Handling of tent city has been totally inept

Re: “Tent city taps into drinking water, will get flush toilets,” May 14.

I am aghast. What’s next? Perhaps we should put in electricity and then maybe cable and phone. I’m sure they would love a nice big hot-tub.

“Tent city” is polite-speak for a dirty little shanty town. And its inhabitants are thumbing their noses at everyone, while working the system for all it’s worth. The letter from the Victoria Police Department when this camp first sprouted was dead-on prophetic.

Dispersing the camp’s people back into the city is not that critical of an issue. That’s where most of them came from a few months ago. Doing so will not solve any of the problems involved here, other than losing the ridiculous shanty town. A portion of the homeless population lives with mental and addiction problems. Serious help for them is sparse and sporadic. Why is there not a safe-injection site in Victoria? This is a brilliant idea in harm reduction, and there is only one in North America — in Vancouver.

The performance of the province and Victoria in this affair has been totally inept. Neither has tried to fix anything underlying, instead throwing huge, poorly spent money and a lot of polite talk at the shanty town. And it’s still there.

Considering Mayor Lisa Helps’ successes with the Blue Bridge, the sewage plan and the police chief mess, methinks not much good is going to happen shantywise. Robert Matthews Willis Point