Shane Calder

Articles by Shane Calder

Micro-housing: the non-solution solution

No one is saying Micro Housing is a solution to homelessness: not city planners, not housing advocates and certainly not the homeless. But here in Victoria the Micro Housing initiative is starting to gain speed. People involved in what could be termed the ‘Micro Housing Movement’ say we live in the midst of a perpetual housing crisis where big governments have completely abdicated any responsibility for building social housing, and cities are left to do what they can. (…)

Fiery Displacement from View Towers

At 7 am on the morning of May 15, 2014, a fire broke out in a suite of the infamous View Towers in Victoria, British Columbia. The fire was visible from the street with flames shooting out the window of the ravaged suite, provoking a building wide evacuation and causing many of the predominately low-income residents to flee the building with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. As devastating as this was for many residents of this iconic building, it was not the actual fire, smoke or water damage that caused the greatest tragedy; it was how the owner chose to take advantage of this event to evict some of Victoria’s most vulnerable people. (…)