Pubdate: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: The Vancouver Sun 1999 Contact: 200 Granville Street, Ste.#1, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3 Fax: (604) 605-2323 Website: http://www.vancouversun.com/ Author: Frances Bula ADDICTS, HOMELESS ON MAYORS AGENDA Leaders Of Canada'S Major Cities Are Convening Here Drugs, homelessness and the need for national programs to address them will be at the top of the agenda when Canada's big-city mayors meet here today. "We need a national drug strategy. There will be no safe injection sites here in Vancouver until there is a national strategy," and Vancouver Mayor Phillip Owen, who will be asking the other 12 city representatives present to support him in asking the federal government to establish a program. "We need a four-pillar approach: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and enforcement. At this point prevention and treatment are non existent." But Vancouver can not go it alone, he said. If we do what Bud Osborn wants, we''' have 10,000 drug users in the city within days." Osborn, a Vancouver/Richmond health board member and downtown eastside activist, has been a proponent of safe injection sites and wants to eliminate laws that criminalize drug use. 46rom the other side of the country, Toronto Councilor Jack Layton will be asking mayors to again declare homelessness a national disaster. They endorsed the first declaration exactly a year ago. The federal government has done little since and the problem has intensified, said Layton, who has led a push to get Ottawa back into social housing, a program it withdrew from in 1993. "We've got a catastrophe. Two or three people die every week in Toronto. We're having to open new hostels all the time. Calgary is probably the next in line after Toronto, and Ottawa is picking up steadily;" said Layton. A report form Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released Thursday showed vacancy rates dropping and rents rising across the country. Layton want to see the federal government act on something the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has asked for already; Put 2-2.5 billion into housing for low income people through and infrastructure program. The existing infrastructure program puts money into roads and public buildings, with the federal, provincial, and municipal governments sharing the cost. Owen is supporting all of those moves, even though Vancouver is actually not seeing the kinds of dramatic rise in homelessness that Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton are experiencing. "If they don't solve this problem nationally, we're going to face the same crisis here" own said. Vancouver is managing to hold some kind of line on the problem because B.C. is one of the few provinces still putting money into building housing for low-income people and because the has supported that with it's own contributions of land and money;. However, local housing activists say Vancouver is at risk of seeing a similar kind of escalation in housing and homelessness problems. "We're still seeing the visible homeless here and there's now a threat from the new high tech developments planned for False Creek flats, which will put pressure on the residential hotels near there," Said Linda Mix of the Tenants Right Action Coalition. her group is backing the call for federal action. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea