During this week’s committee of the whole meeting, Victoria’s city council heard an update from staff about what the City’s Emergency Winter Weather Response Plan (EWWRP) entails this winter.
This update included the fact that other municipalities are overwhelming City-funded shelter spaces and warming centres by sending unhoused individuals in their region into Victoria using taxis.
Part of this update was provided by Tanya Seal-Jones, Victoria’s Emergency Program Coordinator, while Daniel Atkinson, Victoria’s Fire Chief also provided information to the councillors.
Seal-Jones began her portion of the report by stipulating that the city’s EWWRP is separate from, and has a different scope than BC Housing’s Emergency Weather Response (EWR) plan. This plan only activates when certain criteria is met.
She says that when all other resources are exhausted in the community, there is an Environment Canada weather alert in effect and there are still people in need, that is when the EWWRP kicks in.
During a winter weather hazard, there are five facilities this year that are able to open as EWWRP warming centres in Victoria when needed. These five designated warming centres have a capacity of 50, according to Seal-Jones.
However, Seal-Jones brought up the fact that the capacity of the City’s resources often end up aiding unhoused individuals from neighbouring Capital Regional District (CRD) municipalities.
She noted that as far as City staff are aware, the only other spaces for the unhoused in neighbouring CRD municipalities are: Saanich (25 year-round mats), Sooke (13 EWR mats) and Salt Spring Island (30 year-round mats and 10 EWR mats). These are funded through BC Housing.
“Other than these, there are no other shelter resources outside the City of Victoria,” said Seal-Jones in her report to council.
“Staff reached out to other municipalities in our region to determine what other regional resources exist.”
She says protocol dictates that local police in the CRD would receive alerts from BC Housing when a weather emergency is present in the region, at which point they would conduct wellness checks on the unhoused individuals in their municipality.
If the police determine their life, health and safety could be at risk, they can transport those unhoused individuals to the nearest shelter.
“No other municipalities in the region, other than Victoria, have plans to open warming centres in their community,” Seal-Jones explained.
Fire Chief Atkinson stipulated that not all CRD municipalities responded to his or Seal-Jones’ request for information regarding shelter spaces.
Councillor Krista Loughton asked Seal-Jones if there was any data recorded from the EWWRP warming centres in Victoria regarding where the individuals were coming to Victoria from. Loughton wished to gauge how much Victoria is supporting other municipalities’ unhoused population.
To this, Seal-Jones responded that they do not usually request this information, because some people are reluctant to share this.
She added that they knew unhoused individuals from neighbouring municipalities were being brought to Victoria because of their method of arrival to the EWWRP sites.
“The reason we know, from last season, that people were coming from outside municipalities is that we were receiving them by taxi and paying the taxi bill when they arrived at the warming centre,” she explained to council.
Councillor Loughton stated that she would really urge other municipalities to set up supports to help ease the burden currently on Victoria’s emergency weather resources.
“Not only is this difficult for Victoria, difficult for our fire department, the auxiliary staff, but the critical thing here is, their lack of responsibility for their residents who are unhoused could potentially leave someone frozen,” said Loughton.
She wants to see data recorded this winter season as to where people accessing shelters, EWWRP sites and EWR sites are coming from.
After a fulsome discussion of the matter, the council voted unanimously in favour of requesting that Mayor Marianne Alto write to all mayors and councils in Greater Victoria.
Alto will be asking that they all set up an emergency weather protocol for their own unhoused population, beginning immediately.
