Pathways Out of Homelessness

The 2025 Greater Victoria Point-in-Time Count identified at least 1,749 people experiencing homelessness.
This included:
- 318 people sleeping outdoors.
- 493 people staying in emergency shelters.
- 935 people living in provisional accommodations.
The count is a one-day snapshot and does not capture everyone who experiences homelessness during the year.
The objective is to move beyond managing homelessness and help people move indoors permanently.
Different people require different combinations of housing, healthcare, treatment and support.

Treat compassionate intervention and public safety as complementary objectives.
Offer appropriate shelter, housing, healthcare and treatment.
Maintain safe parks, sidewalks and public spaces.
Apply rules and enforcement consistently.
Provide genuine alternatives to encampments and street homelessness.
Stop moving people temporarily from one public space to another without resolving their homelessness.

Establish a secure, confidential and consent-based By-Name List for Greater Victoria.
Use the list as the operating backbone of the regional homelessness-response system.
Allow authorized housing, healthcare and outreach providers to coordinate services.
The list would not be publicly accessible.
Public reporting would contain only combined, non-identifying information.

Use common intake and assessment standards across participating organizations.
Assign every consenting person to an appropriate pathway.
Give each person a clearly identified lead organization or case manager.
Hold regular regional case-coordination meetings.
Match available housing and treatment spaces with people awaiting placement.
Resolve documentation, income, health and other barriers.
Prevent people from repeatedly providing the same information to different organizations.
Track where people are becoming stalled or falling out of the system.
Measure how many people return to homelessness after being housed.

Provide emergency rent assistance for people facing eviction.
Help tenants and landlords negotiate repayment plans.
Assist seniors and people with disabilities at risk of losing their homes.
Improve discharge planning from hospitals, treatment programs, correctional facilities and government care.
Intervene quickly when families and young people are at immediate risk.
Preventing homelessness is generally faster and less expensive than rehousing someone after they become homeless.

Use existing rental housing where appropriate.
Expand portable rent supplements.
Provide damage-protection programs for participating landlords.
Help people find available rental homes.
Assist with deposits, moving costs and basic furnishings.
Provide time-limited case management.
Help people obtain identification, income support and employment services.
Reserve permanent supportive housing for people who genuinely require continuing assistance.

Purchase and convert suitable hotels, motels and apartment buildings.
Use modular and prefabricated construction where it can reduce costs and schedules.
Develop housing on suitable publicly owned land.
Work with non-profit and private-sector housing providers.
Create smaller, well-managed housing locations throughout the region.
Avoid concentrating most homelessness services and housing in downtown Victoria.
Require every regional municipality to contribute through housing, land, facilities, funding or services.

Provide reliable on-site staffing.
Integrate mental health and addiction services.
Support medication management and daily living.
Connect residents with primary healthcare.
Establish clear safety, cleanliness and property-management standards.
Create individual plans that measure progress toward stability.
Ensure supportive housing helps residents and does not transfer disorder into surrounding neighbourhoods.

Provide complex-care housing for people with overlapping mental-health, addiction, trauma, disability or brain-injury challenges.
Integrate housing, healthcare and social services.
Expand timely access to detoxification.
Provide stabilization and assessment.
Increase residential and outpatient treatment capacity.
Expand recovery-oriented and substance-free housing.
Provide peer, clinical, employment and life-skills support.
Create transitional housing leading toward independent living.
Prevent people from being discharged from treatment back to shelters, encampments or the street.

Create 1,700 additional pathway-housing opportunities within 36 months:
- 500 opportunities in year one.
- 600 opportunities in year two.
- 600 opportunities in year three.
Opportunities would include:
- Rent supports.
- Rapid rehousing placements.
- Acquired and converted buildings.
- Modular housing.
- Supportive housing.
- Recovery housing.
- Complex-care facilities.
Measure success by people actually housed and supported, not simply by units announced or money spent.

Establish a formal partnership involving:
- Victoria and other regional municipalities.
- The Capital Regional District.
- The Province and BC Housing.
- Island Health.
- The federal government.
- Indigenous governments and organizations.
- Non-profit housing and service providers.
- Private and philanthropic partners.
Assign clear responsibilities, budgets, deadlines and performance measures.
Recognize that municipalities do not control healthcare, addiction treatment or most supportive-housing funding.
Use municipal and CRD leadership to coordinate partners and press senior governments for results.

Publish a public dashboard using aggregated information from the confidential By-Name List.
Report:
- The number of people actively experiencing homelessness.
- New entries into homelessness.
- Returns to homelessness.
- People moved into housing.
- Housing retention after six and twelve months.
- New housing and treatment capacity.
- Average time from assessment to placement.
- Treatment participation and completion.
- Emergency room, shelter and police-service use.
- Program expenditures and results.