Letter from L. Critchley regarding homeless camping in parks

132 St. Giles St. Victoria B.C. V8Z-5E5

3rd December 2022

Dear View Royal Council,

You are the Council I voted for, but at present, regarding the issue of homeless camping in parks, I feel abandoned and unrepresented.

I have lived here, paid taxes, and tried to be an actively constructive member of this municipality since 1974. I will live here until the end, but my world is disintegrating.

Through the years I have faithfully taken a political interest, regularly collecting garbage from our beaches and streams, cigarette butts from the road so they do not wash into the Inlet, which is after all, a bird sanctuary, and has just undergone a Salmon enhancement project by Peninsula Streams. I have collected other people’s dog’s faeces, because I love to see the dogs run free, and did not want to see the dogs banished.

I cherish this place. My home. I am now old. My immunity is low, so my world must be minuscule. My balance is poor so I walk with a cane. And of course, I am female. I am experienced enough to know what a human target looks like to a predator. And I know I now fit the bill.

In honesty I also admit that not all homeless are predators. Some are just honest folk who have been “renovicted” etc. but others ARE thieves and sometimes violent. And YOU know that too.

There is no cure for my current ailment, but I have been told to get out to walk, daily if possible. So it is with a sense of immeasurable dismay that I now hear that EVERY park to which I can wobble with my cane could become a homeless camp. They have ALL the rights it seems. Will they even have lavatories in all these parks? Or do THEY get to use the Inlet and salmon bearing streams as a latrine ?

As it is, this street is a thoroughfare to the Galloping Goose, and every tarpaulin or potentially useful implement inadvertently left out disappears. And this is NOW. So it will only get worse.

When do I as an elderly member of this municipality receive some rights or consideration? ONE relatively safe park for an elderly resident.

To me, to deny me this constitutes elder abuse. Nothing less.

Yours sincerely,

L Critchley