Critics say it failed to see signs of trouble
local wages, waiting lists of multiple years for students at postsecondary institutions to find residence rooms, and a housing market that has no connection to local wages,” he said.
“If this isn’t a housing crisis, then I’m not sure what would qualify.”
While Coleman points to the investment in housing over the past decade, Eby says the B.C. Liberal government failed to see the signs that the housing crunch was coming, and dismisses the government’s efforts.
“Whether you’re renting or whether you’re buying or whether you’re living in poverty, the housing strategy has been a failure,” he said, noting that he expects housing to be a major issue in the May 9 provincial election.
The province spent more than $25 million to buy and renovate properties to create more than 190 spaces for homeless people.
“I can do affordability in the marketplace to help people with their rent if it’s only about income — if it’s a senior or family in the marketplace — if I have product,” Coleman said.
“On the other side, I also have a very vulnerable population that have issues around mental illness and addictions and issues around whether they want to come in to get help.”
Last year, the province allocated almost $32 million to provide subsidized housing and rent supplements to more than 5,100 low-income households in Victoria, including support for 920 senior households and more than 1,200 family households.
The government has announced $45 million for eight affordable housing projects that will provide 510 units in Greater Victoria for low- to moderateincome adults, families and seniors, along with $30 million, with a matching contribution to come from the Capital Regional District, for affordable rental housing.
Victoria’s tent city, with homeless people camped at the provincial courthouse from November 2015 to August 2016, showcased the need to move quickly to provide housing for people looking for it.
Margo Matwychuk, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria, says tent cities represent do-it-yourself housing.
Matwychuk, who has worked with the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, said nature hates a vacuum.
“What happened in countries like Brazil where the government didn’t put any resources into building houses, people built their own,” she said. “We have so many laws to prevent that, but at some point, if the government isn’t going to invest, then someone else will.”
Matwychuk says no one has dealt with the fact that incomes have not kept pace with the cost of housing.
“What we have built is mainly not social housing, it’s mainly supportive housing — more the notion that it’s not just for people who are poor but people who are poor and are ill in some way and need to be fixed,” she said. “There’s not been much for people who are just poor, and we need to address that before those people end up on the street and become ill.”
Matwychuk said, typically, people are taken off the streets or out of shelters and put into supportive housing.
“The idea is you fix them in some way and then you send them to go into market housing,” she said. “But they are people who will never be able to afford market housing and they will end up back on the streets again.”
Bernie Pauly, an associate professor at UVic’s School of Nursing and author of several reports on homelessness, cautions that a census of the homeless will never count them all.
“It’s just not capturing everyone, it doesn’t capture the couch surfers, or those people who are just hanging on — paying 50 to 70 per cent of their income for shelter,” she said.
Pauly said in many cases governments and the public don’t want to know the real numbers, because they illustrate how difficult a task lies ahead.
“Governments want to make that number as small as possible,” she said, adding they also want to restrict the definition of who is homeless “so they don’t have to invest as much.”