Good morning.
Just blocks away from Victoria’s picturesque harbour, from the manicured lawns of the B.C. Legislature and the Empress hotel, from the bustle of summer tourists, police and civic officials are trying to figure out what to do about a tent encampment and a spate of violent incidents along the 900 block of Pandora Avenue.
Last week, Victoria Police Chief Del Manak announced a nine-week strategy that will include officers accompanying first responders to calls in the area, as well as a plan to remove tents from the street and the grassy median. Bylaw officers will remove what they deem to be garbage and debris.
Just as Vancouver has struggled with a cycle of encampments – Oppenheimer Park in 2019, Strathcona Park in 2021, Hastings Street in April, 2023 – Victoria’s efforts on Pandora are following a familiar pattern: Tents burgeon and outreach workers do their best with limited funding to ensure residents get basic necessities and some form of mental-health support.
Police news releases chronicle a rise in public disorder – along Pandora late last month, there was the seizure of weapons and the arrest of an armed man making death threats.
But then something extreme happens and community concern reaches a peak. Police and municipal officials move in with a harder approach. The outcome might make things better, for a while, but few people are left believing the underlying problems – a lack of affordable housing, lack of adequate mental-health supports, among others – are truly addressed.
In Victoria, the “something” that happened was the attack last month of a bicycle paramedic who was responding to a call on the street where a homeless man was having a seizure. Corey Froese, provincial safety director for Ambulance Paramedics of BC, said the patient punched the paramedic in the face when the paramedic wasn’t looking and then kicked him while he tried to crawl away.
Outreach workers who know the alleged assailant told The Globe and Mail the man is not a substance user, but suffers from seizures owing to a severe brain injury and can be aggressive when coming out of a seizure. Manak acknowledged the man was not inherently violent and “needed help, there’s no doubt.”
Karen Mills, a Métis mental-health outreach worker who founded Peer 2 Peer Indigenous Society and helps unhoused people find supports, said her group had been trying to get him into housing for head injuries.
“That housing is not available. There’s just no room.”
According to Mills, the man was tasered by police after he assaulted the paramedic, which led to the formation of an angry mob of about 60 unhoused people. Police said they tasered the man after the mob had already formed.
The man was arrested and first responders said they would no longer attend the area without a police escort because of the assault. The decision raised concerns elsewhere in city about what that would mean for response times for other kinds of incidents, a concern Manak acknowledged is real.
And he was upfront about the holes in the plan. Like first responders in Vancouver and elsewhere grappling with tent encampments, the key to a lasting solution is better housing and mental-health options for encampment residents.
“We can only temporarily improve public safety with our part of this plan,” the police chief said.
Victoria residents have been among the most progressive in the country, with city council championing creative solutions such as designating some parks where overnight sheltering is allowed.
Erika Heyrman is among those residents who want to see a lasting solution. She told reporter Brishti Basu she has spent thousands of dollars dealing with broken windows at her Wildfire Bakery pastry shop. Foot traffic has plummeted.
Heyrman considers the tent encampment just steps from her bakery’s front door as part of her community.
“There’s a lot of added responsibility and expense to trying to function in your workplace within this environment, but I also don’t support the strategies around dealing with it,” Heyrman said.
“If people need to move from our public spaces, which is understandable, we need to have an actual place to offer up before going in. … People should never be removed from their belongings. That’s completely inhumane and … it’s adding to the problem.”
This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.