Victoria to spend another $100,000 on cleaning up after campers in parks

Victoria councillors agreed to spend another $100,000 to continue cleaning up after people tenting in city parks.

During budget deliberations in January, councillors reduced the special allocation for park cleanup to $200,000 from the recommended $300,000 in the hope that hundreds of new social housing units would result in reduced pressure on parks’ use from homeless people. Staff say that has not been the case. On average this year, the city is receiving 294 calls-for-service per month.

Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe said it’s interesting the calls for service are going up as the most recent Greater Victoria Point In Time homeless count is showing a 16 per cent decrease in the number of people sleeping rough.

Meanwhile, councilors rebuffed suggestions from Coun. Geoff Young that the city change direction on how it deals with people overnighting in parks.

Young believes the additional cleanup funds are necessary.

“My concern is with the overall direction that the council has chosen to go on this,” he said.

“I need to ask how long are we going to keep moving down this path of supporting and paying for camping in the parks given the evolution we have seen happen over and over again,” he said.

Victoria has been wrestling with the issue of camping in parks since 2008 when a B.C. Supreme Court judge deemed it unconstitutional to deny a person the right to erect shelter in the absence of available shelter beds.

Young said the city should be taking all the funds it directs to park cleanup to instead use it to create sufficient temporary shelter beds so it doesn’t have to permit overnight sheltering in parks at all.

“The courts have not said we must provide camping in the parks. The courts … have said: You must permit camping in the parks if there is no other adequate shelter for people.”

Coun. Chris Coleman said they had little choice but to approve the increase.

“Staff came to us a number of months ago and said we need X-amount of dollars, $300,000 to do this cleanup. We carved them back and said: ‘No, make it work for $200,000.’ Staff looked at it and said: ‘No, we were right.’ So I’m quite willing to support this,” Coleman said.

Mayor Lisa Helps said she didn’t understand Young’s thinking, given his record of voting against allowing social housing applications such as the former Tally-Ho, 3020 Douglas St. and Mount Edwards Court.

“If you are sincere about us getting empty buildings and putting people in them as shelters; if you’d like to champion that in all the neighbourhoods, then I think that would be awesome,” Helps said.

Progress is being made on the homeless file, Coleman said, noting the latest point in time count shows that the projected 30 per cent a year growth in the rate people sleeping outdoors has been arrested.

City staff say the budget allocation is needed not only for cleanup of trash, abandoned goods and needles but also to keep some park washrooms open into the evening and provide extra security.

City bylaws state that overnight shelter must be temporary. Shelter can be erected only from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. from March to October, and 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. from November to February.