Stop chasing people from park to park
Re: “Costs for Regina Park camp could add up to $1M,” Sept. 26.
Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell’s comment: “I can’t think of a cost more unanticipated than a tent city,” reveals that he is not paying attention. Residents, advocates, researchers and others have come before him and council to express concern about the municipality’s approach to homelessness. The affordable-housing crisis in our communities is well known.
Tent cities are not new phenomena. When people are sheltering outside, being together provides stability, safety and mutual aid. Tent cities will continue to happen if people don’t have appropriate housing.
Most of the expense incurred by Saanich is due to its decision to police tent cities and chase people from park to park, an expensive and ineffective approach. Instead, we should work with those sheltering outside in a collaborative way that treats unhoused people as the human beings they are.
With municipal elections happening soon, we need candidates who will stop misusing public funds on surveilling and displacing homeless people, inadequate temporary measures such as rubber mats on a floor or institutionalized “supportive” warehousing that is more about controlling poor people than meeting people’s housing needs with dignity.
These are not effective solutions; they are all based on the dehumanization of people living in poverty and often exacerbate the problem.
Constructive action is within our grasp, but only if we stop spending money on punishing people for being unhoused and start from principles of respect and care.