The number of people tenting in Victoria city parks is climbing, despite millions being poured into social housing.
Victoria city staff report that an estimated 302 tents were pitched in city parks in April, almost twice as many as the 164 erected in May 2016 and more than the 225 erected in July 2016. An estimated 536 people were sleeping in parks in April, compared with 399 last May and 475 in July, the report says.
“Obviously, it’s an issue that is continuing to be of concern,” said Victoria Coun. Geoff Young, adding there’s a “fundamental incompatibility” between using parks as residences and using them for their intended purpose of recreation.
“It’s not a simple case of it’s dark, so now we use it for sleeping, and in the daytime, it’s used by the public,” said Young, who believes efforts should be concentrated on providing shelter mats. Once there are enough mats, the city should work toward banning tenting in parks, he said.
“I know that we will have conflicts over the issue of what is [an] acceptable shelter, but I think we just have to work through those in the courts if necessary. But we can’t simply accept the position: ‘I don’t like your shelter so I’m going to sleep in the park,’ ” Young said.
The tenting numbers indicate that homelessness is continuing to grow, said Coun. Ben Isitt, who doesn’t agree that providing more shelter mats is the answer.
“I find the standard of amenity offered in the shelter system to be inadequate and arguably inhumane,” Isitt said. “I personally believe in a right to housing and I personally believe we have more than enough resources in Greater Victoria and certainly in Canada to provide housing for people in need. So I’m not prepared to settle for mats in a church basement.”
Tenting numbers are higher in parks now because last May, the tent city on the courthouse grounds was still operating, said Mayor Lisa Helps.
Helps, who recently returned from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention in Ottawa, said the problem of homelessness is showing up in parks and on doorsteps in cities across the country
“Until we have a substantial investment from the federal government in housing, we’re going to keep seeing people camping in parks and sleeping in doorways right across this First World country known as Canada. It is abysmal,” Helps said.
The province and Capital Regional District have each committed $30 million to a regional housing-first strategy that’s going to build 880 units over the next five years, but the federal government has to come to the table, she said.
“In 1989, the federal government spent $114 per Canadian on affordable housing, and by 2018 the federal government [will be] spending $50 per Canadian on affordable housing, even though the population of Canada has grown by 30 per cent,” Helps said. “What we’re seeing now is the result of that.”
In 2008, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that in the absence of adequate shelter beds, it is unconstitutional to deny someone the right to erect a shelter in a city park.
The city responded by amending its bylaws to allow people to camp in parks between dusk and dawn, and bylaw officers and city police began daily wakeup patrols.
In November 2015, campers established a tent city on the courthouse lawn. Because it wasn’t city property, the city’s parks bylaw didn’t apply, meaning tenters didn’t have to dismantle their tents in the morning. The tent city stayed until it was dismantled through a court order in August, after neighbours complained of noise, violence, smoke, thefts and intimidation from residents.
The province invested more than $26 million to house tent-city residents, buying four buildings — the Central Care home on Johnson Street, Mount Edwards Court seniors home on Vancouver Street and the Super 8 and Tally Ho hotels on Douglas Street.
