Amazing to have social justice lawyer Leilani Farha (second from left) on the block today talking with people like Mack about their experiences of living homeless on the streets of Victoria. Leilani is the global director of The Shift @make_theshift , an international organization advocating for housing as a human right, and in 2020 served…

Zephyr describes himself as “one of the founding fathers” of the street community in Victoria, and says he was right here heading into Our Place on the very first day that it opened, almost 20 years ago now. He has tried out various supportive housing buildings over the years and gives his vote to the…

Call her S, she says – she has four kids and doesn’t want to risk that they might see their mom being a street story, living homeless on Pandora and waiting for the miracle. Like more than a third of the people out there, she was a kid when she first fell out of housing.…

There are some new faces on the block these days – University of Victoria sociology professor Mike Ma and a number of his students, who are in the “observation” phase of a two-part study into the impact of bylaw seizures on people living homeless and the visibility of homelessness. The group is hitting the block…

Beautiful Rose, I think you would be moved to know the immense grief people are feeling over your death this week, though you’d probably want to be comforting each of them through it. You were one of those people who was always there for everyone, always standing up for people’s rights. But I heard such…

It’s hard to grasp the impact of the City of Victoria’s ongoing bylaw seizures without seeing one in progress, and hearing the angry and agonized outbursts from people losing all their worldly possessions yet again. “Your fcking karma is going to be brutal! I’m glad I’m not you!” yelled David helplessly to bylaw officers on…

Clayton was headed to detox this week, and asked if I’d take a few photos with him and his friends to mark the big occasion. Getting into detox with its 6-8 week wait is a feat in itself, and Clayton is really hoping that this time through will be the one. “I am done with…

Nathan dreams of writing a book that would tell the story of homelessness from the perspective of the person living it – one that revealed all the moments, good and bad, that can either lift a person up or smash them down, the little twists and turns that can change everything. “Bylaw would definitely be…

The informal memorial at the corner of Quadra and Pandora just keeps on getting more beautiful. My heart lifts every time I see that it hasn’t yet been torn down by bylaw officers – almost 11 months now, surely a record for longest standing street memorial. It started for a young woman who died last…

Alex and Gemina wonder how it is that all the “rules” that bylaw uses to decide what stuff they’ll take from people change with every person, every circumstance, every item, every day. “They’ll tell you they’re throwing away anything with ‘no resale value,’ but what does that mean when it’s valuable to us?” asks Alex.…