Shelters face a growing dilemma
Opposition builds over lack of accountability, but need for supportive housing remains high
Some critics of shelters and supportive housing say operators of the facilities are not honouring their agreements — and that city council is not holding them to account.
Speaker after speaker at a recent public hearing about rezoning Mount Edwards Court for seniors’ supportive housing expressed fears that promises of security, staffing, restrictions on drugs or alcohol and monitoring of visitors wouldn’t be kept.
The facility, immediately adjacent to Christ Church Cathedral School, is to be operated by the Cool Aid Society. The school has students from kindergarten to Grade 8.
Several speakers cited the example of 844 Johnson St., the 147-unit former Baptist Central Care Home where former tent city residents now live, as an example that agreements with social-service providers promising performance standards can’t be believed.
That, they said, was brought home by a recent arbitrator’s decision that the operator of 844 Johnson — Portland Housing Society — cannot legally restrict visitors to the facility.
“The Residential Tenancy Act does not permit B.C. Housing or Cool Aid to dictate the rights of future residents. Guarantees of current personal drug use or vetting for mental disorders [at Mount Edwards Court] may not be legally possible,” Sandi Love, a Cathedral School parent, told the hearing.
Others point to what they see as a history of broken promises.
When Cool Aid’s Rock Bay Landing shelter was opened at 535 Ellice St., neighbours were told that two community police officers would be stationed there.
It hasn’t happened. Victoria police relinquished the office space in the shelter two years ago because it was inefficient for officers to be driving between police headquarters and Ellice Street, said Insp. Scott McGregor, who heads the department’s community services division.
A community resource officer is still dedicated to the shelter and police are there every day, McGregor said. “The shelter poses a lot of challenges for us.”
Built in 2010 on the site of a longneglected city park, Rock Bay Landing was billed as a state-of-the-art facility that would be a benefit to the neighbourhood.
It has become a daily drain on city crews and police as they try to keep up with a clientele that regularly overflows onto the street.
“When they built the shelter on Ellice Street, they promised it was going to be a model [shelter],” said former city councillor Shellie Gudgeon. “Drive down that road. Tell me if that is a model that you would want in your neighbourhood.”
Woody Woodruff, who owns Woody’s Towing and drives on Ellice Street at all hours of the day and night, said he sees open drug dealing, discarded needles, people urinating on the street and camping on private property.
He has asked campers to move when they are set up on private property. In return, he’s been yelled at and spat on.
Mike Grams, who owns Coachwerks Automotive Restoration, said he’s concerned customers feel unsafe coming to his Ellice Street shop.
Grams said someone who has been barred from Rock Bay Landing because of behaviour should not be allowed to set up camp across the street.
Cool Aid executive director Kathy Stinson said the nature the services provided at an emergency shelter and drop-in centre such as Rock Bay Landing make keeping a lid on activities on the street challenging — especially during the current overdose crisis.
“The thing with people who are using an emergency shelter and those type of dropin services is generally their lives are somewhat chaotic,” Stinson said.
“They’re in crisis. They don’t have any permanent address. They’re carrying their belongings around with them. They’re often having multiple challenges that they’re trying to deal with.”
Problems are exacerbated, she said, because there isn’t the capacity to help everyone, and some are turned away.
There is a code of conduct, but users don’t pay rent or a service fee, “so the only real way we have of managing behaviours is to deny service.”
Stinson said the Mount Edwards proposal had support from several neighbours, including younger and older women who said they had no safety concerns.
“I think it’s about trying to differentiate the perceived fears from the actual realities,” Stinson said.
Still, some neighbourhoods are looking at 844 Johnson and Rock Bay Landing and saying no to more social housing.
For the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood, the last straw was news that the former Super 8 hotel — purchased by the province for “transitional housing” — is now to include a transient shelter.
Burnside Gorge is home to just seven per cent of Victoria’s population, but 77 per cent of its shelter units and 36 per cent of supportive housing units.
The Burnside Gorge Community Association has called on the province for a moratorium on development of more shelters and supportive housing within its boundaries until problems like mounting levels of crime, drug dealing, open drug use, and entrenchment of transient encampments in doorways and boulevards are addressed.
Don Evans, executive director of Our Place, a drop-in centre in the 900 block of Pandora Avenue, said he’s sensing a growing backlash against proposals for new facilities, and finds the reaction “troubling.”
He said neighbourhoods are safer with people inside facilities, getting support, than they are with people on the street and not getting assistance.
Our Place has worked hard to respond to issues raised by neighbours, but there’s always work to do, he said.
“This summer has been extremely difficult for neighbourhoods because we’ve seen an increase in the numbers of people out there camping on boulevards and in doorways and in parks,” he said.
Gudgeon said city council has not held social service agencies to the standards they promise at public hearings.
“They are not given measurables and they are not having to live up to what their promises are to the neighbourhoods. … It makes the voice that’s saying ‘no’ look like we’re evil,” she said.
“But what we’re not getting is accountability from the social service providers on making sure that they add to a neighbourhood and not detract from a neighbourhood.”
Stephen Hammond, one of the founders of the Mad As Hell group organized in response to the tent city, said there is no reason why neighbourhoods should believe assurances about new facilities.
“They [city council] are right in lockstep with B.C. Housing, as opposed to saying: ‘If you are insisting on putting this kind of housing together, you have got to put in protections.’ You have got to put in protections for the people inside and outside,” Hammond said.
“I’d like to take them at their word, but so far that hasn’t been the case.”
Coun. Geoff Young has wondered aloud how council can promise neighbours that visitors and residents in social housing projects will be monitored, while indicating that monitoring is illegal under the Residential Tenancy Act.
“People say things and they make undertakings and they either do not or cannot honour them,” Young said.
Stinson said all residents in Cool Aid facilities are subject to the act, but that Cool Aid’s experience in reaching agreements with residents has been positive.
Coun. Chris Coleman said neighbourhoods have to hold councillors’ feet to the fire to ensure social housing facilities meet community standards, and concedes some assurances have not been met.
“Yes, they have a right to be cautious about believing us,” Coleman said.
Meanwhile, Young maintains Victoria is increasingly becoming home to a disproportionate share of social services.
“I sympathize with Burnside because they’re getting the brunt of a lot of those facilities in the city,” he said.
“But, of course, my bigger concern is the city is getting a lot of facilities that should be spread throughout the region.”