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Downtown Crime

That is so unfortunate. My assumption is it would be expanded facilities and everything would be nice and new. I don't understand why more trees would be a problem. I wonder if there is issue with the location which is only 2 blocks from the current location?
 
^^^
i agree completely. i also happen to think that all three levels of government have and will continue to fail because the focus continues to be investing in ever larger buckets - to use your analogy - and not in the individuals themselves.

we will never solve this until we stop focusing on the supply side and start to enable solutions from the demand side.
 
Just got back recently from a weekend trip to Vancouver. The problem there is way way way worse. I walked all the places you're told not to walk. In Gastown, Yaletown, Downtown there is open drug use and disorder. People don't bother cleaning up emptied dumpsters or garbage on the street. Dozens and dozens of social housing projects in East Hastings have not made a dent in the the problem. The Woodwards building used to be on the edge of things, now it is fully engulfed in daily chaos. I don't know how Chinatown there will survive except out of sure will, and because Vancouver remains on the most desirable places to live.

Happened to be there during the municipal elections, almost all the lower mainland (even places like Nelson) elected new mayors and councillors that are promising more on safety and crime. The new Vancouver mayor is promising 100 new police officers. People are fed up.

I feel now that some of these challenges are outside our collective will to resolve. The pandemic, opioid crisis and other factors like affordability and job security mean there's more people than ever on our streets. I think 'housing first' policy has merit for only a very small percentage of folks, the opioid crisis has fundamentally changed the equation in terms of what our response should be. We have places in our NA cities now that are just open drug use and the anti-social behaviour that drives people away from those area. Search for any city on YouTube and you'll find complaints about the same things around drug use, crime, vandalism, etc. Our police don't want to deal with disorder all the time or aren't resourcing it, our private security is costly and doesn't have to the tools, our leaders mostly are looking toward long term solutions that don't always address root causes or the reality of the crime and disorder on the streets right now.

It makes for some tough choices for all of us on where we choose to live, work, spend our time. Cities that had strong Downtowns pre-COVID are recovering much fast it seems, and are more resilient desirable places. But even Vancourites have their limits. The difference there is the amount of people on the streets (density) all the time. Here seems to be that most people are wanting to take pedways or drive vehicles because the streets are still relatively empty. This has always been a winter reality but how do you have your Downtown recover without people walking on the streets again? It feels so chicken-and-egg.

Just trying to share my thoughts as I see them and work out the issues in front of us.
 
Coming down Alberta Ave at noon today, quite a few windows damaged.

Victoria last week was bad. but not as bad as other places. There were more people sleeping on the street by the Empress though.
 
Coming down Alberta Ave at noon today, quite a few windows damaged.

Victoria last week was bad. but not as bad as other places. There were more people sleeping on the street by the Empress though.
Y’all should see what’s happened in Kamloops. Their crisis basically just popped up over a short period of like 2 years.

It certainly feels like our country is creeping towards a watershed moment. We need more effective leadership in this country from all parties and they need to employ modern policies that work to redistribute wealth. For me, it is absolutely mind boggling walking down East Hastings and then down Robson street moments and get a true experience of the growing wealth gap.
 
Good to see:

BOMA Edmonton1,581 followers45m • 45 minutes ago

Do you own or operate a business downtown? We're looking for your insights!

We want to know about your security costs in downtown Edmonton: https://lnkd.in/gSecKgze?

This 3-minute anonymous survey will provide necessary data to support informed decision making and ongoing work to improve downtown, and to understand more broadly how some of the issues facing downtown are also found in other parts of our city.

Take the survey: https://lnkd.in/gSecKgze?
 
Good to see:

BOMA Edmonton1,581 followers45m • 45 minutes ago

Do you own or operate a business downtown? We're looking for your insights!

We want to know about your security costs in downtown Edmonton: https://lnkd.in/gSecKgze?

This 3-minute anonymous survey will provide necessary data to support informed decision making and ongoing work to improve downtown, and to understand more broadly how some of the issues facing downtown are also found in other parts of our city.

Take the survey: https://lnkd.in/gSecKgze?
Our condo recently increased fees of 20 per month on average per unit to cover costs of crime related damage and security improvements. I support the move, but it’s a shame knowing the aggregate costs across the entire downtown felt by businesses and residences probably runs in the range of about 4 million dollars per year doing monkey math.

These aggregate costs could build a freaking mid sized facility for housing the mentally ill and homeless every 5 years.
 
Our condo recently increased fees of 20 per month on average per unit to cover costs of crime related damage and security improvements. I support the move, but it’s a shame knowing the aggregate costs across the entire downtown felt by businesses and residences probably runs in the range of about 4 million dollars per year doing monkey math.

These aggregate costs could build a freaking mid sized facility for housing the mentally ill and homeless every 5 years.
I'm sure the Province knows this, but they just don't care.
 
I'm sure the Province knows this, but they just don't care.
Saddest part is I would bet a lot of the the public servants in Community & Social Services, Children's Services, Mental Health & Addiction, and Indigenous Relations are all more frustrated with the direction of their employer than any of us are.
 
Our condo recently increased fees of 20 per month on average per unit to cover costs of crime related damage and security improvements. I support the move, but it’s a shame knowing the aggregate costs across the entire downtown felt by businesses and residences probably runs in the range of about 4 million dollars per year doing monkey math.

These aggregate costs could build a freaking mid sized facility for housing the mentally ill and homeless every 5 years.

Yup.

We increased our security spending by 5x and have had more incidents in the last two-three years than the previous 16 combined.

I know of a few residents who moved out/sold because of safety concerns not being addressed and them feeling unsafe each day they left their unit in their own community and that's simply wrong/awful.
 
^It's exactly why BOMA is collecting the data, so we can show how much security costs have been offloaded onto private buildings including condos.
it’s not just that the security costs have been offloaded, it’s that the increased costs for those private buildings is still ineffective as the root causes are still not being adequately addressed by any of the government levels responsible.

the costs to our health system and justice system are enormous and divert resources that could better deployed elsewhere.

and the city pays even if the city isn’t paying those increased security costs. this isn’t saving the city 4 or 5 million a year, this is costing the city multi millions of dollars a month in everything from lost property tax revenue as assessed values plummet to reduced transit fares and increased maintenance on everything from the funicular to parks to garbage cans to way finding signage…
 
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