What are the plans for Pandora and sheltering?

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I hear questions from people like “what are the plans for Pandora and for sheltering in parks?” and “what actions are governments taking?” etc.

The short answer is that there are plans, and governments are taking action – and of course much more is needed.

It’s a complex problem – a disaster actually – as I’ve discussed in many other blog posts (see links at bottom of this post). The disaster was decades in the making, and it’s going to be years in the solving; we all wish we had magic wands, or a simple fix, but there isn’t one. Nobody who is actually working on this issue – non-profit service providers, the police, the City, the Province, the Federal Government, the community, or anyone else – thinks there is a quick fix.

The best place to look if you want to understand this problem and the way out is Belonging in BC, the Province’s comprehensive homelessness plan. I discuss that plan here, and the plan itself is here. The City has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Province to help implement Belonging in BC locally. Belonging in BC is a longish document but well worth reading.

Julian Daly of Our Place and Nathan Medd of the Conservatory published a shorter summary of what is needed. I discuss their four-part plan here, and their op-ed itself is here. The four points are:

“1. Conduct an intensive outreach program with those on the street to build a relationship and understand how they ended up there, and what it would take to get them off the street, especially understanding their health, housing and sheltering needs.

2. Provide and place people in a range of housing and sheltering options, including emergency low-barrier shelters, long-term shelters, complex-care housing,* transitional housing, and permanent supportive and independent housing. Remove the street and parks as being the normalized, sanctioned, and viable housing option it has become.

3. Support people to access a range of physical, mental illness, and addictions services and interventions, including trauma-informed counselling, institutional mental-health care, complex care, primary care, transitional treatment, detox, treatment, and recovery; and move beyond harm reduction as being the sole response to people’s addiction and health needs. In extreme situations, this care needs to be involuntary.

4. Support the police and judicial system to incarcerate the small number of “bad operators” on the street — those who are dangerous, and extremely physically and sexually violent, and those who traffic unhoused people, mainly women — and repeat offenders. This is not criminalizing homelessness or poverty but recognizing that unhoused people are disproportionately the victims of crime and deserve the same protection as housed citizens.”

Even from this short summary, you can see the complexity, the need for a lot of pieces to be moving, and the need for everyone to be pulling in the same direction.

So what’s happening now? Lots. I won’t even attempt to list it all, but here’s a few items worth noting (and I’ll just reiterate that more is needed):

These are just some of the pieces underway. There are more, and there will need to be much more.

What isn’t going to be effective in helping address the problems is pushing people around from place to place (often called “whack-a-mole”). That game causes harm to the individuals displaced and ends up creating conflict in recipient neighbourhoods.

The City is working with BC Housing and Island Health, and these issues are squarely in their wheelhouse. However, we need the outcomes quicker, so the City has been reluctantly stepping in and taking action to move things forward – temporarily, until provincial and federal agencies can take over.

So yes, there are plans, there are actions being taken under those plans. We are heading in the right direction, but there are headwinds – worsening drugs, sky-high rents, brain injuries from repeated overdoses, and more.

More investment in the solutions is needed.