Not quite sure what this has to do with the Edmonton real estate market, but my times on the peninsula in the summer showed a much more vibrant core than you're portraying. Didn't feel very overwhelmed with unhoused outside the DTES, streets downtown like Granville, Burrard, Hastings, Water, and Robson were fairly busy.
I think it is helpful to take a little bit of our self-deprecation syndrome.
My experience with the back-and-forth between Edmonton and Vancouver, and spending about 1 week every month there, for the past 2 years, kind of falls in the middle of what you both said.
Granville is usually busy during the day, as it still has a bunch of offices, and Thursday-Saturday at night. It has been getting increasingly sketchy, however, and less busy, over the past couple of years.
Hastings is busy during the day (office crowd) and dead at night
Robson is busy, but I know many a restaurant in Yaletown that are struggling quite a lot, and the situation has been deteriorating quite a lot. One of the most cited reasons is, surprise surprise, safety.
Burrard is definitely the brightest spot in Vancouver, IMO. It has remained busy and apparently impervious to the degrading safety situation.
A lot of the businesses I used to go to, when I first started going to Vancouver regularly, have closed. Some more have opened, but the overall feel is that there are more empty storefronts now than there were in 2021. One explanation I've hear from a lot of people is that, after the COVID incentives went away a lot of businesses started to really struggle, as demand didn't exactly make up for the difference. That coupled with the high inflation and the lower influx of tourists, compared to pre-COVID, has brought a bunch of these places down.
Office vacancy is high. Proportionally, might be lower than Edmonton's, but the sheer amount of vacant space is somewhat scary. Opposite from their residential market, their office market is seeing leases go down so that landlords can lease up, or even just hold on to/renew current leases.
Generally, I don't feel much safer in DT Vancouver than I feel in DT Edmonton. I see, and hear about, just as much crime, if not more, and the homeless population has been increasing steadily and, with it, problems related to aggressive drug users, etc. The biggest difference in this perception of safety has to do with the fact that Vancouver has a disproportionally high residential population, so at any given time, there are more "regular" people out and about. Also, the issues with drug use in public spaces, property damage and aggressive behaviour is just as bad.