A Colwood councillor has spoken out against a suggestion Victoria’s homeless housing project – known as Tiny Town – should move to another municipality.
The 30-unit shipping-container village, located on the parking lot next to Royal Athletic Park, has an agreement in place to stay open until September 2025.
According to Victoria City Councillor Jeremy Caradonna, Tiny Town “has to move next year”, and he says he is preparing to bring a motion to an upcoming meeting requesting neighbouring jurisdictions take on hosting the temporary facility.
In an online question-and-answer session with Vibrant Victoria, Caradonna said he feels the homeless crisis in Victoria is reaching a “breaking point” and the city is “inching closer” to declaring itself “full”.
“Currently the city has 420 folks in shelters and 716 units of supportive housing, with 216 more in the works,” said Caradonna. “The rest of the region has practically no shelters and very little supportive housing."
“We simply cannot do it all,” he added later, explaining because of provincial supportive housing targets, Colwood, View Royal, Oak Bay, Saanich and others are “now on the hook”.
“It's their turn to do their part,” said Caradonna.
But Colwood Coun. Ian Ward disagrees and has accused Caradonna of attempting to shift the city’s problem onto other Greater Victoria municipalities.
According to Ward, the City of Victoria’s own initiatives to support the homeless community have been unsuccessful, forcing them to look elsewhere for a solution.
“I would put it this bluntly, they failed,” said Ward about the City of Victoria, speaking to Black Press Media. “Their experiment has failed. And rather than clean up their own mess, they want others to do it for them.”
Ward’s feelings have been shared by some West Shore residents online, whilst others have labelled the pushback as a NIMBY reaction.
“We're not NIMBYs,” said Ward, who described himself and his Colwood colleagues as sympathetic to the homeless issue. “Victoria created this problem, it’s on them to fix it. The notion that that we share a responsibility in that is frankly false. And I think it's disingenuous of them to put it in those terms.”
According to Ward, in comparison to Victoria, the West Shore does not have a significant homeless, addictions and mental illness problem. But the councillor does acknowledge there is a number of people in the community needing help from the city.
“We want to take care of our residents first,” said Ward. “On all ends of the spectrum — that includes the homeless community, the folks struggling with addictions and mental health problems. We want to care for them and do the work to help … and advocate for them.
“But we do not want to become a dumping ground for Victoria's problem … because of years of ideology that has backfired.”
Coun. Caradonna declined an interview with Black Press Media ahead of the provincial election.
