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This is simply not cool. Details below...

Camping on Victoria boulevards is now illegal.

With about a half a dozen people looking on, city
councillors gave final reading Thursday to an amendment to
the city’s streets and traffic bylaw prohibiting camping in
road allowances.

Only Coun. Philippe Lucas dissented, calling the
bylaw “over-broad, regressive and reflective of past
motions of past councils that have not served us well.”
Lucas said there are other ways to address safety issues.

The bylaw prohibits occupancy of medians and sidewalks
between sunset and sunrise the next day. Occupancy is
defined as “squatting, kneeling or lying down.”

An offense carries a fine of $42.50. People are allowed to
congregate on the medians between sunrise and sundown.

“It means the neighbourhood residents cannot walk their
dogs on that space legally. It means teenagers cannot meet
on a park bench to discuss life and or to make out. It
means that literally we have disengaged — we have taken
away the right of this community to use that space in any
way that supports community,” Lucas said.

In the past two years since the Our Place drop-in centre
opened, and in the wake of a 2008 B.C. Supreme Court
decision striking down the city’s prohibition against
camping in parks, the 900-block of Pandora Avenue has
become a focal point for drug use and dealing, homeless
camping and prostitution.

In the past year, police calls to the area have skyrocketed
and residents and businesses have worried that their
neighbourhood was being ghettoized.

Mayor Dean Fortin said between 15,000 and 17,000 vehicles a
day travel down Pandora and the number of collisions
involving pedestrians is on the rise.

“We need to fundamentally recognize that it is a safety
issue, having people on both that boulevard and whether
they start to locate on the boulevard on Blanshard Street,”
Fortin said.

“The level of traffic there is simply too high to have
anyone safely on those boulevards for an extended period of
time — especially clients who may not be in full command of
their faculties,” Fortin said.

“We’ve seen the numbers rise from six to, I think, 17
[accidents] in the previous year. And we’re already at 17
or 18 this year. So we recognize there is a safety issue
there.”

Since council began discussing the bylaw, the number of
Pandora campers has declined significantly.

Lucas said people continue to gather on the sidewalk in the
900-block of Pandora, so the bylaw is not addressing safety
issues. Further, he said, it does nothing to address the
issues of poverty, homelessness or addiction.

Fortin said even if the bylaw just moves people from the
meridian to the sidewalk, that will provide a measure of
safety.

However, Lucas is worried that by passing the bylaw, the
city is “stepping into constitutionally challenging waters.”

“We have fought and lost a long constitutional battle
regarding the issue of banning people from sleeping in out
parks, and it’s hard to imagine that banning any and all
traffic from dusk until dawn on this broad swath of grass
within a residential area wouldn’t be seen as an over-broad
approach to homelessness,” he said.  

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