25933 replies to this topic

[kungfucious]

sorry guys... ive only been casually following this topic.  and please edit to correct this sequence.  im 99% sure its not correctly numbered

 

1. homeless overwhelms pandora street

2. province buys pauls motor inn

3. all pandora homeless moved in

4. victoria's homeless problem fixed

5. pauls motor inn gets set on fire*

6. city opens up topaz for homeless

7. province buys quality inn across street

8. all topaz homeless moved into motels

9. victoria's homeless problem fixed, for sure this time

10. quality inn gets set on fire*

11. city opens up BHP

12. province asks to use Oak Bay Lodge for BHP homeless

X. OBL gets set on fire*

X. province buys empress

X. victoria's homeless problem fixed.  this time we mean it

[rmpeers]

Adam Stirling says the City of Victoria's report to council indicating 88% of individuals are "local" is factually incorrect.

The City, in a report to mayor and council, lumped in 4% that did not know how long they've been here, or wouldn't say.

Asked about this during a seven minute segment with Al Farraby just ahead of 9AM, the mayor didn't know what to say, but settled on saying something to the effect on "let's say its around 80%" who are "local."

In conversation with people, the "here for more than one year means you're local" isn't flying. It literally means that if 16% say they've arrived within the last year, approximately that many arrived within two years. Thrice as many within three years. And so on.

Yes, they are really pushing this "they're from here" narrative more than ever, as those anyone with elementary-school-level math skills can't see through it.

The influx is in some ways the root of the city's inability to end homelessness, so why are they so desperate to deny it?

"The Coalition to Keep the Bucket Full of Water reports that reports of a hole in the bottom of the bucket are exaggerated. Out of the entire bottom of the bucket, the hole only represents 10%. Other factors, including temperature and raccoons drinking out of the bucket are the main factors. Therefore, funds are needed to keep adding water to the bucket."

Edited by rmpeers, 06 August 2020 - 09:44 AM.

[Rob Randall]

For the alcoholics I have known, there was no such thing as a "safe" amount of alcohol. Abstinence was the only way their lives became better. So my comment does make sense.

 

What if abstinence is not possible? We are not talking about a cure, we are talking about mitigation. You follow? If someone is dying in unbearable pain in the final stages of stage IV cancer you don't say, we can't do anything, he can't be cured. You're not thinking this through.

[aastra]

 

...in a community when we don’t understand addiction...

Just consider the "understanding" thing in light of the local/non-local debate. If those involved are indeed mainly locals then the notion that the local community doesn't understand the issues would be a logical contradiction. More cognitive dissonance, the bread and butter of politics.

 

(We should note that this same illogical point used to be made about crime in Victoria. Victorians didn't understand the realities of crime in their own neighbourhoods. They were detached onlookers, misinformed, even though the crime was happening right where they lived and even though they themselves were the victims & witnesses of the crimes! "Everyone's had their car broken into, myself included")

On the other hand, if the issues are indeed mainly imported then it still doesn't make any sense to think the residents of central Victoria neighbourhoods wouldn't understand. It's not as if the tent city experiments started yesterday. Do Victorians also not understand tourists and tourism?

When you boil this down, we're claiming ongoing (and increasingly amplified) familiarity has no relevance to understanding. The premise is inherently self-contradicting. People in central Victoria are complaining because these issues have been artificially concentrated in their parks and neighbourhoods for the past 15-20 years running... and yet those people in central Victoria also don't have any understanding of the issues. They may as well live in Ten-Mile Point, that's how detached and uninvolved they are (no offense to any compassionate & ultra-involved UVic profs who live in Ten-Mile Point).

[aastra]

Methinks there IS a big gap re: understanding.

 

People want their parks and public spaces to be respected and maintained as parks and public spaces, but the authorities misunderstand this as hatefulness, because they can't be bothered to listen.

 

People want their streets and neighbourhoods to be safe and properly & consistently policed, but the authorities misunderstand this as hatefulness, because they can't be bothered to listen.

 

You could address these concerns without any reduction in the sheer amount of camping. If would just be much safer, cleaner, and more respectful camping (and less focused on special sites where it can have the most unfortunate consequences, like Beacon Hill Park). But the authorities have great difficulty understanding this.

Maybe it's just an odd coincidence, but I'm inclined to note that safer, cleaner and more respectful (non-destructive) camping wouldn't be very energizing for prevailing political agendas.

[kitty surprise]

"The Coalition to Keep the Bucket Full of Water reports that reports of a hole in the bottom of the bucket are exaggerated. Out of the entire bottom of the bucket, the hole only represents 10%. Other factors, including temperature and raccoons drinking out of the bucket are the main factors. Therefore, funds are needed to keep adding water to the bucket."

You get my vote for Comment Of The Week!

[aastra]

 

...what would that person have gained from that, compared to on the other side...

 

Things are always framed as a battle between opposing sides. One side will be victorious, and the other side just needs to deal with it.

 

It's always about the conflict, and never about working toward solutions.

 

If I live in a James Bay condo and I have an addiction to painkillers and I care about Beacon Hill Park and I think people should be allowed to camp in a respectful & crime-free manner in appropriate locations, exactly which side am I on?

[Mike K.]

sorry guys... ive only been casually following this topic. and please edit to correct this sequence. im 99% sure its not correctly numbered

1. homeless overwhelms pandora street
2. province buys pauls motor inn
3. all pandora homeless moved in
4. victoria's homeless problem fixed
5. pauls motor inn gets set on fire*
6. city opens up topaz for homeless
7. province buys quality inn across street
8. all topaz homeless moved into motels
9. victoria's homeless problem fixed, for sure this time
10. quality inn gets set on fire*
11. city opens up BHP
12. province asks to use Oak Bay Lodge for BHP homeless
X. OBL gets set on fire*
X. province buys empress
X. victoria's homeless problem fixed. this time we mean it

You’re close. I’ll help make sense if then when I get a moment to sit down, if nobody does so by then.

[rmpeers]

Things are always framed as a battle between opposing sides. One side will be victorious, and the other side just needs to deal with it.

It's always about the conflict, and never about working toward solutions.

If I live in a James Bay condo and I have an addiction to painkillers and I care about Beacon Hill Park and I think people should be allowed to camp in a respectful & crime-free manner in appropriate locations, exactly which side am I on?

I swear the current council thrives on conflict and wedge issues. How else to explain a lot of their actions? Macdonald statue is a case in point. If they'd handled it differently they might have brought people together; instead they chose the most divisive approach possible and, I believed, undermined reconciliation.

[Nparker]

I swear the current council thrives on conflict and wedge issues. How else to explain a lot of their actions?...

That's what happens when you are an ideologue: you cannot accept that there may be another - and equally valid - side to an issue.

[rmpeers]

sorry guys... ive only been casually following this topic. and please edit to correct this sequence. im 99% sure its not correctly numbered

1. homeless overwhelms pandora street
2. province buys pauls motor inn
3. all pandora homeless moved in
4. victoria's homeless problem fixed
5. pauls motor inn gets set on fire*
6. city opens up topaz for homeless
7. province buys quality inn across street
8. all topaz homeless moved into motels
9. victoria's homeless problem fixed, for sure this time
10. quality inn gets set on fire*
11. city opens up BHP
12. province asks to use Oak Bay Lodge for BHP homeless
X. OBL gets set on fire*
X. province buys empress
X. victoria's homeless problem fixed. this time we mean it

Jesus if that were a pitch for a movie script, I'd reject it on the basis that the characters aren't believable, no way would any city government keep repeating the same screwups over and over and over...

Oh, and thanks for giving them that idea about the Empress, by the way! Today's joke is tomorrow's CoV policy.

[Victoria Watcher]

The British Columbia government was the largest single buyer of hotel properties in Canada during the second quarter, accounting for four of the 12 transactions and more than half the dollar volume.

 

The fact the B.C. transactions — all of which are for supportive housing — are the biggest deals in the country is indicative of a troubled hotel industry reeling from the effects of COVID-19.

 

https://www.timescol...yers-1.24181843

 

B.C. Housing was also responsible for the single largest deal this year, with its purchase of the 110-room Howard Johnson hotel on Granville Street for $55 million, a price that pencils to about $500,000 per room.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 06 August 2020 - 01:11 PM.

[Nparker]

...The fact the B.C. transactions — all of which are for supportive housing — are the biggest deals in the country is indicative of a troubled hotel industry reeling from the effects of COVID-19...

It's also indicative of a knee-jerk, band aid response to an issue that has been poorly managed by all levels of government for years.

[Barrrister]

I cannot believe that the BC Government spent about 500k per room to house primarily druggies in Vancouver.Is absolutely nobody supervising this insanity?. 

[aastra]

The property acquisition agenda should be glaring. Central properties which were due for redevelopment and which would have had obvious relevance to the broader housing situation going forward have been removed from the pool. In effect the 800-pound gorilla is purposely (and rapidly) creating a shortage of redevelopment sites.

 

Once again I refer to the past several decades of media coverage re: the housing crisis. The various levels of government never stop scheming up new ways by which to aggravate and prolong the situation.

[Victoria Watcher]

it's truly *****n# ridiculous.

[Rob Randall]

2007: Victoria's homeless population estimated at well under 1,000. So we must have solved homelessness because so few arrive here from elsewhere.

 

[aastra]

Call me a dreamer but I've really wondered if the following approach might work.

What if many medium-to-large condo or rental developments were to include a few simple townhouse units tucked along one side? (to be managed and operated by the heroic and compassionate authorities) The idea here wouldn't be to save the world with any one project. The idea would be to disperse small numbers of units all over town in a non-concentrated way, continually. And when I say "tucked along one side" I don't mean hidden or invisible. I mean a pleasant little strip of simple living units, fully visible from the street.

Critics would surely say, "That's only 5 or 6 units! What good is that?", but a handful of units per development spread out over a large area and a long timeframe would equal a continually growing supply. You could still have a few dedicated buildings in the mix, one over here and another one many blocks away over there, etc. But they shouldn't be particularly large buildings, and they should be the exception rather than the rule.

An approach like this would bind market-based development & redevelopment with increasing the supply of units. In other words, it would be non-adversarial, a complete reversal from the this-versus-that mentality which dominates how the authorities approach everything. The old game by which politicians use the housing crisis & homelessness as a ploy to impede development (and thus aggravate and prolong the housing crisis & homelessness) would be over.

The ground-level townhouse format encourages visibility and connection with the immediate neighbourhood. The low-concentration per site and per any particular area isn't just about preventing a neighbourhood from being overwhelmed. It also facilitates the recognition of the residents as individuals, and the recognition by the residents of the established neighbourhood in which they now reside. It re-introduces mutual respect back into the equation (similar to how things were in the old days, when nobody would have been concerned if an individual happened to be sleeping in a local park or behind a building -- live and let live, every person has to be somewhere).

Forget trying to warehouse hundreds of difficult people in special zones full of old motels or whatever. Treat them as human beings and as individuals and integrate them back into the real world as much as possible. Foster a climate of inclusion & respect rather than a climate of marginalization, exploitation, & chaos.

Everything would be more manageable: support & reaching out, policing, responding to breakdowns and exceptional incidents. Instead of having war zones you'd return to a community atmosphere of person-to-person human interactions.

Yes, I'm suggesting you would have a handful of these units at Dockside Green, another handful at the Railyards, another handful on the Songhees, another handful on one side of James Bay, another handful on the other side of James Bay, etc. It wouldn't just be a Victoria thing. The other municipalities would be doing it, too.

Like I say, this would be a reversal from the prevailing philosophy of the last ~20 years re: creating distorted concentrations and unmanageable/dysfunctional high densities. The ultimate goal of my strategy would be the complete elimination of special zones where people and issues are artificially concentrated to an excessive degree. All support services would be de-centralized and mobile.

[aastra]

 

Instead of having war zones you'd return to a community atmosphere of person-to-person human interactions.

 

The potential for someone to get swallowed up and lost (trapped) in the system would be much less likely.

[JimV]

The potential for someone to get swallowed up and lost (trapped) in the system would be much less likely.

Ask yourself this question:  If I could have a neighbour who is highly likely to be an addict, thief or arsonist, or one who is not, which would I pick?