Centennial Square could house homeless
Re: “Victoria mayor pitches idea of using parking lots to shelter homeless,” Sept. 4; “Using parking lots for temporary shelter nixed in tight Victoria council vote,” Sept. 5.
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto’s idea of using church parking lots for the homeless was a great idea. The lots would develop into places of squalor and the surrounding neighbourhoods would provide great opportunities for thefts.
A far better relocation would be to Centennial Square. It has lots of room, has a place for bathing and washing clothes, a public toilet, is adjacent to city hall to take shelter from the cold in winter, a nearby parking lot for great break-and-enters and best of all, it’s downtown!
How does this idea sound, Ms. Mayor?
Steve Hoffman
Victoria
A better spot to shelter homeless people
I think that the parking lot at City Hall would be an ideal area for a trial run. Staff could either work from home or if public interface is required there are dozens of empty offices that could be rented for those staff.
They could be dispersed throughout the city for easy access. To secure the property and allow access to washrooms, security guards could be hired by using funds set aside for travel and lunches.
Both helpful in weight reduction and encouraging the use of bicycles.
Are the fumes from drug use in downtown drifting into City Hall’s ventilation system?
David Gray
Sidney
Build the locations, and more will come
Victoria council considered asking 13 religious and cultural centres to open their parking lots to overnight camping. Refuse, and their property assessments would go up 20% over the next five years.
It would have been, Mayor Marianne Alto said, “entirely voluntary … and an opportunity … to be part of a solution.”
I am relieved to see that Coun. Marg Gardiner was not a fan: “the more anchoring you do, the more permanency you create,” she says, “we’re growing the problem.” (I present you exhibits — Paul’s Motor Inn, Gorge Road Motel and Traveller’s Inn.)
It really does beggar belief to see something like this proposed. Even my cat understands the concept of a non-profit.
Then there’s the question of who would clean up the inevitable debris (feces, needles, vomit) each morning. What about property insurance — would it cover the broken windows, doors and related infrastructure?
Are police supposed to add 13 new sites to their details each night?
This is not a “solution” any politician should want to be remembered for.
Sheila Jones
Saanich
How to pick a parking lot for the homeless
I wonder if Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto has a parking lot near her home that would offer “an opportunity for people to be part of the solution” to the “very complicated solution we’re trying to attack from every different direction.”
Eliza Rosewylder
Oak Bay
Spreading downtown’s woes through the city
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto wanted to use parking lots as “temporary” tent cities? Temporary?
The mayor wanted to use a parking lot on Niagara Street in James Bay, right by an elementary school and community centre.
This is a busy neighbourhood, enjoyed by residents young and old, as well as thousands of tourists who walk in this area from Ogden Point.
Perhaps the mayor and city council need to source out what other cities in Canada and other parts of the world are doing with their homeless population.
How are they successful in handling the mental health and drug use that is rampant with this population?
I am afraid to walk downtown. I refuse to be afraid to walk in my neighbourhood of James Bay.
Judy Wood
Victoria
Parking lots as shelter, tax relief as coercion
The thorny question of “housing” the unhoused in Victoria must be getting desperate if the City of Victoria seriously considered stage two of a potential project to pressure selected organizations to “temporarily house,” i.e. overnight camping, some of the unhoused in their parking lots.
Phase one of the solution was the change in the property tax status of the parking lots belonging to these organizations (urban parking lots and property taxes are a whole other topic) which makes offering them some tax relief for acquiescing to the city’s proposal smack of coercion.
The key negative for the proposal going forward however is the word “temporary.”
A drive-by examination of the Pandora debacle, and memories of its predecessors at Topaz Park and the courthouse show the several vulnerabilities inherent in the idea.
The first is that those granted camping permission there, in short order, become very resistant to moving out “every morning,” or at all.
The second is the near impossibility of providing adequate sanitation and potable water in private parking lots.
The third is the nearly unavoidable negative impact on the activities of the affected organizations for which the parking lots are an integral part of their operations.
Then there was the veiled insult to the “surrounding municipalities.” If Mayor Marianne Alto wants to criticize, then she should name her targets and her rationale specifically. Without that, her position cannot be properly responded to.
Andy House
View Royal
They gather here from across Canada
Not long after Our Place opened, I overheard a conversation between two knights of the road from Toronto who were lounging in the downtown library.
They were comparing notes on their respective journeys west, riding the rails, to winter at the new facility.
When Victoria’s former mayor and council decided to disregard the Beacon Hill Park Trust and allow camping, the park became unsafe for citizens, but a great place to hide out from a Canadawide arrest warrant.
Now the mayor and council wanted to dot service centres for injection drug users in residential neighbourhoods all over town, and the mayor’s bright idea was to allow camping in church parking lots.
She won’t rest until every neighbourhood has its own Pandora Avenue.
A recent commentary by Coun. Marg Gardiner noted that about 20 per cent of the street population is from this area. The rest have come from away, enticed by our city’s climate, council’s gullible hospitality, and the support services we taxpayers provide.
Build it and they will come.
Frederick Shand
Victoria
Modify the Charter to provide care
I think it is time for all bleeding-heart politicians to shake their collective heads and start the process of petitioning the federal government to modify the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to allow compulsory treatment.
No amount of hand-holding as a solution to addiction is going to work. The massive numbers of addicts that exist today were never envisioned when the Charter was enacted into law.
The addiction solution is to force addicts to enrol in compulsory treatment such as was once carried out at Riverview Hospital, but I won’t hold my breath.
Yes the bleeding hearts will say this is no solution and won’t work — but how is the alternative working?
Mike Wilkinson
Duncan
Build more homes, just build more homes
If you want to stop the growth of homelessness, build more homes in lots of places. It’s not that homeless people will move into unsubsidized apartments — new homes are expensive.
It’s not that more market homes will “fix” Pandora Avenue. Many of the people there need other help.
New market homes won’t be “affordable,” but building enough will stop the ballooning housing costs that drive people living on the edge into homelessness.
People with money will always find homes, and those with more money will outbid those with less. Our housing shortage forces a cruel game of “musical chairs,” where you win with cash, not speed.
Why build in lots of places? Because if we allow multi-family homes only where they already exist, then we end up replacing older, less expensive homes with more, but more expensive, ones.
There are hard data that ever increasing housing costs drive homelessness. It’s not politics. It’s not drugs. It’s ever increasing rent.
And the experience of places like Minneapolis and Austin shows building enough homes keeps rents in check.
We’ve been digging this hole for 50 years. Building more market housing won’t solve the problem alone.
We need to build a lot of non-market housing, too. But when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first step is to stop digging.
So, kudos to those politicians, local, provincial, and federal, who recognize the reality, and the true costs, of our housing crisis. Let’s stop digging holes, and let’s start building homes.
Jim Mayer
senior citizen
Victoria
Stranger attacks could happen here
The deadly stranger attack in Vancouver is a tragic situation that could have been avoided. It has been suggested that the suspected attacker had mental health issues to the extent that he had a history of 60 interactions with police over the years. A similar incident could happen here in Victoria.
Successive governments have retained the notion that community mental health services are adequate; they simply aren’t and haven’t been for several decades, since the closure of the Riverview facility on the Lower Mainland.
No one wants a repeat of the questionable care that the facility provided. However, it is well overdue to build replacement infrastructure, like hospitals, to provide contemporary and progressive mental health services that also include addiction-related illness.
Why governments are opposed to this primary health-care needs explanation when they don’t skip a beat to build, staff, and operate other primary medical centres and services.
The current community services model to support mental health is, by all accounts, an abject failure because there are not enough of them to provide timely access and care.
John Stevenson
Victoria
Another sad tale from our medical system
So here’s another amazing tale from public health system. A couple I know, both permanent residents from India and both in public service, had a baby girl a few months back, badly afflicted with rashes.
They couldn’t get a doctor and found 14- hour waits for emergency care at the hospital unsatisfactory. So the mother is back in India. That’s right, in India, to get the medical care for their baby British Columbia cannot provide.
Though it would take a gun to my head to get me to vote NDP, I blame not only them, but previous governments of the Liberal stripe, and the medical profession to boot, for putting us all in this jam.
Yes, after 38 years in this province, my wife and I also find ourselves without a doctor. How about you?
Steve Weatherbe
Victoria
Ignore the people who use nicknames
I see federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has come up with a new nickname for Jagmeet Singh (Sellout Singh) — to go along with the nickname he’s already made up for Justin Trudeau (Wacko).
That’s what schoolyard bullies do — isn’t it? They come up with mean nicknames for their opponents.
So, what do we do about schoolyard bullies? We’re told it’s probably best to simply ignore them and spend time with intelligent people whose company and wisdom we can enjoy sharing.
Jean Jenkins
Victoria
SEND US YOUR LETTERS
• Email: [email protected]
• Mail: Letters to the editor, Times Colonist, 201-655 Tyee Rd., Victoria, B.C. V9A 6X5
• Submissions should be no more than 250 words; subject to editing for length and clarity. Provide your contact information; it will not be published. Avoid sending your letter as an email attachment.
