Victoria City Hall is putting the final touches on a bylaw that would forbid camping on boulevards in a move to disperse the Pandora Avenue encampment responsible for an increase in social problems in the Harris Green neighbourhood.

Street campers in the 900 block Pandora. Photo by Robert Randall © VibrantVictoria.ca.

The bylaw will be presented to Council this Thursday morning at the meeting of the City’s Governance and Priorities Committee. If approved, it will later be sent to Council for a vote, and if passed, will become Victoria’s newest bylaw. As the regulation is under the domain of streets and boulevards, no public hearing will be held.

The proposed bylaw states that camping will be prohibited on medians including parts of Pandora Avenue, Blanshard Street, Begbie Avenue and the Johnson Street bridgehead–essentially all grassy areas surrounded by busy arterial roads.

The move was made in the wake of several instances where street people have walked into busy Pandora Avenue traffic. Two people have died after being hit by vehicles traveling down Pandora Avenue in recent months. Several near-misses have been reported as well.

In addition, the bylaw will outlaw loitering on the medians between sunset and sunrise, meaning anyone on the problem boulevards or medians not in the process of lawfully crossing the street is contravening the bylaw. This gives police the power to move along any person standing, lying, squatting or camping on City medians at night. Any tent in these areas will require Engineering approval before being put up, which would permit tents used for community celebrations but disallow tents used for temporary shelter.

City Hall hopes the bylaw will force street campers to use the available shelter beds provided this summer. It is believed that some of the population already has access to housing. City staff have also said that the 900 block of Pandora Avenue is becoming a destination for the region’s illicit drug shoppers.

Left to be seen will be the impact the new bylaw may have on problems associated with social disorder. Dispersal of Victoria’s street population from Pandora Avenue may mean an increase in drug dealing, sex acts and human waste in the remaining alleys, parking lots and doorways throughout Downtown.

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