Homelessness solution is homes
Re: “Neighbours’ cry: End ‘shantytown’ in Saanich’s Cuthbert Holmes Park,” April 11. Neighbours of Cuthbert Holmes Park and the Gorge Tillicum Community Association are escalating calls to ban camping in the park. Saanich council is responding by creating its displacement plan.
Two years ago, the tent city outside the Victoria courthouse shone a light on the housing and poverty crisis in Victoria. B.C. Housing made a mistake when it provided only enough permanent housing for those it could see, rather than hearing what tent city residents and activists were saying: Tent city is the tip of the iceberg.
Tent city represented visible homelessness and not the “hidden” homeless, who are camping in other parts of the city, sleeping in cars, living in temporary shelters, seniors and people on fixed incomes who are being driven into homelessness every day.
Vera Wynn-Williams of the Gorge Tillicum Community Association told the Times Colonist that it is not compassionate to turn a blind eye to the Third World conditions in Saanich parks. Yet forcing homeless people out of their shelters without an alternative is exactly that.
The policy of displacing visible homelessness, one encampment at a time, is cruel and ineffective. The only thing that solves homelessness is homes. Ashley Mollison Alliance Against Displacement Victoria