As two B.C. groups express concerns about the city's new sheltering restrictions, Victoria council hopes it can provide a clearer picture of its homelessness response in the coming months.
In a July 30 letter to council, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and Pivot Legal Society took issue with the new 24/7 sheltering bans that took effect at Vic West and Irving parks on Aug 1.
The groups said banning all sheltering in additional parks will cause significant harm to Victoria's most marginalized community members, particularly given the city's "lack of adequate housing and safe, legal, indoor places to use drugs." Their letter said the two new bans are "unlikely to withstand constitutional scrutiny."
"Given the clarity of existing charter jurisprudence and the clear facts of lack of available and accessible shelter in Victoria, the city also runs a risk of liability for charter damages to all those impacted given the arguable bad faith and clear disregard for constitutional rights," the legal groups wrote.
After adopting the new park bans and passing various other homelessness-related directives in July, Victoria councillors on Thursday said there's a need to provide a plan with clear objectives and timelines for the public.
“I am fielding too many questions that I can’t answer, from both the unhoused and housed neighbours, who don’t understand the big picture of our recent motions regarding homelessness,” Coun. Krista Loughton said.
Council on Thursday (Aug. 1) voted to have staff and provincial housing officials release a plan by Oct. 1 that will show how the HEART and HEARTH programs will provide suitable shelter or housing options for those "currently" living outdoors by the end of 2025. That plan will also have to show how the two initiatives will wind down sheltering in parks and "non-sanctioned public places" by that deadline.
Through an agreement between Victoria and the B.C. government this year, the HEART and HEARTH programs provide additional provincial funding for responding to encampments, spurring new shelter or housing spaces and increasing mental-health and addictions services. Council on Thursday received some information about the initial impact of those programs, but Loughton, who successfully pushed for the data, said it lacked the details she had hoped to get.
BC Housing has used HEARTH funding to open an additional 60 beds in Victoria this year. That's been done through the reopening of the former Tiny Town sea-can village for those experiencing homelessness and making 30 nightly shelter beds available at St. John the Divine Anglican Church.
Pointing to winter shelter beds in the city that are sitting dormant due to a lack of funding, Loughton pressed for the coming HEART and HEARTH plan as she said solutions that could be put in place quickly are still taking too long to roll out.
Victoria has raised concerns it's left to deal with the entire region's homelessness issues as it hosts almost all of the supportive housing, shelters and related services. Council members and the city manager have stressed the need for the province to more evenly spread out those supports as they note homelessness exists across the region. Council heard Thursday that of the 1,456 supportive housing units in the Capital Region, Victoria has 1,267 of them.
The legal groups said Victoria has insufficient shelter spaces and the beds it does have are not accessible to many people who need them. While writing that the city does have authority to restrict outdoor sheltering locations, Pivot and the Civil Liberties Association argue that Victoria has gone beyond that by removing nearly all spaces accessible to local homeless folks.
"The list of prohibited sheltering spaces demonstrates that the city is moving to prohibit sheltering in nearly all parks in the district, and the few remaining parks are significantly further from the resources unhoused people rely upon to survive," the letter states.
