Victoria’s mayor says a community safety and well-being plan to be considered by council members Thursday could profoundly reduce street disorder.
Mayor Marianne Alto unveiled on Monday the 79-page plan that includes more than 80 recommendations that touch on everything from housing to health care and sprucing up downtown.
“They’re all very much interdependent, because no one single thing is going to provide community safety. If we had been able to identify that one thing, we’d have done it already, and so it is a very complex puzzle that has many, many pieces,” Alto said.
Proposed city actions include increased foot and bike patrols in the downtown core, more funding for cleaning and sprucing up public spaces — including street and boulevard washing, garbage collection and garden maintenance — and investing in late-night support teams on Fridays and Saturdays, with 24-hour “foot teams” trained and resourced to support people to be downtown safely.
They also include investing in downtown amenities such as benches, trees, lighting, murals and historical markers, and increasing funding to the Downtown Victoria Business Association for graffiti removal and facade repairs.
The plan calls for support for expanded peer support for unwanted person or loitering calls, funding for anti-hoarding programs through the Victoria Fire Department, and exploring the feasibility of establishing designated sheltering spaces and small-scale tiny homes for those transitioning from homelessness.
Councillors will vote Thursday on whether to endorse the plan and send it to staff to determine financial and operational implications, Alto said.
Any recommendations that can be immediately implemented are designed to come under the existing 2025 budget.
Alto said once the plan goes to staff for financial analysis, she expects to hear in the fall about its impact on future budgets.
“That financial implication will be part of our budget considerations for future years,” she said, adding the city will look for “new funding in 2026 and beyond.”
Actions in the plan are divided by which jurisdiction is responsible — city, regional district, province or federal government.
While much of what’s included is out of the city’s hands, the mayor pointed to an “emerging and really positive relationship” with new Victoria MP Will Greaves as evidence that partnerships with outside agencies will be productive, adding she has met with Greaves to discuss the issues and solutions presented in the report.
She said that the city “continues to be the catalyst in making sure that these complex conversations continue.”
The plan also calls for the province to assign a dedicated forensic psychiatric health professional to every provincial court to support immediate psychiatric assessments and recommend treatment or diversion opportunities, and for community-led crisis-care teams to be available 24 hours in every community with more than 50,000 residents to reduce the burden on police, and alleviate tensions between police and vulnerable individuals.
It includes asking the province to support the creation of Crisis Response Stabilization Centres to offer a single-door entry into mental health and substance-use care that accepts walk-ins and people transported by ambulance, fire and police.
As for the federal government, it would ask for diversion laws that enable accused persons with severe mental health disorders to be diverted from the criminal to the forensic systems (akin to the U.K’s “restricted patient” law).
Alto said she hopes implementing the plan will lead to the reclamation of public spaces that are not comfortable for everyone to use, while ensuring marginalized residents are adequately housed.
The city began work on the plan in 2023 after council identified community safety and well-being as one of the most critical priorities in its strategic plan.
Alto selected a panel of 11 community leaders, including Victoria Police Chief Del Manak; Fire Chief Dan Atkinson; Brianna Bear, a speaker and artist from Songhees Nation; and Our Place Society CEO Julian Daly, to develop a vision for the plan and design a framework to engage with residents, including those outside of Victoria.
Through surveys, open houses and facilitated events, more than 1,600 people shared their thoughts on how to improve safety and well-being in the city.
— With a file from Hannah Link
