It’s a sunny, hot day in British Columbia’s capital and Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto is making yet another announcement about safety on one of the city’s most challenging streets.
In the four weeks since a paramedic was allegedly punched and kicked in the face while treating a man on Pandora Avenue, city councillors, police and other officials have been working to address safety in the area.
“The situation has become sufficiently dire that it’s no longer acceptable to the general public or to the unhoused residents of the city to be left in the situation in which they find themselves,” Alto said Wednesday morning, addressing ongoing issues on Pandora Avenue.
Alto was responding to the previous day’s announcement from the Victoria Police Department about its three-part safety plan for Pandora Avenue and Ellice Street.
The plan includes foot patrols, police assistance of bylaw officers clearing shelters set up on the street, and removing encampments. It has been well received, even by advocacy groups that have previously criticized the removal of tents and other shelters from Pandora, which has long been known for unhoused people grouped around social service agencies in the area.
A ‘breaking point’
Safety concerns on Pandora were heightened about a month ago when a paramedic was attacked and first responders were swarmed by a group of about 60 people.
Victoria Police Chief Del Manak says the incident was chilling for many.
“This incident that happened really was the kind of breaking point that allowed us to reset and make sure that the police are there to make sure that we can create safe environments for everyone,” Manak said at a news conference Tuesday.
The incident led to a flurry of activity that included police escorts for first responders to Pandora, a council decision to regularly enforce the city’s ban on sheltering in the area, and heightened concern for safety.
The increased response has also prompted collaboration among government agencies and service providers that has led some officials to feel positive about support for some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. However, those same people say that long-term solutions are impossible without an immediate influx of resources from the provincial and federal governments.
‘Massive gaps’ in services: Alto
That’s a point that Alto, like many mayors around the province, has made repeatedly.
“It’s important, I think, for us to realize that all of this is happening in a context where we are seeing a very dramatic breakdown in social services that are usually provided by the province and sometimes the federal government with a little bit of interaction with local governments,” Alto said Wednesday.
“These things that we’re dealing with locally are responses to symptoms that indicate massive gaps in the health-care system and in the housing system.”
The police plan, which Manak says was created in collaboration with the city and social service agencies, includes helping outreach workers connect the unhoused on Pandora and Ellice with housing, whether that be a shelter bed or affordable and supportive housing.
Alto says there are new shelter spaces coming and several service providers are currently waiting for provincial funding. She hopes the province will act upon those requests sooner rather than later.
She praised the province for its new housing plan but says the housing crisis is too critical to wait for those units to be built.
Rapid options
Don McTavish, director of housing and shelters for Victoria’s Cool Aid Society, is one of the people supportive of the Victoria Police Department’s plan.
McTavish says people living on the street are particularly vulnerable to abuse, in part from people targeting them specifically.
But, like Alto, he doesn’t think a safety plan alone will solve anything.
“The enforcement and the safety that has to come with the resources to be able to provide an alternative to the folks that are living there,” he said.
“Now we need to rapidly come up with the shelter and housing options to try and provide a more permanent option and a way to kind of prevent [the encampment] from recurring in such a large way.”