A weekend topic on this Globe and Mail article. "Condo owner Brock Worobel says he is feeling extremely uneasy living at 53 West Hastings, near Vancouver’s downtown east side. Mr. Worobel purchased his condo in the six-storey Paris Block, just west of Carrall Street, nine years ago. It is an award-winning commercial heritage building that was converted to condos with sleek, modern interiors in 2008. Mr. Worobel says he loved his neighbourhood – until the pandemic hit."

"In the past six months, he says he’s seeing new faces on the street, including drug dealers doing business in the street below. There’s been vandalism to the building, including the entrance door, which was damaged and now needs replacing. The building manager cleans up used needles , human feces and trash from the doorway daily, and he has friends who won’t visit."

"'Last night for example, across the street there was a fight between one of the vendors, and this guy pulled this massive knife out of his back pocket. I’m no stranger to the stuff that goes on down here, but that was a shock to see,' Mr. Worobel says. 'If you’ve been into the area lately, this one block of West Hastings is a dangerous no-go zone. This is social chaos. It’s social disorder. It’s a textbook case of what not to do when it comes to civil society. … No one would expect or accept to have to live in something like this.'"

"The increased crime and disorder of the Downtown Eastside is pushing into other areas. Vancouver Police Deputy Chief Constable Howard Chow noted a rise in serious crimes throughout the city, as well as an increase in needles on the street, visible drug use and garbage that’s accumulating on city streets."

"Mr. Worobel questions why the situation was allowed to become so dire. His strata council has considered hiring a security guard, but it would cost around $24,000 extra a year, and some residents have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and can’t afford it, he says. Landlords in the building are seeing their tenants move out. Mr. Worobel worries that if he wanted to leave nobody would buy his condo, or even rent it, which means he’s stuck."

"When COVID-19 struck, businesses throughout downtown shuttered and customers and workers left, and garbage and crime increased. Empty streets are always an unhealthy situation for an urban environment, and for the housing market. Downtown Vancouver now has the region’s worst sales to listings ratio, which is industry’s way of saying that sales have plummeted."

"Hani Lammam, executive vice-president of Cressey Development Group, agrees that the dire downtown situation isn’t just due to the pandemic. From his developer’s perspective, he sees the situation as a result of what happens when rampant speculation drives up real estate prices and drives affordable housing out of the market. He says the city played a role when it rezoned areas of downtown and helped drive those land values up further, gleaning higher community amenity contributions from developers."

"A side effect is that developers who paid too much for downtown properties are just leaving them undeveloped, he says. 'All this land that has been designated for condominium development and unfortunately been speculated upon by sometimes less experienced developers is now caught in a situation where it really cannot ever be developed economically based on what has been paid for it. So downtown Vancouver is at a standstill.'"

"'I sit here and I look at what has happened downtown, and to an extent on the west side – and Vancouverism, this concept that has been celebrated, is actually failing,' Mr. Lammam says. 'While we do blame some of those bad actors that were chasing foreign buyers, I am going to take this opportunity to say that the rezoning policies forced that to happen – when the process of determining community amenity contributions [CACs] by the city of Vancouver became this pot of gold that city council at the time wanted to get their piece of.'"

"Developers typically pay CACs to the city when a property is rezoned. CACs are based on the 'land lift,' or the increase in the property’s value. 'And of course the greatest land lift is achieved when you build a super luxurious product, because you can sell it for $3,000 a foot,' Mr. Lammam says. 'And so, then the land must be worth $600 a foot. But if the conclusion is it’s worth $600 a foot, then I cannot build an affordable product based on underlying land valuation. So developers were forced to go and build these lavish buildings and of course there’s no market here, ‘so let’s go sell it in China.’"

"'The city wasn’t just greedy; they drove it in that direction,' Mr. Lammam says. 'That had a snowball effect, because once this project achieved this selling price, then every other property valued is based on that success – whether it was a rezoning or not a rezoning. So, I would say we got caught up in that in some of our west side projects, where in order for us to buy the land we had to pay so much for it, because the [comparables] with the marketplace now, we could sell for $2,000 a foot, or $2,500 a foot.'"

"Craig Stanghetta, business owner and designer known for the interiors of many popular restaurants, has had his office in the area for years, and he’s shocked at the decline. Fellow business owners in the area have been hammered by the economic downturn and again by the influx of additional crime and vandalism, he says."

"'I am a terrified bystander right now,' Mr. Stanghetta says. 'I think that there is a bit of leadership required, where I think the idea of how to help a disenfranchised segment of the population is not working. All I’ve seen is it get worse and worse. … .I am left wing in my political leanings, but it comes down to pragmatically how you have to go about your day, and I have pretty much an all-female staff and if they don’t feel safe coming into the office – then that’s a broken system. It’s not fair, frankly. So I am hoping there is a re-evaluation of [the situation] for the greater good.'"