Newsletter from Greater Victoria Acting Together - What a night! So what comes next?
The view from on high of member roll call with banners
Dear GVAT members and supporters.
We are so thrilled with how our Homes For All Community Assembly came together on Sunday October 2nd! Thank you to everyone who came out to join us in person and online to ensure we delivered a powerful, impactful event. If you missed it, you can watch the video here, with thanks to Christ Church Cathedral for providing the excellent camera work and livestream.
This was our first in-person assembly since the pandemic, and we can say with confidence that it was a success! Over 300 people joined us in person, with up to 77 watching live online, and 365 total views on the recording so far. We saw lots of engagement and amplification on social media, including coverage by a Capital Daily reporter in attendance. Many candidates - mayoral and council - publicly shared our event and their support for our municipal policy platform. No doubt, we got noticed by the broader public in Greater Victoria and made a mark with this campaign launch event.
Audience members shared their enthusiasm for our campaign and were especially moved by stories from people directly impacted by the housing crisis. May we never lose sight of the reasons we are working hard toward solutions to the housing crisis.
Most importantly for making progress on those solutions, all leading candidates for mayor in Saanich, Victoria and Esquimalt showed up, agreed to support the policy platform and to meet with GVAT within 100 days if elected! In fact, a jovial "competition" emerged for how soon they'd meet with GVAT. That is a hopeful sign that they see GVAT's power to impact change and mobilise public support. We even had the acclaimed mayor of Oak Bay agree to support the policies. He'd agreed to attend until a family matter came up. Several candidates made a point to underscore the importance of embracing a human rights approach to housing.
This all points to a massive success and a great mandate to build on for future actions to ensure these policies are adopted at council tables across the region.
Mayoral Candidates. L-R top: Stephen Andrew (Victoria), Sonya Gracey (Esquimalt), Dean Murdock (Saanich); L-R bottom: Fred Haynes (Saanich), Barb Desjardins (Esquimalt), Marianne Alto (Victoria)
This assembly and the buzz it has generated for GVAT has opened up an important opportunity for us to continue organising in support of our platform. We’re already talking about possibly showing up to inaugurations to let newly elected mayors and councils know that we’re just getting started. If you’d like to hear from the Housing Action Research Team about future opportunities to take action to continue applying pressure to realise our housing vision, please add your name to this petition. We need help from all of you to achieve this vision!
Finally, a word of thanks to our member organisations and the dozens of volunteers that provided countless hours to develop the policies, prepare the event, outreach to candidates, members and the public to put on this memorable event. We’re so grateful and excited to see what we will accomplish with all of us continuing to work together for homes for all.
With hope and appreciation,
Kari, Lynn and Yvonne, Housing ART Co-leads
PS all those handy links in one spot:
The event video: https://vimeo.com/event/2446442
The platform: https://www.gvat.ca/s/Homes-for-All-Muni-Platform20220928.pdf
The petition: https://you.leadnow.ca/petitions/greater-victoria-urgently-needs-homes-for-all
