Same Old , Same Old , Downtown

By Ben Meisner

If you want to fix downtown (and it seems that we are about to trot it out as an election issue one more time) you will need to look at the root causes of the problem.

The powers to be haven’t,  hence the problem.

How can you expect to have people move downtown and live next to a needle exchange, or a hostel for those youth who are on the fringe, or beside a pawn shop that while it may not intentionally being doing it , is a conduit for the people who steal to get more drugs and booze?

We first removed the old Canada Hotel and the,”Mac”, the argument was raised at the time if we get rid of them in that area of the city we will get rid of our down town problems.

The Mac was the spot that all the hookers hung out at and to this day I find it hard to believe that we had to get rid of the place. They were plying their trade in the hotel and rarely if ever were they on the street. What did closing the place do?  Well first they went out onto George and then after the heat was applied they moved to along Queensway.

Too bad for those people who live in the area and now we are building more homeless shelters in that area. Has it been picked as the next catchment area?

The cops were taking the heat at the Saturday meeting but it speaks volumes about what the people in attendance really knew. You can’t kick street people off the street unless they are doing something wrong, standing there or lurking in a door way will just not cut it. How can you ask the cops to charge everyone they see shooting up when on the other side of the coin, there is a van running around giving them the needles to do the job?

George St is in the process of taking its last breath, and the cancer is creeping ever so close to Victoria because we have used up the space to the east. So we are back to using the issue to try and get some people either elected or re-elected. Some of those who attended the Saturday meeting were either in office or are still there and that record stands out loud and clear.

Has the City now taken over from the province and the federal government for the responsibility of caring for the street people? They are heading to Portland this week to look at their system , that my friends is clearly a provincial and federal responsibility, that is unless of course we are so wealthy that we are going to do the job for them.  

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

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