VANCOUVER -- The City of Victoria has spent roughly $85,000 cleaning up the former site of a tent city on Pandora Avenue, city staff tell CTV News Vancouver Island.
Some of the fencing around the site was taken down Friday, after months of remediation work in the area. Fences remained in front of Our Place Society Saturday.
Back in April, the B.C. government announced a sweeping plan to move people living in tent cities in Victoria and Vancouver into hotel rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
All of the former residents of Victoria's Pandora Avenue and Topaz Park camps were offered housing, and the sites were dismantled. The same happened at a tent city in Vancouver's Oppenheimer Park.
Since the move, however, both cities have seen new encampments spring up, to the dismay of people living nearby, who have complained about increasing crime and violence.
In Victoria, homeless campers in Beacon Hill Park and in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood have been a source of concern for police, as well as local residents.
A tent city was also set up outside city hall in Centennial Square, but campers were evicted from that space on Sept. 1, after Victoria police reported that the camp had become cover for a drug-trafficking ring.
Clean-up at Centennial Square has now been completed, the city said Friday. City staff are still examining the total cost of the remediation effort.
