Pubdate: Thu, 18 Dec 2014
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Randall Denley
Note: Randall Denley is a strategic communications consultant and 
former Ontario PC candidate.
Page: C10

CRIMINALS PREY ON VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES

Current Social-Housing Policy Is Doomed to Fail

It's such a familiar story. People are shot or killed in Ottawa's 
social-housing neighbourhoods. Police step up enforcement. People are 
arrested, and guns and drugs seized. Community meetings are held. 
Multiple social agencies introduce new programs. Pause. Repeat.

The recent shootings in the west end have produced another of those 
periodic spasms of media, public, police and social-agency attention. 
They follow hard on the heels of similar shootings in similar 
neighbourhoods in the city's south end.

Some of the things being done to respond to the west-end shootings 
are good. Surveillance cameras can't hurt. More police presence is 
useful. Maybe programs with fancy names like Problem Address 
Framework and United Neighbours Levers of Change will help.

The goal of those new programs is to get social agencies and the 
police working together, and to help "empower" the people who live in 
social housing neighbourhoods like Michele Heights and Britannia Woods.

It's a valiant and well-intentioned plan, but it doesn't get at the 
fundamental problem. These social-housing "communities" are planned 
to fail. To me, it has never made sense to cluster large numbers of 
people together when the only common factor is that they are 
struggling, either economically or with mental health and addiction 
problems. How do we think things will turn out?

Consider the west-end social-housing picture. In the relatively small 
Pinecrest and Britannia areas there are six social-housing 
neighbourhoods and five smaller projects. The largest ones are run by 
city-owned Ottawa Community Housing. Pinecrest- Queensway Community 
Health Centre says these communities include more than 4,000 
individuals, most of whom live in single-parent households. About 
two-thirds of residents are children and youth. Close to 30 per cent 
are newcomers to Canada, with a high percentage from Somalia and 
other Arabic-speaking countries. Almost all of the residents are 
living below the average income level, and many are living below the 
poverty line.

The stated goal is to empower these people so their neighbourhoods 
won't be havens for criminals. It's a steep, perhaps impossible, challenge.

There is a reason drug gangs choose to operate in social-housing 
neighbourhoods, not in the Glebe or Westboro. Social-housing 
communities are vulnerable communities, the type where a gang can 
take over someone's townhouse and operate out of it with relative 
impunity. The type where someone gets shot and neighbours don't have 
much to tell the police. No charges have yet been laid in the recent 
west-end shootings. A murder on Ritchie Street in May 2013 remains 
unsolved. People are afraid in these neighbourhoods, and they have a 
right to be.

Drug gangs are parasites that prey on weak communities, and these are 
weak communities.

It's not just the people in the social-housing neighbourhoods who are 
affected, though. It's all the people who live in the surrounding 
areas. The city does not have a notable record of paying attention to 
these neighbours. Community activist Geoffrey Sharpe, for one, has 
been going on about this problem since the past century, and time has 
proven him right.

The problem we see now goes back nearly 20 years, and it will last 
another 20 years unless we rethink the very idea of social-housing 
neighbourhoods. They are benignly described as "affordable housing" 
by the people who provide the housing, but what they really are is 
subsidized housing for people who can't grasp the bottom rung of real 
affordable housing in places like Bells Corners.

So-called social-housing communities are a product of well-meaning 
progressive social thinking of a few decades ago. Across North 
America, there are stories of their failure.

It's no real surprise. When we group people with big challenges 
together, they will tend to drag each other down. When we distribute 
them into other neighbourhoods, they will encounter people who will 
help pull them up.

The problems of drugs, guns and gangs are symptoms of a failed social 
policy. Until we recognize that, the problems will persist.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom