28130 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

Coming this mornig for Jody Patterson.  5 pages on why social housing "doesn't work".        

[Victoria Watcher]

Coming this mornig for Jody Patterson.  5 pages on why social housing "doesn't work".        

 

Sorry, Paterson.

 

 

 

 

 

Life support: B.C.'s supportive-housing system is overwhelmed and underfunded

Those on the front lines say B.C.’s supportive-housing system simply doesn’t have the staff, the buildings or the supports required to make it work.

https://www.timescol...funded-12014491

 

 

 

 

 

Far from having the robust system that would be required to help everyone living homeless in 2026, those on the front lines of the issue say B.C.’s supportive-housing system simply doesn’t have the staff, the buildings or the supports required.

 

There are 15,789 supportive housing units in B.C., with about 10,000 people on the waitlist. For every unit of supportive housing that comes open in Greater Victoria right now, 12 or more service providers are bidding for it, having picked one name to put forward from their own waitlists of dozens of other people.

 

There isn’t enough to go around, and what there is doesn’t fit an emerging population of people who can’t “behave” to a level that is manageable under the current structure.

 

[...]

 

Not only has a new kind of homelessness taken hold that supportive housing wasn’t designed to help, more people are becoming homeless: Between 2020 and 2023, the number of people living homeless in B.C. increased by 36 per cent.

 

Some people won’t even go into supportive housing, a term that encompasses everything from bare-bones housing like the former Tiny Town on Caledonia Avenue — no kitchens, one bathroom for the entire site — to self-contained suites and two meals a day. Most prohibit couples living together and visitors.

 

[...]

 

“For my son, it’s usually having a cigarette in the morning that gets him suspended into homelessness for a few days,” says Lucy, a local mom whose 41-year-old son Mike (names changed) has lived for the past three years in transitional housing — basically a long-term shelter bed, with no tenancy protections.

 

“He knows he can’t smoke inside, but he wakes up groggy and just reaches for one. They just gave him another 24-hour suspension for it, but he was able to stay at my house that time.”

 

Like a growing number of people living in local shelters, Lucy’s son is certified under the Mental Health Act so that he can be forced to take his psychiatric drugs, but he is left to live homeless. He has a brain injury from his teen years and an opioid dependency.

 

[...]

 

Adding to challenges is the time required to prep an empty suite for the next resident. An FOI request submitted by BCIT News turned up a 2025 B.C. Housing report detailing almost 1,700 units that had sat empty for close to two years. More than 80 per cent of them were deemed uninhabitable.

 

[...]

 

Desiree has lived in supportive housing on Johnson Street for 10 years, ever since the provincial government bought the former seniors’ care home in the 800-block as housing for more than 100 homeless campers who had set up a tent city in 2015 behind the provincial courthouse.

 

“I came here straight from Tent City,” says Desiree. “I don’t like it. The building is a trap, really. It’s like a time warp, its own reality. The building never sleeps. But the scene on Pandora has changed, and I don’t want to be out there again.”

 

[...]

 

For the last three years, he and his friend have lived at a shelter. B.C. shelters no longer have limited stays, and it’s possible to land an assured bed indefinitely in a three-sided cubicle with no door, as long as a person follows the rules — like not smoking inside, as Mike has learned the hard way.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Yesterday, 04:26 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Life support: B.C.'s supportive-housing system is overwhelmed and underfunded

 

 

There are 15,789 supportive housing units in B.C., with about 10,000 people on the waitlist.

 

 

 

 

What we need to know now - reporter - is how many spaces were there 15 or 20 years ago?

 

Grok:

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Yesterday, 04:32 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Desiree has lived in supportive housing on Johnson Street for 10 years, ever since the provincial government bought the former seniors’ care home in the 800-block as housing for more than 100 homeless campers who had set up a tent city in 2015 behind the provincial courthouse.

 

“I came here straight from Tent City,” says Desiree. “I don’t like it. The building is a trap, really. It’s like a time warp, its own reality. The building never sleeps. But the scene on Pandora has changed, and I don’t want to be out there again.”

 

 

 

So in these 10 years, what have YOU done to improve your lot?

[Victoria Watcher]

 

 

 

 

 

The 2025 PiT Count was conducted on March 25 and 26 and identified 1,749 people who were experiencing homelessness compared to 1,665 in March of 2023. 

 

 

 

City of Victoria = about 150 or more per 10,000 population.

 

https://www.crd.ca/n...sults-announced

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Yesterday, 04:54 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

[Victoria Watcher]

Life support: B.C.'s supportive-housing
system is overwhelmed and underfunded

https://www.timescol...funded-12014491


Funding has never been higher. 2x to 6x what it was in 2015.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, Yesterday, 12:10 PM.

[LJ]

Too much funding. Build VW's shelter housing, make them all dry. Don't like it, want to continue to use drugs - incarceration in a locked facility with more stringent restrictions.

[dasmo]

Dropped my truck off at Big O this evening. The parking lot was full of folks in miscellaneous states of consciousness. All up and down Pandora. Just crazy. The morning opening must just suck for them.

[Mike K.]

The facility near my mum’s place has been very disruptive and the facilitators there do not care. They view the rest of the community as the problem. You are not met with sympathy or understanding if you raise a concern, rather, the sense I get, is you’re a person lacking in understanding and lack tolerance.

If any other neighbour caused that same level of disruption the other neighbours would be mighty upset and eventually you’d be deemed a nuisance property.

[dasmo]

I will repeat time and time again.... We need Holistic Harm Reduction. HHR. Help the addicted, homeless and downtrodden. But no harm shall come to our community and economy. Soft up to a point. That point is taking over public space in any way. Camping, doing drugs openly, leaving garbage everywhere, any sort of excrement, abuse or other harm to others. Plus the help should have a slant towards actually helping people get out of the life they have found themselves in, not servicing it.