Victoria city council endorses plan to address homelessness, addiction and mental illness

Globe and Mail

5 hours ago

The City of Victoria has endorsed a community safety and well-being plan aimed at tackling the complex and 'entangled challenges' of homelessness, addiction and mental illness playing out on city streets.
The report contains dozens of recommendations aimed at all levels of government across eight sectors, including housing, health care, service delivery, and policing and justice.
'Collectively, we are feeling the consequences of compassion fatigue, and a growing 'scarcity mindset,'' the report said.
'This plan recognizes these tensions, and the anger, frustration and vulnerability that exists on all sides, and seeks the balance among them.'
Two years ago, Mayor Marianne Alto initiated the process of creating the 79-page document, which is aimed at responding to increased social disorder and a public perception of diminished safety. Its recommendations are the product of an 11-member expert panel.
A survey by the Downtown Victoria Business Association published earlier this month found downtown businesses had reached a "tipping point‚" saying many of them won't survive without meaningful efforts to reduce street disorder such as open drug use, camping in doorways and on sidewalks, and repeat criminal activity.
The Globe and Mail spent months speaking with Victoria residents, business owners, police officers, local politicians and drug users in an effort to chronicle the impact of the decline of Pandora Avenue, the epicentre of the city's fentanyl crisis. The story, published last month, put Premier David Eby on the defensive in the legislature as he highlighted his government's efforts to create more supportive housing.
Poisoned: How fentanyl transformed Victoria's Pandora Avenue from downtown hub to open-air drug market
During discussions about the report with city council Thursday, Ms. Alto said the process involved 'extraordinarily challenging conversations' and thanked those involved.
'The most important thing for us to say is it's time now for us to act,' she said.
City staff will now assess the plan's budget implications, and examine the policy changes it requires with an aim to report back to council in the fall, before 2026 draft budget deliberations. The city manager will also implement preliminary actions within the existing budget.
The report's recommendations included urging the city to explore the feasibility of small-scale tiny homes for the unhoused, increasing funding to maintain the cleanliness of public spaces, supporting local businesses with graffiti removal and creating more public amenities, such as micro-plazas and benches.
But the report noted that many levers to improve the downtown situation are the provincial government's responsibility. Its recommendations to the province include expanded supportive and complex care housing and reforming police budget rules to recognize a municipality's ability to pay.
It also requests the province allocate resources directly to municipalities if they 'are expected to continue to respond to local homelessness and its impacts.'
Victoria is spending millions to tackle its homelessness crisis, stressing taxpayers
From Ottawa, the report calls for the adoption of bail reform policies that would see repeat and violent offenders held within institutions for longer, while increasing emphasis on rehabilitation and community-based intervention programs. It also recommends the creation of a national encampment and homelessness response plan.
The panel, supported by city staff, included experts in social-service provision, law enforcement, fire and emergency response, public health, business leadership, local neighbourhoods and local Indigenous knowledge.
Jonny Morris, chief executive of the Canadian Mental Health Association's British Columbia division and a member of the panel, likened the existing health care response to the current crisis to focusing cancer care on its final stages.
'Right now, it can absolutely be argued that our health care system – nationally, provincially – does spend the majority of its mental-health resources on Stage 4 interventions: emergency psychiatric hospitalizations, involuntary care, intensive crisis responses,' he told council Thursday.
'Meanwhile, Victoria is a municipality spending significant resources on the community impacts of those health care gaps, police responding to mental-health crises, bylaw, people discharged with nowhere to go, services, court processing. The health care recommendations in this plan rebalance the system.'
Marg Gardiner, the lone councillor not to endorse the plan, said the root cause of disorder on the streets is drug addiction and the failure to provide rehabilitation. She blamed decisions by the province and city for anchoring a drug subculture, and said the plan cannot be realized as is.
'I cannot give false hope to the general public that [a] solution will be found if this plan is fully endorsed,' she said.