The mayor has been testing the limits of a BC Supreme Court judgement asserting the homeless' right to shelter even since assuming office. At which point do bylaws encroaching upon their vital space amount to mass murder?
If you’re not utterly dismayed by the city of Victoria’s recent announcements pertaining to the displacement of its homeless population to make room for the council’s recent splurge of frivolous ‘enhancements’ nobody asked for, at outrageous price tags, you haven’t been paying attention.
I attended the city of Victoria’s council meeting today, expecting developments and answers. Its most pressing issue was of course the rejuvenation of “crappy old buildings” (not my wording, a councillor’s). Sheltering in parks was only addressed in a rush late in the afternoon. The mayor displayed such a suffocating display of perfunctoriness and contempt that no amount of training in front of a mirror could hide it. Her talk of “finding the right balance” between citizens’ right to enjoy their amenities versus the unhoused’s survival struck me as the epitome of weaselspeak. And her latest motion to phase out sheltering in three more parks (in addition to Stadacona Park) constitutes at best clinically acute delusion, at worst similarly acute Machiavellianism. Destitution does not go away by decree.
The city of Victoria, under the mandate of mayor Marianne Alto, engages in a campaign of attrition against its homeless population, treating it like vermin, and has been doing so ever since assuming office. I do not accept that it is inevitable, or that it isn’t deliberate. It is a crime against humanity.
In response, I’ve started a petition to reverse this outright sociopathic campaign of encroachment on our most vulnerable people’s vital space. Allow me to paste it below:
The City of Victoria’s beautification strategy is a campaign of human rights violations in disguise, meant to inexorably encroach upon the vital space of the city’s unsheltered population. We the signatories demand the city council reverse its stance and invest in desperately needed homeless shelters instead.
The council has recently announced a plethora of vanity projects nobody needs under the pretence of making the city more attractive. Its most recent proposals include the allocation of no less than $750’000 in consulting fees alone to design a revamp of Centennial Square featuring a splash park, and displacing campers in Stadacona Park to make room for an in-ground trampoline at the cost of $600’000.
In contrast, the current council has been ratcheting up sheltering bylaw enforcement since the day it took office, and failed to open Emergency Weather Response shelters last winter even with funding from BC Housing.
These figures prove that the City has the means to shelter its unhoused population, and callously declines to do so. It prefers an ironic beautification strategy of spreading unsafe, unsightly, and unsanctioned encampments all across downtown.
Amid historical unsheltered population swelling across the province and horrific attrition rates, such initiatives can only be construed as a campaign of mass murder against the homeless and of genocide against its disproportionately represented indigenous population. Because displacement means death for disenfranchised people being scattered ever farther from the resources they need to survive.
On a concluding note, an obvious parallel can be made between the council’s plan and that of the provincial government’s to renovate the Royal BC Museum at the cost of $800M while the social fabric was disintegrating, an announcement which led to then Premier John Horgan’s resignation. The council would be wise to heed this warning and instead invest in its own social safety net while that remains a politically viable option.
References:
“Victoria’s mayor moves to further restrict overnight sheltering in city parks” https://www.cheknews.ca/victorias-mayor-moves-to-further-restrict-overnight-sheltering-in-city-parks-1157360/
“Victoria council OKs first steps to overhaul Centennial Square” https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/victoria-council-oks-first-steps-to-overhaul-centennial-square-7153378
“Accessible Stadacona Park playground will have in-ground trampoline” https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/accessible-stadacona-park-playground-will-have-in-ground-trampoline-7068592
“Victoria unveils plan for $1M revitalization of downtown with public events, safety” https://www.vancouverislandfreedaily.com/news/victoria-unveils-plan-for-1m-revitalization-of-downtown-with-public-events-safety/
“BC Housing will fund overnight emergency shelter sites in Victoria under new agreement” https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/bc-housing-overnight-emergency-shelter-sites-victoria
“2020 GREATER VICTORIA POINT-IN-TIME
HOMELESS COUNT AND HOUSING NEEDS SURVEY” https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/housing-pdf/housing-planning-and-programs/crd-pit-count-2020-community-report-2020-07-31.pdf
“Deaths of Individuals Experiencing
Homelessness in BC, 2012-2021″ https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/deaths-of-individuals-experiencing-homelessness.pdf
“Victoria city council seeks solutions for ‘untenable and unsafe’ camp in civic square” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-homeless-camp-crime-business-city-hall-1.5704112
“Displacement = death” https://springmag.ca/displacement-death
“Premier stops controversial Royal B.C. Museum project: ‘I made the wrong call'” https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/premier-john-horgan-to-give-update-on-royal-bc-museum
“B.C. Premier John Horgan announces he will step down in the fall” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-bc-premier-john-horgan-resigns/
Don’t underestimate the power of petitions. Sometimes public backlash can compel a municipality to roll back such measures, like the city of Barrie in Ontario which recently backed down on its plan to criminalise homelessness by imposing hefty fines on whoever fed or donated to the unhoused amid nationwide uproar. We likewise need to mobilise in order to put an end to this tyranny, and a petition is the first step on the escalation ladder.
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