Advocates and council face off on park sheltering deadline

The Aug. 1 deadline banning sheltering in Vic West and Irving parks is tomorrow. It’s got housing advocates pushing for more consideration of the rights of the unsheltered. On July 25, that deadline brought the unhoused, their supporters and legislators into yet another faceoff at City Hall for presentations and the reading of a related motion that caps the number of  temporary shelter spaces that can be made available in any Victoria neighborhood to 40. It limits the number of temporary shelter spaces to 40 in any one neighborhood and directs staff to adopt amendments to the city's zoning bylaws that would allow temporary social-services centres to be built to provide support to help meet their needs. As per the motion, those service centres must:

\* Not be located within 100 metres of another temporary shelter

\* Be well kept and maintained at all times

\* Not causing a nuisance to neighbouring community

Coun. Krista Loughton said several residents had emailed her constituency office, expressing their opposition to rezoning and the presence of social services in their neighbourhoods.

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Fear is a factor on both sides of the housed-unhoused equation

Fearful of their imminent removal from Irving park, Ana Brazeau and Darryl Williams made poignant pleas to the council for an extension on the Aug 1 deadline. “I've been on the BC housing list for a couple years now. I've been waiting,” Brazeau said. “It doesn't look like it's happening and I don't know what to do.”.

Nikki Ottosen, founder of the Backpack Project—a charitable organization that provides aid to community members who live without homes—called for an immediate halt to the closing of Vic West and Irving parks until the city “can fulfill [its] legal obligation to provide spaces for people to shelter and basic human rights such as water, toilet and sanitation.”. A city spokesperson told Capital Daily that since April 17, and the deadline motion passed, all but two people had accepted shelter options the city offered them by the Pacifica Housing Advisory Association.

“We’re trying to do our part with our partners to provide the services and sheltering and housing that are needed by so many of our residents and so many of the folks who are part of our community,” said Mayor Marianne Alto, when she brought the rezoning bylaw  amendment motion to the floor for voting.

MOU reached earlier this year

In February, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was formalized between the province and the City of Victoria to coordinate community support for people experiencing homelessness through the Homeless Encampment Action Response Teams (HEART) and the Homeless Encampment Action Response Temporary Housing (HEARTH) programs.

HEART is in the right place, but there remain a number of issues to smooth before park sheltering is resolved entirely, not least of which is Ottosen’s challenge to the legitimacy of the city’s pending removal of the unsheltered from two of Victoria’s remaining five parks where, up until Aug. 1, overnight sheltering remains an option.

“We are ready to hold the mayor and council and city accountable through the courts,”Ottosen said. “There are lawyers preparing for class action lawsuits and individual lawsuits, and while we are preparing, there are cases being won and precedents being set through the country, such as the Bamberger decision and the Powers decision.”

A matter of constitutionality

In BC, legal challenges to encampment evictions have almost exclusively focused on whether the bylaws permitting evictions are constitutional.

In its 2009 Victoria v. Adams decision, the provincial court upheld that bylaws restricting encampments in parks and other public spaces were unconstitutional if adequate shelter spaces were not immediately available for the same number of encampment residents in need. Victoria, like Vancouver, has been avoiding legal backlash by implementing rolling and time-specific restrictions on encampments.

Last fall, council banned overnight sheltering in Stadacona, Topaz, Hollywood and Regatta Point parks. Sheltering had already been banned in Beacon Hill Park and Central Park.

What angers Ottosen is the way the city council has prioritized—through the May bylaw—who gets to be in public spaces and how they get to occupy them. “I am calling for an immediate halt to the closing of these parks,” she said. “Sheltering is a human right. Housing is a human right.”

Victoria has gradually been reducing the number of parks in which people are allowed to shelter overnight. In April, Vic West and Irving Park were added to the no-sheltering list. That left only Oaklands, Pemberton and Gonzales parks as overnight sheltering options. On July 17,  Coun. Stephen Hammond forwarded a motion to put an end to any and all daytime sheltering in Victoria. This came on the heels of  an incident involving the assault of a paramedic six days earlier which prompted first responders to say they would not provide medical aid on the 900 Block of Pandora without a police presence.

The distinction between impact and constitutionality comes to a head in the question of legal dismantling of encampments against the will of people sheltering in them.

The 2022 Bamberger case

Adjudicators of the 2022 Bamberger case considered, for the first time, whether an encampment eviction (or “sweep”) was fair, not simply whether it was constitutional. That case also establishes that unhoused people have human rights that must be meaningfully recognized. It challenges the presumption—-the one made by council in its May and July 25  motions—that the availability of any shelter is enough to justify encampment evictions.

It was on this basis of these previous cases that Ottosen warned that the city would face costly legal action if it didn’t reverse its position to ban people from overnighting in city parks and because of—-in her words, its “wilful blindness and recklessness with human life” and willingness to “ignore federal, provincial and UN guidelines on homelessness,” she said.

Closing the parks to sheltering without first figuring out where to locate service centres for people puts the council in the crosshairs of both groups. The rezoning bylaw is a blanket zoning amendment, meaning that they are allowed in every neighbourhood.

Following the motion’s approval, city staff will look into making temporary rezoning amendments as part of the ongoing Official Community Plan (OFP) process to accommodate shelters and service centres. Coun. Chris Coleman said he isn’t opposed to the idea of setting up additional social services. “Pushing this forward right now increases the anxiety level for a lot of people and I think that we have more work to do,”he said. Coleman was referring to the June 20 City Hall protest and petition by neighborhood members worried about the proposed wrap-around community-based services hub at 2155 Dowler Pl. in North Park.

City budgets $300K for SOLID

On June 14, Alto announced the city would be spending $300,000 to help SOLID Outreach Society buy the property that will provide multiple services, connecting people to B.C. Housing options, health appointments, meals and a supervised consumption site to people impacted by recent Pandora St. sweeps.

In response to the Dowler protestors, Alto said, while housing is not a municipal responsibility, the provincial and federal governments have limited capacity to address the issue, and “the city is taking a more active role. We can’t continue to wait for someone else to do the job. It’s time now for municipalities to step up,” she said.

Park and street sweeps and ad hoc planning that does not involve transparent and adequate consultation with either the unhoused or residents may continue to work against a city trying to address the needs of all its residents.