Pubdate: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC) Copyright: 2008 Vancouver Courier Contact: http://www.vancourier.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474 Author: Cheryl Rossi PROPOSED RECOVERY HOUSE WORRIES RESIDENTS Christian Organizations Focus on East Side Neighbourhood The city's director of planning will seek city council's advice before deciding on a proposed 10-bed alcohol and drug recovery house at 49th and Fraser. Brent Toderian will also hear concerns of area residents and businesses at a planning and environment meeting at city hall Feb. 14. Planning staff received 17 letters from citizens opposed to the proposal, and petitions from the South Hill (Fraser Street) Business Association, the B.C. Khalsa Darbar Society, the Universal Buddhist Temple and the community in response to 141 notifications distributed to neighbouring property owners. Staff heard concerns about crime and parking. A resident who lives five doors from the proposed location at 655 East 49th doesn't want to see another drug and alcohol recovery treatment in the area. "I got a list of all the residential alcohol and drug recovery places in Vancouver, of which there are 11, and this proposed one is the twelfth one," said Jenny Chin Peterson, a principal of a Vancouver elementary school outside the area. "This would be the third one along the Fraser corridor, so it'll be the third one in two miles... There's nowhere else in the city that I could see, after I mapped it out, that there's that many condensed in one area." However, a city staff report states: "The proposed location at 655 E. 49th Ave. is in the Sunset local area, which has among the lowest number of [special needs residential facility] beds in the city, with 1.4 beds per 1,000 population, compared to a city average of 10.4 beds per 1,000." The Place of Refuge Society, a Christian organization sponsored by five area Mennonite Churches, has applied for the facility's development permit. The Hope for Freedom Society, also a Christian organization that runs six similar houses in Port Coquitlam, is to operate the program that is based on alcoholics and narcotics anonymous. The facility would be staffed 24 hours. Facility residents, who must be drug and alcohol-free for at least 90 days, could stay up to 13 weeks or longer. The Place of Refuge Society's volunteer chair, Erich Krause, and his wife, Gerda, bought the property on East 49th. The society is to buy it from them at cost after a fundriasing drive. Krause can't understand why residents aren't pleased that a home for people committed to abstinence will replace the boarding house that was there before. He said it previously functioned as a crack house used by sex trade workers. Chin Peterson agrees that the area has been plagued by crime and drug dealing. But said she wasn't familiar with problems stemming from the proposed facility site. She wonders how recovery house staff are going to ensure tenants are drug-free without onsite drug testing, and about the wisdom of placing the facility two blocks from a methadone clinic. Chin Peterson doesn't doubt that the Hope for Freedom Society has seen success in Port Coquitlam, but she presumes their success occurred in a more stable community. "This community is a community that is struggling." If the facility is approved, the Hope for Freedom Society will be required to name a liaison person, likely a staff person, to whom neighbours can direct concerns. It will also have a time-limited permit, likely a year. Chin Peterson worries if the facility fails, the building will revert back to a rooming house. Kelly Gill, who lives next to the proposed site and owns four commercial properties on Fraser, is annoyed by what he sees as an inadequate notification process. The city notifies land owners identified on its tax rolls, not tenants. Gill expects the facility will drive down property values and put a greater strain on the already insufficient parking in the area. The director of planning is expected to make his decision within two weeks of Thursday's 2 p.m. city hall meeting. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake