If “Tent city” - the homeless camp that sprung up on the lawn of Victoria’s courthouse last November - is in the news, it’s usually because something has gone wrong.
Police said last month that they felt a criminal element had moved into Tent city. Earlier this month, a Victoria man was beaten and robbed, allegedly by residents of the camp. And just this week, a CTV cameraman was attacked while filming the camp.
But all of these incidents distract from the underlying problems the camp represents, according to a group of roughly 100 academics who have written a letter to the provincial government, calling for it to drop its efforts to shut down the camp.
“What we were seeing was a public debate around Tent city that was increasingly looking at the problems at tent city which are really easy to identify, and not looking at Tent city as a symptom of the larger problems around homelessness and poverty,” said University of Victoria assistant professor Bruce Wallace, one of the authors of the letter.
Wallace told CTV News forcing the residents of the camp to return to sleeping in doorways isn’t the right course of action.
“We want to get real solutions, rather than responding with panic and rather than just taking down the camp and people having to find where they are going to live throughout the city,” Wallace said.
In the letter, the academics argue that shutting down the camp could lead to increased harm for its residents, and that real solutions will only be found in safe, affordable housing.
Instead of shutting down the camp, Wallace said, the province should “focus on increasing welfare rates, getting more affordable housing - rather than shelter - and advanced health care.”
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Michele Brunoro
