A crowd of homeless congregating on Pandora, not observing social distancing advice, has city officials concerned.
The group has become larger ever since Our Place was forced to curtail many services in order to meet COVID19 social-distancing and crowd size policies.
Kris Greene is homeless. She says people like her need support, and while they do their best, they are vulnerable:
"We're scared, you know, as much as we all try to be safe and clean, it's a scary thing because where are we going to go next. You know. We're homeless."
Greene fears the next step will be to shutdown shelters:
" As much as a lot of us are trying to find a new home, find jobs, etcetera. It's, it's scary. Because where are we going to go if they shut down the homeless shelters. (weeping) What are we going to do? Because that's the next step, is that they're saying they're going to shut down the shelters. We have nowhere to go besides back on the street."
Greene crashed a news conference being held by Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps outside City Hall to ask what the city is doing.
There is growing concern over the numbers of homeless congregating along Pandora Ave. after Our Place was forced to curtail many services over COVID19 measures. And Helps assures the city is doing what it can, and working with other groups to find a solution:
" The Provincial government thankfully has declared a state of emergency, and we'll be working with them on the next steps. And they could take any facility in the region that they wanted to put people inside. So we will be working closely with them on that matter."
Helps says the city is working with Island Health, BC Housing, the Coalition to End Homelessness, and the Province to have a plan in place.