More than half of the almost 400 people who took part in a survey regarding the highway corridor say they don’t always feel safe in the socially troubled area.
Of the survey respondents, who were mostly residents and businesses in the highway corridor between Beverly Street and Boys Road, 52.2 per cent indicated that they only occasionally feel safe, or feel they are never safe, in the area.
Approximately 47.8 per cent said they always feel safe, or sometimes safe, in the highway corridor.
John Horn, North Cowichan’s director of social planning and protective services, presented an update to the municipality’s council at its meeting on Nov. 20 on the efforts of North Cowichan, the City of Duncan and Cowichan Tribes to update the Safer Community Plan for the area, which was first established in 2019 in an effort to deal with crime and public disorder in the highway corridor.
As part of the process, Horn said organizers reached out to businesses, residents and other stakeholders mainly from the highway corridor through open houses, visits to homes and businesses and the survey, among other initiatives, to gather public input on what has been done, and what needs to be done, moving forward.
“There are the folks who take it on the chin every day and those are the ones we wanted to pay the most attention to because they live and breath these topics,” he said. “We have a lot of folks feeling unsafe that are down there regularly and we want to know what we can do about that.”
Horn said among the many comments made by respondents of the survey was that a significant number felt the highway-corridor has changed significantly for the worse over the years, and some indicated that they are not happy with the amount of public intoxication that they experience in the area.
“We know that could be a scary and difficult experience to have when you’re sober and the other party is not,” he said. “We need to have things in place for those folks and we can’t just put band aids on the problem. Letting people live on sidewalks is not working for anybody.”
Horn said when the respondents to the survey were asked what they think the main problems in the highway corridor are, uncontrolled addictions and mental health and the property and personal crimes that go along with them were highlighted. He said the lack of treatment that is currently available for people who need it, open substance abuse, the lack of government intervention as well as police or bylaw enforcement were also raised as issues in the survey.
As for what the survey responders feel the best way is to deal with the issues, Horn said many pointed to better access to care as a good approach.
“Clearly, everyone understands we have a bit of a mental health crisis out there in the streets and, secondly, everyone understands we have an addictions crisis as well, so a large number on the survey said better access to addiction treatment, more enforcement, and more supportive and low-income housing is needed, among others” he said.
Horn said the next steps in updating the Safer Community Plan is to continue engaging with North Cowichan’s partners, the stakeholders and the local residents and businesses during the process.
He said the development of a draft plan, which will take into consideration what was learned from the people in the highway-corridor area, will be developed and the community will have opportunities to respond to it before a final plan is written and presented, with the goal of completing it by March, 2025.
“It’s a little slower process that we thought when we started this (earlier this year), but we wanted to spend lots of time listening and working with the people,” Horn said.
