Community Safety Tag

You may have seen these faces walking or driving down the streets of Strathcona. These are a few of the wonderful people that make up Strathcona’s Community Safety Team, a job that is rarely ordinary but one that we are so lucky to have these friendly, helpful women fill.

The team helps out by providing a safe presence in the area and vital eyes on the street. A typical day includes starting with a vehicle patrol to conduct hot-spot checks, and reporting on activity, including debris or graffiti, and helping to report any vehicle and property crime. During the afternoon, when the two team member shifts overlap, you’ll find the team walking and visiting the different sub-districts of the Strathcona BIA area. They are actively identifying areas in need of additional Strathcona BIA, police, or city resources and work closely with the Strathcona BIA staff and Strathcona Community Policing Center to address areas of concern. 

Another daily responsibility for the Community Safety Team is responding to SBIA member calls. The team is ready to respond quickly to your needs 8am to 8pm, 7 days a week. Whether that be a needle pick-up request, or providing assistance in engaging with a community member in need, the team is ready to offer their support where needed. They work to establish relationships with people in the community as well as with peer-led and place-based service providers and agencies so that they can help connect people to the right resources. 

The approachable and compassionate nature of this team is second to none, and we hope you enjoy getting to know them a little better!

You might recognize Lindsay from Strathcona, she’s been a Community Safety Team member since 2017 and is the current site supervisor. She likes getting to be out in the community and getting involved with local organizations but on her days off she likes running, reading and playing in the mountains. She says “no two days in Strathcona are ever the same”. 

What are some of the highlights of working with the Strathcona Community Safety Team?

Getting to know and see new and different businesses, getting to know community members and hearing stories of what’s going on in the neighbourhood and how they came to be in Strathcona.

Why do you feel this program is important?

This program is important because we have built relationships with different organizations within the community to work together to address the needs and safety of both the businesses in the area and the community members together.

What do you think makes Strathcona unique to other neighbourhoods?

The diversity of cultures, businesses, unique coffee shops and authentic food.

Favourite spot for an after-work drink?

Container Brewing.

Georgia is our Community Safety Team assistant site supervisor, who likes to spend her downtime hanging with her dog and listening to true crime podcasts. She says the reason she likes doing work with the Community Safety Team is that they are able to support the community, whether it’s providing information about community services or reporting issues to the city. She says “there’s always some way we can help both the businesses and the community members”.

What are some of the highlights of working with the Strathcona Community Safety Team?

Interacting with the business and community members and building relationships to create a strong Strathcona community. 

Why do you feel this program is important?

Every community has its own individual issues that can never be resolved with one single answer. This program provides a multifaceted answer to the different types of issues the community faces and helps provide community-based solutions to those issues. 

What do you think makes Strathcona unique to other neighbourhoods?

It has a wide diverse range of businesses and people who bring all their unique worlds into one place. It also has a strong sense of community where everyone supports one another. 

What is your favorite hidden gem in Strathcona? 

Moonlight Natural Pet Store. It’s got everything your dog could dream of wanting plus their mugs for their human owners are hilarious. 

Jeanette is one of the newest members of the Community Safety Team, joining the crew in December 2021. On her days off you can find her doing nearly any type of sport. Right now she’s taking in some snowboarding, climbing at The Hive, or playing volleyball.
Jeanette likes interacting with the community and gaining a better understanding of the social issues of the area, and getting to know the variety of resources available. 

What are some of the highlights of working with the Strathcona Community Safety Team?

The best part of the job is interacting with regular community members and catching up to see how they are doing. 

Why do you feel this program is important?

This program is unique because our team gets to interact with businesses in the area, VPD Community Police Officers, and also the residents of the Downtown Eastside. This program is impactful to the neighbourhood because businesses and community members both feel a sense of security when they see our team on foot or patrolling in our vehicle. 

What do you think makes Strathcona unique to other neighbourhoods?

Strathcona is unique because it has a diverse crowd, wonderful parks and great local food. 

Favourite spot to stop for lunch. 

Rise Up Marketplace – The Jerk Chicken is a must-try! 

In the lead up to this year’s AGM we are sharing a series of reports with our business community on all that we’ve been up to in service to you, our members. First up, safety and sanitation!

We remain as  committed as ever to delivering on programs that improve cleanliness and sanitation across the district. Helping to keep our streets clean and safe, and buildings graffiti-free is part of our core services to the Strathcona community. In the past year this has become more challenging, as the district continues to experience rising rates of graffiti. Advocating for more resources and new solutions was an important part of our work on these issues. 

Street Cleaning

We partner with Coast Mental Health, United We Can, and Mission Possible Maintenance to provide street cleaning services in the Strathcona BIA district. These impactful partnerships create inclusive job opportunities for local people in our community. Between all program partners, team members have picked up over 1000+ bags of litter and 2960 needles across the entire district in the last year, working over 2411 hours or an average of 46 hours per week. Our teams are here to keep the area clean and support members each day. 

Clearly, street litter is a big problem. Through advocacy efforts by the BIA’s, City Council approved additional funding for street cleaning programming city-wide, and allocated $2.1 million in funding for the 2021 Street Cleaning Grant Program. For the Downtown Eastside and Strathcona neighbourhoods this has resulted in an additional 18 micro-cleaning shifts per week. This allowed us to shift more resources towards specific areas of the district as well as our Private Property Debris Pick Up program. We helped complete 70 private property debris pick-ups this last year and make daily reports to VanConnect for debris in lanes and on public property, saving members over $10,000 in removal fees, plus their valuable time.

From Strathcona Pilot to City Service

A big point of pride for us this year was supporting the launch of the social enterprise, The Crap Trapper. Initiators Mark and Elwood saw a need in the community and stepped up to provide a valuable bio-waste pick-up service with support from the Strathcona BIA. Before this, no dedicated service existed for human and animal waste pick-up and removal, often leaving businesses on the hook to deal with this tough task on their own. The Strathcona BIA was a key player in identifying this need and called attention to this from the City. Since then, the program has not only expanded, but is now a City-provided and funded service that members can access through 3-1-1. Mark and Elwood joined forces with Mission Possible to continue to deliver the service, and Strathcona is benefitting from patrols, removals, and on-call service. While advocacy for more public washrooms continues, this has been a big win in improving sanitation across the district in 2021.

Graffiti Removal

Members have access to a comprehensive graffiti removal program through our contract with Goodbye Graffiti Vancouver (a Strathcona business!). In the last few years, the overall size of a graffiti tag within the SBIA district has increased by 70%. The number of calls Goodbye Graffiti receives from the SBIA and members for graffiti removal has doubled in the past 1.5 years. Through our program, we have removed 7,386 graffiti tags in the district over the last year. SBIA members receive unlimited removals of tags 12 feet and under. The program also helped to remove 4,595 square feet of high level tags, a new service being offered through the program. It takes Goodbye Graffiti around 30 minutes to remove a tag the size of a small car from a painted surface. For porous surfaces, a graffiti tag the size of a small car takes around 45 min to remove. All labour, supply, and removal costs are covered within the scope of the program. These time and money savings add up for our members! This program also helps prevent City bylaw infractions and potential fees for our property owners and businesses.

In partnership with other BIA districts across Vancouver we successfully advocated for and secured more funding to handle this challenging issue. We received $35,000, one of the highest amounts from the City of Vancouver, for additional graffiti removal services. This funding will enhance our ability to target graffitti and leverage your levy contributions even further.  As always, we also continue to think outside the box on solutions for the rise in graffiti tagging, with initiatives like meaningful mural art with respected local artists, working with the VPD to allocate more preventative resources, and connecting with other community partners to raise the impacts that graffiti has on our members, especially small businesses.

Community Safety

Members can call 604-789-4143, seven days a week from 8am-8pm to reach our safety patrol team who dedicated 6,126 hours to keeping members, customers, and the community safe over the past year. Everyday our compassionate patrol team is on the ground in the district, responding quickly to member needs and connecting with community members. The safety team is our most used program and we are consistently working towards ensuring our approach to community safety is responsible, valued, and holistic. With this in mind, we launched our first annual safety survey this year to better understand how Strathcona BIA members feel about safety in the neighbourhood. Advocacy, Environmental Safety, and Patrols emerged as the priority areas for investment. We received 64 completed surveys, representing 113 businesses and properties across Strathcona. We’re excited to build on this feedback and future engagement to develop a new and strong community safety model for the Strathcona BIA. Stay tuned for updates! 

Advocacy is an enormous part of our work in all of these areas. For more on our advocacy efforts and impacts read our advocacy report. 

We’re about to launch an engagement with our members about safety.

Here’s the background.

At our 2019 AGM, we set out to re-envision our safety model with the goal of co-creating a program that is adaptive to member needs and more responsive to the rising social, economic, and health issues in East Vancouver. The Strathcona BIA Board and Staff have been working towards this goal ever since, while also maintaining and improving our current safety program. 

Advocacy to all levels of government, raising the business voice in the media, and building community partnerships are some of the avenues the Strathcona BIA actively pursues to help improve safety in our neighbourhood. In addition, the Strathcona Community Safety Program, our largest program, currently operates as an on-call patrol working 7 days a week from 8am-10pm. A day in the life of the team includes foot and vehicle patrols, working with the Strathcona Community Policing Centre, responding to member calls, data reporting, needle disposal, graffiti and debris reporting, connecting vulnerable community members to resources, meet and greets and more.

How did we get here?

The Strathcona BIA was founded on safety and security principles in service to the businesses, employees, and customers who come through the community every day. Safety and the perception of safety is still cited as a primary concern for SBIA members. To help address these concerns the Strathcona BIA created an ongoing security program. The program has evolved over the years from a traditional security program to a community-serving model. This evolution, in part, has been driven by changes in the legal landscape around what a private security company can and can’t do and the rights of citizens on private property adjacent to public property. Strathcona as a whole has a long history of political activism and a high concentration of social services addressing everything from drug use and addictions to mental health. Many of the social service organizations are members of the Strathcona BIA. Fostering relationships with local service providers, social enterprises, and institutional partners is one way to help build and develop long term solutions to many challenges that SBIA members and community members face.

How we plan to evolve our safety model

We’re ready to continue the evolution of our safety programming to have an even bigger impact on the safety and well-being of our community. Changing our safety model requires a hard look at the data. It requires research and a review of best practices. It requires partnership. And, most importantly, it requires that we speak to our 800+ members about safety and security across the district. We are committed to listening deeply to our members which is why we are launching: Let’s Talk About Safety, our new annual community safety survey for Strathcona BIA members. 

We’ve chosen a platform called Ethelo. Ethelo is more than your typical survey tool. It’s a platform where you can engage in dialogue, vote on priorities, and see the district-wide results in real time. Once you sign-up to participate you can return back to the conversation, re-visit answers, and continue to contribute your perspectives. 

We’ll be asking members to weigh in on:

• What safety means to you
• Your experiences with the current safety program and model
• How should the Strathcona BIA approach safety across the district

The survey will be open for four weeks starting next week. It takes anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes to complete, depending on how much you want to share on the platform. All Strathcona BIA members will receive a link to the survey next week. If you missed it, and are an SBIA member who would like the link, please reach out to us at info@strathconabia.com.

While we gather the results from the survey engagement, staff will undertake a robust analysis of our current program data from over the last two years. In addition, we will conduct research on other community safety models and review best practices both close to home and from around the world. All this information taken together will inform our safety programming framework moving forward.

Community Engagement

Any future safety model of the Strathcona BIA will be brought to the wider community for consultation. We intend to engage community experts from diverse backgrounds including people representing marginalized groups, social service providers, local community centres, Indigenous groups, social enterprises, and community members at large in future phases of our safety program development. We know that partnerships and strong working relationships are integral to our success as an organization and as a district. As bridge-builders, we’re always looking for opportunities for connection within our diverse community. 

If you have any questions or concerns about our upcoming engagement around safety programming please reach out to us as info@strathconabia.com.