408 replies to this topic

[spanky123]

Other than Mayor Helps, and perhaps a few others on Council (Isitt, Loveday), who could possibly support this idea? Her Worship is pretty clever; she has to have known this would go over like a lead balloon. I wonder what her REAL plan is?

She is a smart lady who sometimes thinks she has more support than she does and then does dopey things. Case in point her initial efforts to hire her friend as a consultant. At least she has the sense to know when she has mucked up and back down quickly.

[Nparker]

...At least she has the sense to know when she has mucked up and back down quickly.

Let's hope this is one of those times.

[Dr.Doinglittle]

Given this Council's abysmal track record of enforcing its own regulations (e.g. illegal dispensaries, Gorge derelicts aka floating tent city, which is now bigger than ever before), I have a hard time believing that a proposal for a more regulated camping area will actually amount to anything.

[Mike K.]

Isn't this too far from where many of the homeless who currently camp in our parks and on our streets want to be? It's like a downtown worker having to walk over to Esquimalt to grab lunch, it just ain't happening.

[jonny]

Isn't this too far from where many of the homeless who currently camp in our parks and on our streets want to be? It's like a downtown worker having to walk over to Esquimalt to grab lunch, it just ain't happening.

 

We'd have to install shopping cart lanes along Blanshard.

 

For the record, this is a terrible idea. Worse than the BHP traffic calming.

[Mike K.]

Terrible ideas have a way of coming to fruition in this city. Never, ever underestimate the power of a terrible idea backed by emotion.

[nagel]

You would probably want those to be separated shopping cart lanes.  I mean, a shopping cart can do a lot more damage to your car then a cyclist's corpse.

[VicHockeyFan]

We'd be a lot better off with this installed in the grassy median on Pandora.

[sebberry]

Why Topaz?  It's home to a variety of uses.  Why not Beacon Hill?  Or would the drug dealing violate the no commercial activity policy?

[Nparker]

Can this plan be stopped if we say the tent city blocks the view of the

- harbour

- Sooke Hills

- the sky

as one drives by in their car?

 

Perhaps it is not "human scaled"?

 

It is destroying a piece of pastoral heritage?

[VicHockeyFan]

Beacon Hill makes more sense.  

 

Mayor Helps on CFAX now (11:45am).

[spanky123]

Next Thursday, meet at the fieldhouse, for a walk-through with Ben Isitt and City staff.

Looks like the Mayor thinks that she has support on this and is going for broke.

[Nparker]

So they're serious about this? 

[nagel]

Ben Isitt gonna live there to make sure it all runs smoothly.

[spanky123]

So they're serious about this?

Listening to the interview, the word 'crusader' came to mind. Sounded like to the Mayor there is a broader socio-economic issue that needs to be addressed and she is the one to take it on.

[VicHockeyFan]

Ben Isitt gonna live there to make sure it all runs smoothly.

 

6 days' notice in the middle of summer, to affected neighbours?  Bullsh&t.  There is also an elementary school adjacent, let's give parents an opportunity to chime in.

[spanky123]

The Mayor is making the tent city sound like an outdoor version of your regular city shelter with a 3rd party agency operating the service. From what I understand though, many existing shelter beds go unused each night because the issue is not available space, it is that many homeless people don't adjust to shelter requirements (ie no drugs, no fighting, etc).

On that basis then I wonder what difference additional outdoor beds will make.

[Nparker]

Listening to the interview, the word 'crusader' came to mind. Sounded like to the Mayor there is a broader socio-economic issue that needs to be addressed and she is the one to take it on.

If the Mayor wants to be a true crusader, she would be better off to challenge the appropriate agencies to affect the correct solution to the homeless problem: the provincial and federal governments who have off-loaded this social issue onto the backs of the municipal taxpayers for far too long. Perhaps the recently acquired federal cash for biking and footpath infrastructure can be used to expand the services at Our Place, rather than once again going to the CoV taxpayer to fund yet another band-aid solution to a problem that shouldn't be the city's in the first place.

Edited by Nparker, 24 July 2015 - 11:25 AM.

[VicHockeyFan]

If the Mayor wants to be a true crusader, she would be better off to challenge the appropriate agencies to affect the correct solution to the homeless problem: the provincial and federal governments who have off-loaded this social issue onto the backs of the municipal taxpayers for far too long. 

 

Have they?  How much does Oak Bay, Sidney, Langford and North Saanich, or even Saanich now pay for the services formerly paid for by the upper-level governments?  Even Esquimalt for that matter.

 

Ya, we have policing costs, but I'm not sure an offload is responsible for that.

[Nparker]

Have they?  How much does Oak Bay, Sidney, Langford and North Saanich, or even Saanich now pay for the services formerly paid for by the upper-level governments? 

This is exactly my point. Costs once paid for by the entire province or even the country, have now, through changes in social policy, been off-loaded onto a very select group of taxpayers. In BC that's mostly the CoV and City of Vancouver.