Fate of Victoria tent city before the courts again

[There are growing calls for the B.C. government to evict homeless campers who arrived on the grounds of the Victoria courthouse last October. CBC News]

Eviction notices could be coming for a tent city that sprouted up near the B.C. legislature in Victoria last fall and has been a flashpoint over the issue of homelessness.

B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman has vowed to get rid of the eight-month-old camp following a fire inspection last week that concluded the site poses a fire hazard for the 100 plus campers.

The Office of the Fire Commissioner had ordered the camp to comply with orders concerning spacing between the tents, exits and people cooking too close to things that can alight too easily.

This will mark a second time the B.C. government will try to evict the campers.

In February, the chief justice of the B.C. Supreme Court, Christopher Hinkson, rejected the government’s eviction order. He set an eviction trial for September.

In his decision, Hinkson said there weren’t enough homeless shelter beds in the capital. At the time, the camp also had some support in the community.

However, things are changing. One of its staunch supporters, the nearby Christ Church Cathedral recently announced that it wants the campers gone citing the proliferation of needles and human waste on its grounds.

“We’ve seen an increase in violence on the site,” Victoria police Insp. Scott McGregor told CBC News last week, adding that there are “person that are trafficking drugs.”

Some Victoria residents have complained about the stench now emanating from the camp ever since temperatures started to rise. The City of Victoria said last week it would provide plumbing and running water for the tent city until things are resolved.

The province said it is now paying the Portland Hotel Society in Vancouver to “manage” the tent city.

‘Failure of government’

So what happens next? This isn’t the first tent city to appear in Canada. There are many that now exist across North America — something Stephen Gaetz is very familiar with.

The York University education professor and director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (Homeless Hub) says “few homeless people actually want to sleep on the streets.”

“A tent city means we are not addressing the problem,” he told Yahoo Canada News. “It’s an evidence of the failure of government. People are outdoors because it gives them dignity and control over their situation. Shelters can be scary places, full of people with their own problems and often, things get stolen.”

Gaetz says homelessness is on the rise because it’s now too expensive to live in a lot of cities. That’s on top of government policies in the 1990s that slashed funding for public housing and social programs and assistance.

According to Gaetz, there are only three things authorities can do: force the tent city residents into emergency shelters (which are “inadequate’), criminalize homelessness and let the police deal with it, or provide housing first.

“For every $10 you spend on someone to provide housing, you save $21 on average, according to our project,” said Gaetz.

Gaetz spearheaded the Canadian Housing First Tool Kit, an online resource guide, and collected information over a five-year period ending in 2015.

“The higher the needs of a person i.e. in terms of health or addiction problems, the greater the savings to the system,” he explained. “Imagine someone who’s homeless for 20 years and has either mental or drug/ alcohol problems. The amount of time and cost spent in terms of hospital visits or even the justice system is greater than if that person had been housed.”

No pre-conditions for housing

Some municipalities (including Seattle, Nashville and Las Cruces, N.M.) have decided to give land to the tent cities and create housing in terms of small cabins or trailers. This hasn’t happened in Canada yet.

However, some places in Alberta have decided to do the housing first and in cities, such as Medicine Hat, they have effectively eradicated homelessness.

“Ontario is moving that way but B.C. doesn’t have a strategy yet on homelessness,” points out Gaetz. “Providing housing with no pre-conditions is the best. If the person has stable housing and gets help for, say, their alcoholism, their chances of being homeless again are diminished.”

Gaetz points to the tent city that blossomed on Home Depot land in Toronto in the early 2000s as an example.

“The city engaged landlords. You know, a lot of them can be persuaded to provide housing because they are reassured that the rent will be paid and that they have someone to call if something goes wrong.”

According to Gaetz, most of the Toronto tent city residents got housing by 2005 and for the most part, none have returned to the streets.

“The evidence shows if you get the housing part right — with support — they stay housed.”

Gaetz says moving in and throwing people in jail without having an option for them to live somewhere else properly is “immoral.”

“It takes an investment to provide housing first but it’s the humane, and the right, thing to do.”