Victoria’s mayor is proposing financial incentives to churches and community organizations that offer up their parking lots as a place for people experiencing homelessness to shelter overnight.
The city is planning to phase out tax exemptions for parking lots of some community groups – the extra costs are something the organizations could avoid if they opt into the program.
Mayor Mariann Alto has proposed that staff craft a policy that would preserve the tax exemptions for groups that allow temporary overnight sheltering in the lots.
“Let me be clear, this is entirely voluntary,” Alto said. “It is an opportunity for folks to be a part of a solution, and it’s one very small piece of a very complicated solution, which we are trying to attack from every direction.”
The proposal is set to go to council on Thursday but is already drawing criticism.
“I don’t see the growing of the problem as a solution, and I think that’s what I saw when I saw this,” Victoria councillor Marg Gardiner told Global News.
“The suggestion of putting it out further into the neighbourhoods … the spots are throughout the city, and I don’t think that will really help the situation.”
Gardiner said she has been bombarded by calls and emails from people concerned over what the policy could do to their neighbourhood.
“I’m very concerned, and I have a message for any of the people or the organizations that take up the offer of reduced taxes: please, please consult with your neighbours, sort out security and liability,” she said.
Residents in the James Bay neighbourhood Global News spoke with also raised concerns.
“It just really seems like grasping at straws to me, an apparently simple fix to a complex problem,” said Don Gibson, adding the neighbourhood is home to several daycares and a K-5 elementary school.
“It kind of pits these community centres and organizations against the communities they are in. They’re being financially (incentivised) … to support this idea.”
Deanne Loubardeas said she was “really ticked off – angry actually” about the proposal.
“I don’t think we should be all of a sudden expected to do the policing, the cleanup, the monitoring,” she said. “We have to do enough of that already. This is totally an egregious idea.”
Loubardeas said that given the amount of money the city is having to spend cleaning up and policing the Pandora Avenue encampment, she doubts any organization that signed on would come out financially ahead.
“It’s just this continuous tinkering around the edges of issues that are way bigger than tinkering can solve,” she said.
“First and foremost, clean supply. We need clean supply.”
Alto said it was “premature” for residents to judge the proposal, and asked them to wait and see what kind of plan city staff come back with after researching the idea.
She added that while the provincial and federal governments have begun to take steps to tackle the homelessness crisis, that work is moving slowly and the city had no choice but to act to find ways to shelter those living on the street.
“Meanwhile we have very significant issues around homelessness in every municipality,” she said.
“It is just one option in a very, very long list of ideas to try and provide some shelter for some of the people some of the time.”
Homelessness remains a critical issue in the city.
A count last year identified more than 1,600 people experiencing homelessness throughout Greater Victoria.
Last month, the city announced plans to increase policing and work towards the end of the Pandora encampment, however, it conceded the plan was reliant on help from the province to find shelter for the people living in it.