It’s basically up to City of Victoria bylaw officers to decide what’s garbage and what are people’s personal possessions when they’re doing their daily random enforcement in different parts of Victoria’s downtown core. Most of the 10 tonnes of stuff Bylaw takes away from people every week gets landfilled within a couple of weeks, the…

Alaina and Jim put the ubiquitous anti-homeless fencing to good use on a rainy day on the Block as a structure for draping a tarp to keep the rain out while they watch a show on Alaina’s phone. Alaina has lived homeless for 10 years off and on, the last five consecutively, and says she…

Angel, 19, has been in and out of homelessness since age 12, when the Ministry of Children and Family Development removed her from her mother’s care and she began cycling through foster placements. “Then I turned 19 and that was that. I ‘aged out’ of care. It’s kind of funny that the ministry took me…

Brian’s high school friends back in Montreal used to joke he looked like American rapper Mac Miller. (He does.) He’s gotten a lot more selective about who he thinks of as his friends now that he’s living on Victoria streets, where picking the right friends can determine whether you’ll still have all your stuff when…

Happy birthday to this guy here, who is turning 32 today. Michael’s birthday wish: an ongoing dialogue among people living homeless around their rights to stand up to City of Victoria bylaw raids, which have rapidly gained a reputation among those on the receiving end as calculatedly cruel (taking away tent poles and leaving the…

Jules has been out here a long time. The constant chaos keeps the boredom away, but acts of violence are a constant too. A man she knew and liked got beaten to death on the same street she’s sitting on a few nights back. Even the nightly ritual of trying to secure a shelter bed…

CJ builds things, though this fold-up bed on wheels was actually built for him by a friend after CJ’s own prototype solar-powered invention was dismantled by bylaw a while back. It attaches to a bike for easy relocation – essential for people who are constantly under pressure to move along or lose all their stuff…

It’s been a hard day for Rawnice already and it’s not even noon. She woke up hard in a downtown hideout with a security guy shaking her awake, then discovered that her face was swollen and her eye almost shut tight from some kind of allergic reaction. She got to the place where she normally…

Mr. Ed has been out here since the long-gone days of the Victoria Street Community Association, back in the 1990s when the public and governments not only listened to people living homeless but helped them start drop-in centres and open businesses like the defunct Bent Nail. Mr. Ed remembers all the churches that used to…

There’s a lot of sadness for Alex in living homeless amid the condos that he helped build when he was working in construction, back before he started having problems with “shifting realities.” He keeps his hospital bracelet on now as identification for when police approach him with their questions and orders to move along, having…