Mayor positively pushing Victoria
There’s more to Victoria than panhandlers and the tent city, and it’s up to locals to talk up the positive, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps told business leaders.
“Part of our challenge … in Victoria is we still think of ourselves as a small 19th-century outpost of Britain — and we’re not,” Helps told the annual general meeting of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. “I think we need to start thinking of Victoria as a big city.”
Helps joked that it’s almost as if negative self-talk is embedded in Victorians’ DNA, but the reality is Victorians live in a “leadingedge, 21st-century capital city.”
“With that, of course, there come challenges and complexities, but with that even more there come opportunities.”
Helps reminded the luncheon crowd that Victoria is not alone in dealing with a tent city. Abbotsford, Maple Ridge, Campbell River, Surrey are all struggling with them. “I don’t want to minimize tent city and I don’t want to say that it’s not having an impact,” she said. “It is having an impact on nearby residents. It’s having an impact on businesses. And I get that.”
She said the city is taking tent city seriously. Reserve constables are distributing pamphlets on crime prevention through environmental design to nearby Fort Street businesses; policing, bylaw and public works responsibilities all have been stepped up in the encampment area.
“So we’re taking this very seriously and we’re doing this while the province works hard to build the housing needed or find the housing supports needed to make sure that the people living on that site can get the help they need.”
Helps pointed to recent travel magazine pieces that trumpeted Victoria as a terrific tourist locale with its eateries, burgeoning tech sector and growing network of breweries and coffee houses.
“Did these articles in Vogue, the Toronto Star and the New York Times warn of panhandlers and homeless people? Did they run screaming and say … ‘What a mess. No way are we going to write a travel encouraging people to come here,’ ” Helps said. “Quite the opposite.”
Yet local media seem to “dwell on and amplify the negative” to the point where many people have come to think the only things council is working on are sewage treatment and homelessness, she said. “But we can shift the story. We can stop amplifying the negative and we can start amplifying all of the positive things that are happening in our city and in our region.”
Some of those positive elements include an increase of $80 million in new investment in downtown Victoria between 2014 and 2015, and the 21 construction projects underway downtown — including 1,000 new residential units.
She said the province is showing support for the Capital Regional District’s sewage-treatment program and is expected to announce initiatives today to help get the project done.
Helps said she expects the province to soon announce matching funding in support of the CRD’s recent decision to borrow $30 million to build affordable housing.
Chamber CEO Bruce Carter called Helps’ address interesting.
“The putting into focus that we’re not the only people with challenges around homelessness and we do have some very positive things in our community certainly rings well with a lot of things that we hear,” Carter said.
Starr McMichael, a director of Tourism Victoria, lauded Helps’ “courage to be collaborative.”
“It’s a messy job and I applaud you for trying to do something. Anything,” McMichael said to applause. “You try, and you do, and I just think we’re very fortunate to have you.”