For a significant period of time, Vancouver has been thought to be among the world top places to live. Even the 2009 Mercer Quality of Living global city rankings indicated Vancouver as the best city in America. And yet it is getting negative international press attention by The Economics and The Independent. What is the reason for this?

Vancouver, with its 2.7 mil citizens, has registered total of 45 shooting incidents for the first quarter of 2009 (17 of them were fatal). That’s 6.3 violent deaths per 1 mil citizens. In comparison, Toronto has 5.1 mil citizens and for the same 3 months, only 11 murders occurred, resulting in almost three times smaller number - 2.2 people dying violently out of every 1 million.

Double war: gangs fight gangs, gangs fight the police

10 years ago, there were only 10 times less active gangs in Vancouver than these days. Speaking in specific numbers, it is over 100 groups active in Vancouver these days! Moreover, there are three main circumstances that are not helping the situation at all: 1) the gangs' organization is mostly quite pathetic, 2) they can acquire weapons without any remarkable effort, and 3) the member base of the gangs is formed of very young draftees.

Nowadays, we can notice a parallel fight in Vancouver and its streets. The first of them of course occurs among the gangs. This war originated from the fact that the cost of Mexican cocaine has been rising. Lately, there has been a strong effort coming from the Mexican government, aimed at the drug cartel operations, which has pushed the cocaine price from $23,300/kg to almost $39,000/kg.

Now you might be asking why the bond between Vancouver and drugs is so intense. In order to reply to this enquiry, we have to remember several facts: the city administration has traditionally very laid-back policies, Vancouver is in a perfect area for drug business, and it has large surroundings where only few people live. So the drug-related business and crime has very good climate here. Besides, Vancouver is has quite a unique combination of all these conditions. However, no other large Canadian city has less people in the police offices than Vancouver. On the top of that the local government plans on cutting the police and court annual expenses by $20 million by 2012. If the metropolitan police had more financial and personal resources in hand, their situation in the fight against the gangs would be much better.

How to handle the situation

I am brokering Vancouver real estate and local safety is always crucial in real estate business. I am far from pretending that this situation we are facing can be solved by some quick & easy peace recipes. But my logic indicates to me that right now more money and police forces must be utilized, not less of it! The city must be safe and secure again. One, but not the only reason being the Olympic games in 2010, but mostly because the people of Vancouver deserve it. The beginning of the gang problem solution might be a new stern law proposed by the PM Stephen Harper. According to this act, the gang murders would be judged as first-degree and punished with the minimum of 25 years. But we will have to do much more to renew Vancouver's good reputation from the past.