Unhoused downtown: 'What do we do with our stuff?'

After a series of City of Victoria tent-clearing operations along the Pandora corridor in the fall, interlocking blue fencing was installed to deter illegal sheltering along its 900 block. At around the same time, a facility at 926 Pandora used by people to store their belongings was shuttered.

The lease on the 20-foot shipping or C-container where unhoused people could keep their things expired on Oct. 31. On Nov. 7, Victoria councillors unanimously passed a motion made by Mayor Marianne Alto and Coun. Krista Loughton to relocate the container. “The storage facility that has existed has been helpful and certainly has provided an important service,” said Alto.

Loughton shared her appreciation for what the facility was offering people in the face of the removal of their tents.

“This [storage facility] has been operational for a number of months now without issue, and it's desperately needed at this point in time because it's not operational right now," Loughton said. "My concern is slowing this down is going to increase the issues that come with the displacement.”

City staff told the council that when operational, the storage facility was full every day. The container is currently sitting on the site of a proposed housing development.

That land at 926-930 Pandora is slated for the construction of a 20-storey project of 158 mixed and affordable rental homes and 47 supportive housing units. It’s being developed through a partnership between BC Housing, the City of Victoria, the CRD, and the Capital Region Housing Corporation (CRHC). The affordable rental units will be operated by CRHC, and BC Housing expects to hire a non-profit operator to manage its supportive housing units.

The building will not be ready for occupancy until 2028. That’s at least a three-year wait for the people to decamp off Pandora and the city isn’t going to continue to pay to rent empty containers there until then.

“This is the absolute minimum we can do for those sheltering in and around the 900 block,” Loughton said about the motion to move the container.

Const. Mark Jenkins, a community resource officer for the city, said the city was able to secure the C-can which Solid Outreach Society had been managing at that location (926 Pandora).

Still searching for a new location

“We're poised to find a new location,” Jenkins said.

“We're just hanging on to the C-can for now, and I think you'll be able to determine that with our service provider partners. Should the motion be adopted, we’re ready to start looking for a new location,” he said.

As of Nov. 14, that location had not yet been determined by the city council. “Staff are actively working on it," Loughton told Capital Daily in an email. “It's a priority.”

Decamping Pandora has been part of a plan implemented by the HEART (homeless encampment, action, response, transitional housing) strategic table, which comprises representatives from BC Housing, the Ministry of Housing, Island Health, local service providers, and city staff.

“Over the past year, the HEART and HEARTH (homeless encampment, action, response, transitional housing) program has grown the number of shelter spots to 82 and is expected to offer more, however, [the] council has not yet received its operational plan, as it was promised,” Laughton said at the Nov. 7 meeting.

That plan clearly didn’t include a strategy around what to do with a storage container.

“We could have it [the container] sit there as long as we wanted,” said Peter Rantucci, who heads the city’s strategic real estate division. It’s an on-order kind of asset, but it has to be gone once construction there starts.” The anticipated start date for construction is unclear. aa

Unless... they use this one

There is one other alternative in operation across the street. It is a shed located in a gated parking lot of Solid Outreach, a grassroots non-profit staffed by people with lived experience of drug use.

“We have a storage shed where people can either have a bin or ask for space for a suitcase,” a community outreach paramedic who works with Solid, and identified as "Dex," told Capital Daily

The shed can hold approximately 90 bins, each weighing up to 50 lbs., and 10 spots for large suitcases. To track what belongs to whom, forms are filled out and photos submitted. People can keep their belongings there for up to two months but must check in at the shed every two weeks. The shed operates from 11am to 3pm every day. Dex said he was unsure where or when the containers across the street were going to be moved.

Until they are, decamped people around Pandora and the vicinity will either have to use Solid’s shed or keep their belongings with them.