Pubdate: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 Source: Province, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2009 Canwest Publishing Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476 Author: Ethan Baron Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) NIMBYISM WON'T SOLVE DESPERATE SITUATION Wealthier Areas Need To Start Sharing The Pain Vancouver's police chief wants thousands of drug addicts to go somewhere else. Many of them are mentally ill, most of them steal, and nobody wants them in their communities. For decades, the down and out have flocked to the city's Downtown Eastside. The closure of psychiatric facilities and the advent of crack cocaine have turned the area into a vortex that swallows up the vulnerable and doesn't spit them out until they're dead. In surrounding neighbourhoods, residents suffer incessant break-ins to vehicles and houses, as addicts steal to pay for drugs. Taxpayers shell out for extra policing. Having the Downtown Eastside as a repository for troubled citizens has been extremely convenient for the rest of the Lower Mainland, and much of Vancouver. For the provincial government, it's a handy place to shovel money, to foster an impression that something is being done. Now Vancouver police chief Jim Chu is asking the people of the Lower Mainland to share the pain. "All communities need to take their share of supportive housing, housing where people can rehabilitate from drug addiction," Chu says. Concentrating housing and services for mentally ill people and drug addicts in the open-air drug bazaar of the Downtown Eastside makes no sense. "People end up there, and they die there," Chu says. They come from all over Canada, other parts of B.C., other neighbourhoods of Vancouver, drawn by the weather, the cheap housing, the soup kitchens and, in many cases, the drugs. The area is a magnet, and it's time to take it apart. Late last month, provincial officials announced the creation of 600 units of supportive housing around B.C. In keeping with the provincial agenda to contain our troubled British Columbians and new arrivals where most of us don't have to look at them, more than half of the new housing was in the Downtown Eastside. No more supportive housing should go into the Downtown Eastside. The thousands of addicts living there now must be encouraged to move outside the city's core and be provided with treatment and support to conquer their addictions and retake control of their lives. Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan takes issue with Chu's request for other communities to share the burden. Corrigan points out that Vancouver receives the lion's share of economic benefits flowing into the Lower Mainland. "When it's good, Vancouver wants it all," Corrigan says. "When it's bad, it wants to share it." Excellent point. Vancouver's wealthier neighbourhoods -- Kitsilano, Shaughnessy, West Point Grey, Dunbar -- need to pull their weight along with communities outside the city, such as Burnaby, Richmond and West Vancouver. But consider the response of West Vancouver Mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, when asked whether her municipality would take some Downtown Eastside addicts. She said West Vancouver is doing its part already, helping fund a youth safe house, a shelter and a planned addiction-recovery house. All three are in North Vancouver. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom