Victoria Cool Aid Society

The Victoria Cool Aid Society is an organization that was born of a youth hostel established in 1968. Since then, the society, or Cool Aid as it is known, has evolved to offer emergency and long-term shelter and to become an advocate of the homeless. Cool Aid addresses issues such as accessibility, affordability, alternative housing programs and homelessness, but also related issues, such as drug addiction and mental health. The Society has established several programs in an effort to confront these issues, including the Streetlink Shelter and Sandy Merriman House, a women’s-only shelter that provides beds, health services and counselling to women who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

In addition to emergency shelters, Cool Aid manages several long-term affordable housing projects that emerged as a result of the homeless crisis that developed in the 1980s in Victoria. “Affordable housing the in the 1980s was drying up and large mental institutions were shutting down, leaving people with little support for getting off the street. Shelter workers were frustrated to see the cycles of homelessness unbroken, and the homeless themselves were trapped in an eviction cycle from whatever, often substandard, housing they could find.” (http://www.coolaid.org/) By recognizing these issues, Cool Aid developed a progressive and substantial program to deal with Victoria’s homelessness.

In addition to emergency and long-term shelter and housing, Cool Aid developed several health-related institutions in Victoria, including Cool Aid Community Health Centre on Swift St., and the REES Network on Pandora Ave. The Health Centre is one of the oldest of its kind in the city, having provided health and dental care to homeless people or people in need since 1970. In 2001, the provincial government recognized the importance of this institution and provided funding to turn the clinic into a fully fledged “comprehensive community health centre.” For example, some of the services offered at the centre include “nurse practitioners, physicians, a mental health and addictions counsellor, nutritionist, acupuncturist, pharmacist, dentist and dental hygienist, and visiting specialists, such as psychiatrists…” (http://www.coolaid.org/) The establishment of this institution not only provides needed health-care, but it also helps professionals collected much needed information on homelessness in Victoria, data which allows more effective prevention and treatment opportunities to take place.

Secondly, the REES Network on Pandora Ave. (REES: Research, Education, Employment and Support) “is consumer driven and works in partnership with mental health consumers, family members and professionals to provide training, peer support, opportunities for education, community integration and life enrichment.” Additionally, REES acts as a “community casual labour pool” that connects “those who are looking for short term work placements with employers seeking their services.” (http://www.coolaid.org/)

One of Cool Aid’s most well known shelters in Victoria, the Streetlink Emergency Shelter, can be found on Store St., in an area that has experienced intense gentrification over the last few years. Originally the harbour-side street of the “old town,” Store St. was an industrial area dominated by warehouses and noticeably populated by the residents of the Streetlink Shelter. In recent years though, Store St. has expanded its repertoire of business and now hosts numerous tourist-attracting shops, including Ocean-River Kayaks.

This has prompted Judith Lavoie of the Victoria Times-Colonist to write an article entitled “Homeless Under Siege,” (http://www.avi.org/node/view/815). In it she claims that this new amalgamation of the homeless population and the “shoppers, condo residents and hungry knots of people on their lunch hour heading to pubs and bistros in the newly trendy area” leads to inevitable conflicts. The article, written in the fall of 2004, calls for new shelters and housing opportunities for the ever-growing homeless population of Victoria. Is this an effort to help the homeless who she claims are “under siege?” or is it an effort to allow the newly trendy areas an unfettered opportunity to expand? Perspective in this issue is vital, and groups such as Cool Aid, which appear to offer an honest and objective service based on immediate necessity rather than future developmental plans are an important component of this necessity.

In my next blog, I hope to address this issue of perspective further, especially in the context of gentrification and the resulting strain placed on the homeless population.

The Homeless Initiative Community Plan

In the late 1990's, the municipalities of several Canadian cities, including Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria, declared homelessness a national disaster. This was in conjunction with numerous other organizations, including hospitals, health organizations, AIDS services and faith organizations.
In 2000, Victoria completed a three-year community development initiative that focused on the challenges brought forth by a lack of affordable, supportive and safe housing in the city. As a result of this initiative, eight key principles where formulated: community solutions, participation, commitment, openness, language, cooperation, sharing and leadership.
In late 2000, the Victoria Steering Committee on Homelessness was established in an effort to tackle this perceived national disaster. The membership of the Committee included the following organization: Downtown churches, Victoria Housing Providers, Community Center Network, Community Economic Development Corp., Downtown Service Providers, City of Victoria’s Social Planning and Housing Advisory Committee, Victoria Native Friendship Centre, United Way of Greater Victoria, Canadian Homebuilders Association and the Intercultural Association. (All levels of government where also represented.) What is interesting about the makeup of this committee is the various, diverse views that are represented. From my urban explorations so far in my new home of Victoria, I’ve noticed a large degree of church involvement, especially on an active, “grass-roots” level. Other organizations such as the Victoria Cool Aid Society, which has been “building hope, lives and community since 1968” ( http://www.coolaid.org/), and the United Way, also play a very active and involved role. Other organizations tend to view homelessness as in a different light, perhaps more negatively. For example, discussions in the media about what is “lost” due to the homeless “problem” in Victoria in terms of economics and tourism is an oft repeated claim. (http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?
id=5f61f1f1-3123-48bf-89fe-3bd06f11e2c9, for example)
The views and opinions of this diverse group of organizations are telling of how homelessness is perceived in our society in general. What people say, and how they say it, is an issue that I will begin to explore next.
(Most of the information gathered for this brief post is from the following website: http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/currentprojects_homelessness_pln.shtml)