Trevor Wideman, a postdoctoral researcher at Vancouver Island University, is looking at municipal governance and health policy, and how it interacts with the toxic drug and housing crises.
Christopher Hauchildt is operations coordinator for a community engaged research project called Walk With Me.
The two of them spoke with People First Radio about Walk With Me, and the overlap of the toxic drug and housing crises, and municipal governance.
“ If I’m thinking about smaller cities in particular…deaths from toxic drugs are often per capita equal to or greater than what we might see into larger urban centers,” said Wideman. “ Municipal backlash to harm reduction has been an issue I think over the last five to 10 years. A lot of local governments have responded with bylaws or rhetoric rather than supporting evidence-based approaches, often due to perhaps lack of expertise, pressure from citizens or business communities or just because it’s easier, especially when healthcare is a provincial concern.”
“ There’s this sort of push and pull, tug of war between different jurisdictional contexts.”
He says his research is still in its early stages and he doesn’t want to point the finger at a particular municipality, but dismantling of homeless encampments, street sweeps, including in the Fraser Valley, and enforcement related resolutions at the annual UBCM conference represent examples of what he spoke about above.
One element of the Walk With Me Project are story walks, where participants hear first hand accounts of the impacts of the toxic drug crisis recorded by the people who have experienced them.
“ We’re attempting to root a conversation, a dialogue, systems change, not just in opinion, not just in assumption, but in lived realities being experienced,” said Hauchildt.
“ I think it’s really easy within systems policy change to get caught up in assumptions and biases and the universalization of people’s experiences, especially given how politicized, how moralized this public health emergency is.”
Hauchildt says there’s more room for people with firsthand experience of the impacts of the crisis to play a role in institutions that are looking to address those impacts.
“ A recurring finding within all of our research is the need for leadership of people with lived and living experience amidst this crisis.”
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