sites farther along Quadra Street in Saanich.
Hundreds of volunteers and staff hours had gone into a proposal to partner with Habitat for Humanity and add much needed family-oriented affordable housing stock to our region in a location with existing transit and infrastructure.
Much-needed three-bedroom units were to be included in this build, along with new community amenities. B.C. Housing was opaque in its rationale for not funding this specific project, a project with no land cost and a committed community owner.
How Saanich will ever meet the housing targets set by the province if projects like this are turned down is a mystery.
The Anglican Diocese has a 40-plus year history of building, retaining and renewing community housing. Our churches have started eight housing societies that operate across the Capital Regional District as well as across the Malahat.
When municipal land fell through for an affordable housing project in Duncan, we offered our downtown site, St. John the Baptist, so that a much-needed 130-unit complex could be built along with a new amenity space. That project, funded through the B.C. Housing Community Housing Fund, has been underway since 2018 and will likely not be complete until 2026.
At our Dawson Heights site in Saanich, we very much look forward to opening 85 additional units of affordable housing for seniors.
That project has been underway since 2017 and is only coming close to completion because of the determination of a volunteer board that has overcome countless delays and obstacles in getting funding and permits.
Demand for affordable housing for seniors is such that there is already a long wait list for those units.
Based on this and many other experiences, our hesitation with the overnight shelter at St. John the Divine stems from the fact that B.C. Housing is not doing enough to make sure that emergency shelters are a short-term, not a long-term solution.
Nobody should be in an emergency shelter for more a few days or, at most, a few weeks, before more appropriate and humane housing is found, be it supportive housing, transitional housing or independent living.
The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) talks about “functional zero.” It’s not that no one experiences homelessness, but that when people do it’s brief, permanently resolved, and rare overall.
We cannot pretend that making people carry all their belongings with them all day, then having to line up each night in the hopes of securing a mat on the floor of a church basement, is a way to move people out of homelessness and into secure and sustainable living.
While there might always be a need for some emergency shelters, as a society we have failed if there are no reliable, accessible, and appropriate housing steps beyond shelters.
Talk to anyone in law enforcement, social services, or health care (to name but a few) and you will soon learn how much money is wasted “managing” homelessness instead of just housing people.
It is estimated that each unhoused person costs the system upwards of $100,000 a year in services. Transitional, supportive and affordable housing would be a far better and less costly alternative.
The agreement the Diocese signed for the shelter at St. John the Divine has a 10-day exit clause; if for whatever reason the Diocese feels that this arrangement is not working, we can end the agreement and within 10 days, the 30 shelter spots would no longer be available.
How about if B.C. Housing worked towards a target of no one individual being in that shelter for more than 10 days — period?
How about if within 10 days we committed to providing longer-term, more appropriate, alternative housing?
We have the land, we have the will, we are spending the money, but in the wrong places and far too slowly.
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