The lengthy, cleverly titled Globe and Mail piece “Pandora’s Blocks” at the end of May was a highly detailed and predictably heartbreaking, no-winners narrative about the state and fate of Pandora Avenue — Victoria’s epicentre of homelessness, fentanyl and other addictions, random violence, wide-ranging mental disorder, and a springboard for downtown-wide unmanaged behaviour and the spread of filth, theft and predation.

The article discussed impacts on businesses, cultural institutions, property generally, and on the public’s normal functioning, the physical dangers that extend even to health and other care workers, the small and temporary successes sandwiched between large and conspicuous failures and disappointing missteps, the policy and ideological skirmishes, the stormy weather of public and stakeholder viewpoints.

The impacts are unmistakable: downtown’s degraded physical appearance, rent-a-cops, merchandise in security showcases, economic viability threatened, diminished feelings of public relaxedness, effects on cultural and social vitality throughout the city centre.

And all of this at a time when our city is confronting wider social and economic challenges that raise questions about the continuing utility of downtown. One wonders if the entire downtown daily income, with 10% of storefronts........

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