Victoria today: A requiem for my city

Recently, I was in a large dollar store in Victoria. At the rear of the store, a young man was putting on a black balaclava, after which he proceeded to ransack the store, loading a huge carrier bag and filling his pockets, before walking out, unchallenged, into the sunlight.

On another day, as I was walking along Douglas Street, between Broughton and Johnson streets, at noon, I witnessed two people shooting up drugs, in two different locations in two different doorways.

And on each street corner on that walk, there were people behaving irrationally, making me, and others (from their reactions), feel, not threatened, but very uncomfortable. Along that short route, were several people blocking sidewalks and sleeping in doorways, strewn with their attendant belongings, cardboard, broken (stolen?) bicycles, and plastic bags.

Driving past the hotels the provincial government have purchased with our tax dollars, for housing, you can see them descending into fenced-off, uncontrolled tenements; with broken windows; junk covering the property; and temporary structures patched together on the balconies, surely not meeting fire codes.

Under inadequate management, those buildings are losing all their value and taxpayer investment. Demolition will be their fate.

And we cannot forget Pandora Avenue: a hellscape of tents, homeless people and fenced-off buildings, including the former Metropolitan United Church, an amazing heritage building, and home to the Conservatory of Music, who cannot even use the front doors of their auditorium facing Pandora Avenue anymore, because no one — not the city government; not the provincial government; nor any of their agencies — can control the continuing crisis on the streets.

The city’s ideological goal of keeping cars out of downtown is doing more than that: it is also keeping eyes off the streets. Sections of Broad and Government streets — closed off to become “Pedestrian Zones” – are empty and unwelcoming.

With no traffic, there are no eyes. With no eyes, danger lurks.

Pedestrian areas work well when they are already safe areas, with existing sidewalks jammed with people spilling into the street. But trying to create “pedestrian areas” on sparsely visited streets — areas already looking bleak and unwelcoming, and now perceived as unsafe because they are empty of pedestrians — simply does not work.

Attempting Christmas shopping in those areas, two months ago, was a bleak, unrewarding and deeply dispiriting experience.

A month ago, in early afternoon, I tried to get into a downtown shop I had shopped at before. The door was locked. A wooden pole appeared from over from the cash desk, which turned and unlocked the dead bolt. We were allowed in, then the door was re-bolted. It was too dangerous, for both staff and merchandise, to leave it unlocked.

With long-term businesses leaving downtown, or closing, and others — trying hard to stay open — having to lock their doors against shoplifters, Victoria’s downtown is on the edge of a death spiral.

People only have to look at Seattle’s downtown to see the shocking results of similar downtown problems: blocks and blocks of empty, boarded-over, black-painted shopfronts; where businesses have deserted downtown for safer, outlying malls or communities. Victoria — wonderful, special, loved, city — is already in that downward spiral.

We cannot be complacent. It cannot be allowed to get worse.

Throwing huge sums of money at this problem, as the B.C. government has done, has not worked. It is not a solution. Ignoring it, as Victoria’s council is doing, is also not a solution.

We need politicians who are really willing to work, who really want change and are not afraid to make it happen. We are not hearing any plans to make this better, just expensive ways to maintain the awful status quo.

We need real mental health facilities. We need real drug treatment facilities. We need a court system that can hold perennial offenders. We need our streets cleaned up. We need safe streets, and a downtown where businesses want to keep their doors open for shoppers; and shoppers who want to return.

From the city, we are hearing of nothing consequential: only ways to reduce input from citizens regarding developments, ignoring the planning department’s recommendations, support for housing proposals that “trump everything else,” and spending time and vast amounts of money on head-scratching non-problems like removing the fountain in Centennial Square; or spending yet more money on repairing broken shop windows, instead of addressing why those windows were broken in the first place.

There are far bigger problems threatening the future of our city.

Governments have to make sure there will still be a safe, working, viable downtown in our future (Cook Street to the harbour) — full of profitable, vibrant stores, residences and businesses.

Governments also have to ensure Old Town (Douglas Street to the waterfront) continues to survive as a unique heritage entity in North America (which it still is, but barely hanging on, with inappropriate developments being approved), and recognize that Old Town is the economic generator of our tourist industry.

We need a safe city, an attractive, unique city, with doors wide open, to welcome residents and tourists alike.

Who is going to take on that challenge?