Homeless in Victoria must keep moving on
VICTORIA — It’s 7:15 a.m. and a woman is sleeping on the pavement across from Victoria’s Reeson Park, a small green space on Wharf Street. She has no tent to block the morning breeze, just a weathered comforter and her dog nestled beside her for warmth. On the ledge next to her sit two bottles of red and pink nail polish, an open bottle of Sprite and a half-finished mickey of whisky. A bike tire rings the handle of her shopping cart.
Victoria police Staff Sgt. Colin Brown leans over her. “Hey ma’am, it’s the police, time to wake up.”
She stirs, pulls her arm across her eyes and nestles into her dog.
“Sorry to wake you,” Brown says. “It looks like you’ve got a warm friend there with you.”
Brown gives her some space and heads to a neighbouring tarp-covered encampment that overlooks the Johnson Street Bridge.
Roy Osmond, 56, and his wife of 27 years, Debbie, crawl out from under the tarp, which is held up by suitcases and a Rubbermaid bin on wheels. Their dog, Caesar, rests on his dog bed. Where are they planning to go? “We don’t know yet; they want us to keep moving,” Roy says.
Dozens of police and bylaw officers have carried out the morning wake-up routine since 2008, when the B.C. Supreme Court enshrined people’s right to camp overnight in parks when shelter isn’t available. Campers must pack up and move along by 7 a.m. — and the officers are there to enforce that.
One year after B.C. Housing kicked in $26 million to house about 300 people who were camping in the tent city on the courthouse lawn, hundreds of people are still sleeping rough in city parks or on sidewalks, which experts say is visible proof of the failure to deal with the root causes of poverty.
Brown, who heads the department’s community-services division, knows it must be hard to pack up all your worldly possessions every morning and find a place to exist. “It’s always a challenge to move people around, particularly when they don’t have anywhere to go,” said Brown, as a Times Colonist reporter accompanied him one recent morning. “I can just imagine if someone was waking me up every morning and telling me to move on when you’re still sleeping. I think that would be a really hard way to start your day every day.”
Brown apologizes for having to wake people, and tries to speak in a way that builds trust and relationships. During one wake-up, he calls the man brother.