Victoria councillors want Westshore to step up in unhoused, opioid issues

The demands on municipalities to meaningfully address the opioid and intersecting homelessness crisis grow year by year. While the number of opioid deaths in Victoria took a marginal drop this past year, a walk down Pandora or Douglas will tell you the crisis is far from over.

Though this tragic dilemma is not unique to the capital, according to Coun. Jeremy Caradonna, there is a prevailing feeling in Victoria: "We’re doing too much, that we’ve taken on too much. The province has handed down these affordable housing targets but there are also supportive housing targets and people have to understand that. We have a low target because we have a lot of supportive housing. We are completely overwhelmed.”

On May 16th, Victoria police and bylaw officers conducted a massive ‘clean-up’ sweep of the 900-block of Pandora where dozens of tents were set up. They were there most of the day, clearing one tent after another and impounding people's belongings.

“We will help people pack up so that people can at least conform to the rules and regulations that are required to be adhered to,” said Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto.

In a council discussion on May 13 around substance use and recovery services, Colwood Coun. Cynthia Day said, “I know that the struggle is everywhere on the Island and there is no community that is spared.”

“Why can’t every municipality look after its own?” says founder of the Backpack Project and homeless advocate, Nikki Ottenson. “I know a lot of people on the block (Pandora) who are from North Saanich, Vic West, and Sidney. They don’t want to be on the block. They want to be close to family and friends and support and services but there are none.”

That’s one thing Ottenson and the mayor can agree on. “Boulevards are not a place for people to shelter,” said Alto.

Most of the supports are in Victoria

Last year, some Langford residents raised concerns with police about squatters who were living in abandoned homes on Sunderland Avenue. Frequently, peace officers are called to the encampment in Langford’s Danbrook Park on Claude Road near Goldstream Avenue. Danbrook Park is the only park in Langford where people are sheltering overnight. But there are few supports there. Of the 832 supportive housing units in the capital region, 680 of them are in Victoria and currently, there are no shelters in Langford, Colwood, or Sooke on BC Housing’s list.

“We need to regionalize these solutions. We’re still dealing with a 20th-century model where you concentrate all your services that support poverty in one place and that’s how you get a marginalized community. The new model is that you decentralize it,” said Caradonna.

Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi tells Capital Daily he doesn’t disagree, “It is my opinion that the City of Victoria is taking the brunt of [it] because it has the majority of the wraparound services and housing for people struggling with substance addictions in the region.”

It’s the Field of Dreams conundrum—"If you build it, they will come.” It’s just that maybe it can be built elsewhere.

Supports could be 'decentralized throughout the region'

“It is my belief that if provincial funding could be provided to ensure there are adequate support services and housing in the Westshore then it makes sense that these services could be decentralized throughout the region,” Kobayashi said.

Some of the support to decentralize could come in the form of the federal Reaching Home: Canada's Homelessness Strategy announced in December. The program will fund the development of coordinated partnerships among service providers, the mapping of a housing and homeless-serving system, and the establishment of inter-municipal governance structures to support relevant data-sharing tools.

Reaching Home will also fund the bricks and mortar in the renovation of emergency shelters, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, or non-residential facilities. The BC Affordable Housing Fund, a $13.2-billion program also provides low-interest or forgivable loans and contributions for new and repaired affordable and community housing.

Tackling harmful substance use isn’t just about providing housing. Pathways to Recovery, a Canadian organization advocating for respect-based, full-spectrum care for substance users says “it requires a whole person approach that recognizes access to employment, education, housing, and a full spectrum of wrap-around services are fundamental to long-term recovery.”

“Simply building 'brick and mortar' to house people struggling with substance addiction is doomed to failure without proper forethought on all the wraparound services that must be in place to support it,” said Kobayashi.

“This is something the Westshore communities cannot take on without partnership from the province.” Speaking in the context of the Pandora sweep, Alto said “It’s not the responsibility of the municipality to house people.” She, too, wants to see more support from the province.

In step with his thinking, Kobayashi invited Trevor Botkin, the community development manager of the Umbrella—a non-profit that provides mental-health and substance-use help—to present to the Colwood council this week. The Umbrella Society has been in the charitable business of local supportive recovery since 2015. Botkin told the council, “Our interest in those spaces is primarily to make sure that recovery is accessible everywhere.”

The Umbrella Society supports those affected by substance use and concurring mental-health challenges to access a broad range of community supports, including staged recovery housing, harm reduction programming, and counselling.

Coun. Cynthia Day asked Botkin, “What kind of magic does it take to bring out treatment options to the community?”

Burden has been left to charities

“I honestly wonder why it's been left to charities to do it. It's a hot topic. It’s become a political football,” Botkin said. “What serves people is investing so enthusiastically as a community and as councils and as politicians in solutions that people see they have hope.”

Building the regional supports Botkin is talking about requires dialogue and coordination between municipalities. It requires data collection and a large-scale collaborative effort that will enable municipalities in the Westshore to organize and deliver diverse services to clients in a coordinated manner.

Coun. Krista Loughton has been skeptical of the willingness of other municipalities to roll their sleeves up to meet the challenge of investing so enthusiastically. “You have to have the support of council in each of those municipalities, but they won’t. The councils aren’t going to vote for it.”

The mayors of the Westshore will have to prove her wrong.