More than half of B.C. residents say state of downtown core has declined in last year: poll

From overall safety to getting back to work in person, a new survey is revealing how Canadians feel about returning to their city's downtown cores,

The new Leger poll comes as many resist the idea of getting back to life as it was before the pandemic.

RETURN TO WORK

Nearly 30 per cent of employed Canadians polled were concerned about losing their job in the next year.

About one quarter said they are likely to quit their jobs.

If mandated to return to the office full time in the near future, 10 per cent say they would quit their job immediately.

Twenty-eight per cent indicated they would return to the office, but look for new work.

THE DECLINE OF THE DOWNTOWN CORE

Forty-five per cent of Canadians surveyed said that the state of the downtown core closest to where they live has declined in the last year.

That number is higher in British Columbia with 54 per cent reporting a decline.

Nearly all of those surveyed in B.C. attributed that to mental health challenges for vulnerable

populations, homelessness, rising crime rates, and drug addiction.

These are all issues senior crime analyst for the Vancouver Police Department and NPA city councillor candidate Arezo Zarrabian says are being driven by a lack of wraparound services.

“We're giving keys to marginalized people that some of them don't even want to live in those structures, because their chances of being re-victimized are higher than living on the streets,” said Zarrabian.

Zarrabian says it’s a failure of all levels of government.

“But right now, the issue is the municipal level is not coming out together as a group. It's created a very divisive situation or environment. It's pitted residents and neighborhoods against each other,” she told CTV News.

She believes public safety needs to be the city’s top priority.

“I'm a mother, I'm a woman, there's certain parts of the city that I, living in downtown, before for eight years would probably not walk down now in the evening. So it's not just the stats that we're talking about. We're talking about the overall concern people are fed up with,” said Zarrabian.  

Twenty-two per cent said they, or a loved one, have feared for their safety in their downtown core in the last six months.

Eighteen per cent have experienced aggressive behaviour and 16 per cent have fallen victim to petty theft.

The web survey was conducted from Aug. 5 to 7, 2022, with 1,509 Canadians 18 years of age or older, randomly recruited from LEO’s online panel.

A margin of error cannot be associated with a non-probability sample in a panel survey.

For comparison, a probability sample of 1,509 respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.52 per cent, 19 times out of 20, while a probability sample of 1,002 respondents would have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.09 per cent, 19 times out of 20.