thaw presents: Coalition to End Homelessness Part 2 of 2
Channel: thawVictoria
Date: 21/12/2011

Kym Hothead continues this insightful interview with Debbie Thompson of the Coalition To End Homelessness, a City of Victoria initiative.  I was filming for the up and coming documentary Taking The Fall last fall.  Debbie and I met during the crisis of Pandora Green's homeless tenters whereby CIty of Victoria created and enforced a traffic bylaw which moved and spread them out through out Victoria and region.  During and not soon after two deaths affected the community.  One a tragic stabbing death at Travellers Inn that involved a male resident who had enjoyed the safety of the Green and was forcibly removed by use of the bylaw, and a male recently released from Prison who, as residents at the hotel heard him scream at the top of his lungs from the moment he was dropped off till he, in what seemed to have been a mental health breakdown, he was in a very bad way.  The other was an elderly woman who panned in front of Wildfire.  Folks were unable to find her as she too had to move due to her community being spread out and split up.  She passed away in a hospital of pneumonia within weeks of the attack on the homeless campers.
I found Debbie to be a light in the heaviness of what was happening on Pandora Ave in Victoria British Columbia the summer fall of 2010.