...What if the CoV was the wicked witch all along but you were too blind to realize it...

Let's pour some water on the CoV administrators and see if they melt.

Mariash was hotly criticized... for holding several cocktail parties to drum up support for the project.

Can you imagine it? Spending money to put on a party so you can promote your initiative? It's unprecedented! It's outrageous! It's unthinkable!

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Global News
September 19, 2015

Hundreds of Victoria’s homeless get paid $20 to attend meeting

The latest footnote in the ongoing story of Victoria’s homeless population – and how the city is grappling with it – came at Crystal Garden on September 16.

Hundreds of homeless people gathered there to attend an open meeting on temporary housing options.

Approximately 365 people attended, and each were paid $20. All told, it cost the city about $7,300.

Mayor Lisa Helps said... the money was well worth it.

“The city often hires consultants, to the tune of $100, $150 an hour. This is no different. These were consultants, with lived experience, and they had already done their field research by the time they got to the meeting,” she said.

Helps says the only thing she would do differently next time is have people sign up in advance, so they would know how many people were coming – and how much they would have to pay out. City staff had to go to banks multiple times in order to have enough cash on hand.

But otherwise, she has no regrets.

“The quality of input, and the kinds of ideas we got, simply would not have happened if we didn’t have so many people who were marginally housed show up. …all in all, I think it was a very good, and very modest expenditure.

But not everyone agrees.

“The number of people to whom we’ve paid the honorarium was far beyond the number required to get opinions,” said councillor Geoff Young.

Don Evans is executive director of Our Place, which runs drop-in centre downtown. He says it was his suggestion to offer a $20 honorarium.

“If there wouldn’t have been anything to attract people to go, then you may have got some of the regular people that are advocates – people that advocate hard for the homeless – but you wouldn’t have gotten the people that are actually living the experience every day and having to live with all the challenges,” he says.

...the money was well worth it.

I suppose the major difference is in the results. The CoV's homelessness strategy has been bearing truckloads of good fruit since 2015. The roundhouse development, not so much.

Would local homelessness have been eradicated by now if those with "lived experience" had been paid $50 to attend Lisa's session?

More whining and bitching about the Roundhouse approval:

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/letters-feb-5-more-and-more-traffic-the-roundhouse-decision-widen-the-highway-dont-build-a-bridge-8208947

Yes folks because the steaming pile of post-industrial crap-doo that's been just sitting there crumbling away for the last five or six decades looks SOOOOOOO much better; the roundhouse itself will be dwarfed by the new development? Aside from locals no one even knows its there; those old rail buildings are practically falling to pieces. Is there any city anywhere where such a vocal minority not only opposes change but FEARS it above all else? Ah yes.....if only we could turn back time and it were 1969 things would be so much better. Good lord.....