Vancouver’s Granville Street and the downtown core were transformed for the FIFA World Cup games.
The Granville Pedestrian Zone has been extended to Labour Day, meaning eligible FIFA-related temporary patios and public realm expansions will also remain.
However, there are concerns that now the World Cup has ended for Vancouver, the street disorder and open drug use will return.
Just south of Nelson, on Granville Street, an SRO named Granville Villa is still operating.
Raymond Jarvis is one resident and told Global News that when matches were still happening at BC Place, drug users like him were encouraged to be out of sight.
“Just go in the alley, be kind, otherwise we will confiscate it,” Jarvis explained about what police would tell him.
He added that inside the Granville Villa, it’s “controlled chaos.”
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said he doesn’t want chaos to return to Granville. He said the city has added more police and more sanitation crews and he believes the barrier to the long-term success of the strip is the provincial government.
- More details emerge about Vancouver stranger assault suspect
- Video captures distraction theft from an 88-year-old woman in East Vancouver
- Ontario woman pleads guilty to defrauding Taylor Swift fans out of $265K in ticket scam
- Driver accused of deliberately hitting Muslim woman due to race: Edmonton police
Get daily National news
“They have to take care of people that are suffering from significant mental health challenges and substance use disorder and get them the treatment they need and the housing they need and not concentrate it in the Granville Entertainment District,” Sim said.
In March, the B.C. government agreed to close Granville Villa and two other SROs.
B.C.’s Housing Minister, Christine Boyle, was unavailable for an interview on Tuesday.
Also absent from Vancouver’s False Creek during the World Cup were the derelict boats, but when the run ended in Vancouver, the boats came back.
“Derelict boats that just get dumped into False Creek and abandoned or used as chop shops or storage areas — it’s not safe, it’s unsightly,” Sim said.
He added that he will ask the federal government to make the no-anchoring restrictions permanent.
Comments
Comments closed.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.
Please see our Commenting Policy for more.