Pubdate: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 Source: Intelligencer, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2014, The Belleville Intelligencer Contact: http://www.intelligencer.ca/letters Website: http://www.intelligencer.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2332 Author: Gordy Robson Column: Just Saying MINISTER EXPECTED TO HALT NIGHTMARE Rich Coleman has never been my favourite politician, but every once in a while he does something that is brilliant, takes guts and moves the province in the right direction. Last November, Minister Coleman in charge of BC Housing announced that because of his ministry's preliminary investigation, a full scale audit of the Portland Hotel Society was going to be done. After discovering "irregularities," an accounting firm was brought in to ensure public resources were being spent appropriately. The Portland Hotel Society (PHS) has for more than 20 years been involved with Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, providing services to the addicted and mentally ill. The PHS was founded in 1993 to run a renovated single-room-occupancy hotel on the Downtown Eastside, and has blossomed into a near $30 million per year operation with more than 300 employees. Their problem, in my view, is they create and enable more problems than they solve. They are promoters of the harm reduction method of dealing with addiction. This is the organization behind harm reduction initiatives such as the Insite supervised drug injection site, a crack pipe vending machine, and a home brew for alcoholics. PHS also operate housing facilities for about 1,200 residents. Mark Townsend and his partner Liz Evans co-founded the society. As a couple, according to PHS documents, they earn between $240,000 and $300,000 a year. Their critics, including me, think they have found a way to harness the addiction into a multi-million dollar operation. Up till now there has been no accountability as to what their success is in helping the people who they are dealing with. A little over a week ago, Ian Gill from the Tyee reported that "Rich Coleman is in the final stages of ordering a drone flight over the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. His target will be the Portland Hotel Society and his weapon of choice is likely be a court filing leading to the society being placed in receivership." It's about time. Over the past year or two, Minister Coleman has been very supportive of abstinence-based treatment facilities. He recently has provided some empty government facilities to the Vision Quest Recovery Society and created 200-300 more beds for residential addiction treatment based on abstinence. Mayor Moonbeam of Vancouver has just announced a plan costing billions of dollars to help clean up the Downtown Eastside while at the same time supporting the Portland Hotel Society, which in my view, is contradictory. So look for an announcement from Minister Coleman in the next week or so which hopefully will start to reverse the nightmare we have in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. Just saying=C2=85 - --- MAP posted-by: Matt