As Victoria grapples with the growing problem of homelessness on the streets, a new report reveals enforcing the city’s ban on daytime sheltering will prove costly to taxpayers.
The report, presented to city council this week, found doing so would add $4.7 million per year to the city’s operating budget.
The lion’s share of that, $4.13 million, comes in the form of increased labour for bylaw and police officers. Another $150,000 relates to equipment, while $420,000 relates to other costs such as vehicles, insurance and training.
“Police and bylaw, they are very talented people and they don’t come cheaply — as they shouldn’t — so that’s a big cost,” Victoria Coun. Stephen Hammond said.
Hammond asked staff to come up with the numbers this summer, as the city responded to growing safety concerns after a paramedic was attacked while responding to an encampment on Pandora Avenue.
He said he wasn’t surprised at the magnitude of the cost, but that it leaves the city in a difficult financial position, with council already trying to trim spending to limit property tax increases.
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If the city were to fully fund the initiative, it could add the equivalent of three per cent to next year’s property tax hike.
“Municipalities, we don’t have the money, we don’t have the expertise, and we don’t have the jurisdiction,” he said.
The report deals strictly with the cost of enforcing the city’s daylight sheltering bylaws, and does not address the much larger cost of finding shelter or housing for the city’s unhoused.
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto has been vocal of her criticism of neighbouring municipalities, who she says aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to sheltering the region’s homeless.
Alto said the province also needs to do more to work with cities to tackle the root causes of homelessness, not just the symptoms.
“I think it’s important to highlight that the report did say — as have police and bylaw and other folks who are responsible for this — you can’t police or enforce your way out of homelessness,” she said.
“There is also an important need for us to invest in the upstream preventive work that deals with the gaps in supportive housing, social services, health care, all the reasons that precipitate why people find themselves without housing.”
Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said the province is already working on addressing the housing and shelter needs of the city.
He said the province had already opened 740 units and had another 240 on the way.
But he said cities have their part to play as well, and that the province frequently meets pushback to proposals for supportive housing.
“The problem we always have is where (to put the housing),” he said.
“Victoria, the regional district, everybody needs to come together and identify locations, because we from the province are ready to invest more.”
Hammond and Alto said nothing has been decided at this point.
Councillors will spend the winter holiday break considering their options before they return for budget talks in the new year.
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