It’s time to clean up the tent city in Victoria once and for all.
With two new facilities opening this week - one of which is in View Royal - the spaces being made available should cover the bulk of people living at the tent city on the Victoria court house lawn. These spaces opened just in time, before yesterday’s provincial government’s deadline forcing campers to move on or face a possible injunction order.
However, just because space is being made, it doesn’t mean that campers have to take the space allotted for them. They also don’t have to move off the street and into a facility if they don’t want to.
So with government funding pouring in to open more temporary or transitional housing to get people off the streets we can’t help but wonder why this funding wasn’t available earlier - perhaps the beginning of the winter season.
We also have to question why this money is available for temporary solutions and didn’t go towards addressing the root causes of homelessness.
We suspect someone who devotes their time to getting people off the streets would agree with us when we say there isn’t enough funding for the programs aimed at preventing people from ending up there, whether it is from drug use, mental illness, abuse or a variety of other causes.
Yes, there are some people living on the street just because they want to. But a far greater number are there because they have no other choice.
We can’t keep using these Band-Aid fixes and expect them to be the end all to the systemic problems that create homelessness in the first place.
It’ll be interesting to see what unfolds in the aftermath of yesterday’s deadline and whether more funding will be made available to keep those facilities operating after their six-month operation timeline comes to an end.
Will we see another tent city taking shape again next fall or will we even have to wait that long before campers set up shop in a new location? Temporary solutions won’t fix long term problems.