Former senator Michael Kirby managed to get $110 million through the Mental Health Commission of Canada to put into studying the best strategies for getting homeless people back into housing and a stabilized life. It’s a project that could potentially point the way to answers for many countries.
Five cities participated in that study, Vancouver among them. As part of the research, 300 people got guaranteed housing (including specialized teams who would negotiate with landlords to make sure they could stay, even if there was some disruptive behaviour) and super-intensive support teams to make sure that their mental and physical health was well taken care, as well as provide coaching in how to get along with other people and even, maybe, how to get work.
That research project is due to end March 31, as I outline in detail here, and no one has heard boo so far about whether the federal government would consider extending it. That has everyone — the people who have been housed as part of the project, most of all — on edge. For Vancouver, it would be a minor disaster, if those 300 people, who were often people who’d been out on the street for years, were to flood into the already over-stretched low-cost housing available or to go back to the streets again.
22 responses so far ↓
1 Julia // Oct 9, 2012 at 11:56 am
I can’t help but wonder if this project is so worthwhile, why is Canada the only one coughing up money? The project has 300 folks they are trying to keep on track. While I realize there is more to the project that day to day housing, health care and living expenses, we are talking $366,666 per homeless client.
If at the end of the project/study term, those 300 people flood back on to the street once cash has been withdrawn, I would submit the study has found its conclusion and a different approach must be considered.
2 teririch // Oct 9, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I can only hope that some of those at the Bosman have straightened up.
When the place first opened, the drug dealing around the area was laughable.
3 Julia // Oct 9, 2012 at 1:36 pm
It is interesting to read some of the comments to the Globe article. Many are suggesting that Research projects/studies have a beginning and an end with some sort of report that shows findings. Where is that report, and where is the justification to extend the study. Yes, we are talking about people and their well being and it should not be so cut and dry, but why would the Canadian government be the bad guy for doing exactly what it was asked to do – fund a study. If they had been asked to set up a program that was ongoing – then we might have a different conversation. Obviously, the results have been less than stellar. Why would you want to continue a failed strategy? I can think of a few reasons but they are not ones that actually address this sad, and unacceptable problem.
4 Silly Season // Oct 9, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Since so many of the homeless have profound mental health as well as addiction issues, can we please go back to looking at this as public health issue, and not just a “homeless’ issue?
Shame on successive provincial governments (Socreds, NDp and Liberals) for closing down Riverview in stages, a place where continuous medical supervision, meds and treatment were available within safe, secure housing.
It would be wonderful to fully integrate the mentally ill/addicted into social housing but without the ability to transistion people into differrent “levels’ of housing based on treatment outcomes, this study sounds like its doomed.
5 teririch // Oct 9, 2012 at 9:43 pm
@Silly Season #4:
You have too many groups in the DTES that want to keep ALL levels of ‘poverty’ services in the area – keeps the government money flowing their way.
Think about it – it makes zero sense to place an treatment centre into the main drug dealing area – and yet there are several in the DTES. People ‘go to treatment’ and then walk out the door and into the drug dealers den.
The dealers in the DTES are like Starbucks; one on every corner.
A true working model of addiction treatment is the one Lorne Mayencourt started up in Prince George, Baldey Hughs. It is out of town and the people are not allowed into town during the duration of their stay. They are away from temptation.
Here, we have a treatment centre above Insite for the love of heaven. It makes zero sense.
And let’s look at Atira – that has been all over the news for the poor state of the governement funded ‘housing units’ they run. I have to mention, I was gobsmacked to learn that they hired addicts to manage other addicts and then wonder why things completely derailed. What a brainchild idea that was.
As for mandating the mentally ill into treatment or a institute of sorts – how well do you think that would go over with the BCCLA? They and Pivot, Vandu and every other ‘union of whatever group’ or… ahem… ‘advocates’ would be all over it in a heartbeat.
Change in the homeless situation will not happen. It will however worsen over the years to come.
6 Julia // Oct 9, 2012 at 10:39 pm
the entire cycle/situation is tragic and unacceptable.
7 Raingurl // Oct 10, 2012 at 9:28 am
@teririch // Oct 9, 2012 at 9:43 pm
Absolutely agreeing with you on all points. Why is the govt afraid of people like VANDU et al? They don’t help addicts in any way, they just enable them to keep being addicts. OMG, I’m just remembering my dream from last night. I was on the DTES Business Improvement Association and I was walking around with a clip board and helping people get off the street. The sun was shining and there were birds flying around. It was like something out of The Wizard of Oz. I wish it were true……….I’d like to help get them off the street not enable them to stay.
8 teririch // Oct 10, 2012 at 10:47 am
@Raingurl #7:
LOL! When you mentioned ‘clip baord’, it made me remember how ‘addicts’ are paid (ususally $10-$20) to participate in surveys of sorts.
Now, tell me that doesn’t skew the outcome …. just a bit.
Look at the uproar over the placement of a Community Police Station on Hastings – the protesters were out in full force (faces covered and all). Yet, those same people that protest cry foul when something happens and the police don’t respond as they see fit.
It is a sad joke that too many of us have been conditioned to accept.
9 MB // Oct 10, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I can see from the comments above, except for one, that the only option is to ship addicts up north by the busload for treatment using only private funds.
And how will that work out?
10 Julia // Oct 10, 2012 at 1:03 pm
MB, I imagine there are other options but for some reason, nobody wants to give up control to let it happen.
11 teririch // Oct 10, 2012 at 1:27 pm
@MB #9:
Nice stretch.
The simple point is, that having treatment facilities in the DTES – where people walk out the front door of the facility and are right back into the drug trade makes no sense.
That is like placing a recovering alcoholic in a liquor store and saying – don’t touch.
I suggested Baldy Hughes as a model – never mentioned shipping anyone up north.
Vancouver and BC need to look at building treatment centres outside of the city area and away from easy access to drugs.
But what we have now is not working and is costing us a heck of a lot of dollars to maintain not to mention the human factor it effects.
12 Raingurl // Oct 10, 2012 at 4:19 pm
@8 teririch // Oct 10, 2012 at 10:47 am
@Raingurl #7:
LOL! When you mentioned ‘clip baord’, it made me remember how ‘addicts’ are paid (ususally $10-$20) to participate in surveys of sorts.
Now, tell me that doesn’t skew the outcome …. just a bit……
……yeah, here’s twenty bucks. You know what that can get ya. Sad, I didn’t know they gave people money. I usually give them fruit…..fresh fruit from the Sunrise Market.
13 Raingurl // Oct 10, 2012 at 4:20 pm
@MB, I never implied that I wanted to “ship” anybody anywhere. I just want to help them get better.
14 Silly Season // Oct 11, 2012 at 1:29 am
And I never implied that I thought the DTES was the best place for mentally ill/addicted folks!
15 MB // Oct 11, 2012 at 9:31 am
@ teririch 11:
Vancouver and BC need to look at building treatment centres outside of the city area and away from easy access to drugs.
Ok, I’ll go along with that, provided the “patients” are still close enough to home and family (i.e. are able maintain paramount groundings) and receive focused care in a health care environment like they they used to receive at Riverview.
The question has been asked by Silly Season (4), why not treat this issue under new health care policy?
To which the peanut gallery replied with mockery and glibness, using dismissive terms like “poverty industry”, and offered very little analysis other than to state the obvious that services are currently concentrated where they are needed most.
Here’s what the Canadian Mental Healh Commission has to say about this issue:
In any given year, one in five people in Canada experiences a mental health problem or illness, with a cost to the economy of well in excess of $50 billion.
… and …
The vast majority of people living with mental health problems and illnesses not involved are with the criminal justice system. In fact, they are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
[...]
Estimates suggest that rates of serious mental health problems among federal offenders upon admission have increased by 60 to 70 per cent since 1997.
… and …
Depending on which study is cited, between 23 and 74 per cent of people who are homeless in Canada report having a mental health problem or illness.
Among those with the most severe and complex mental health problems and illnesses, unemployment is estimated at between 70 and 90 per cent.
One study reported that 27 per cent of caregivers lost income and 29 per cent incurred major financial costs related to caring for a family member who is living with a mental health problem or illness.
… and …
A recent report in the U.S. estimated that the lifetime economic cost of childhood mental health disorders was enormous — $2.1 trillion, which with our smaller population would roughly translate to $200 billion in Canada.
[...]
Improved access to peer support, housing, and community-based services can improve quality of life and help to keep people living with mental health problems and illnesses out of hospitals and out of the criminal justice system.
[...]
Canada spends just over seven cents out of every public health care dollar (seven per cent) on mental health, far below the 10 to 11 per cent spent in countries such as New Zealand and the U.K.
The report calls for greater investment for, in part, moving mental health and addiction treatment deeper into health care system, because their causes are linked. The authors back their conclusions with 38 references.
http://strategy.mentalhealthcommission.ca/the-facts/
There is more to this than just conveniently busing crazed addicts off to institutions outside of the Lower Mainland and letting the DTES rot.
The DTES was not created by addiction, mental illness or government services, but there are very specific reasons why these attributes are attracted to this one locale more than others, and that starts with poverty.
16 teririch // Oct 11, 2012 at 11:32 am
@MB #15:
I agree that serious steps need to be taken to help those that cannot help themselves. The mentally ill in the DTES are easy prey for drug dealers which only exacerbates the problem and that is why facilities need to be moved out of the area. After all, drugs like meth, crack etc have been proven to ‘eat’ at the brain.
Last count there were 177 groups set up in the DTES (a 10 block radius) ‘working’ to feed and cloth the homeless. Many of these organizations get funding of sorts from various levels of government, aside from private donation and fundraisers.
Why don’t we cull that ‘stupid’ number back, drastically, and ramp up funding to those groups, such as the UGM and the Salvation Army, and truly try to make a change.
What we see now is a maintenace program – there is no progress. If you look at the number of addicted over the decades it is growing which makes little sense considering the ‘advocate groups’ and the $$ this area receives.
Who I feel truly sorry for are the elderly trying to live in the area. During he summer months I was down at Hastings/Main; this little elderly Chinese gentleman was walking with a bag of sorts in his hand. This young FN woman grabbed the bag from him and started runing while others cheered for her. The poor little guy was so yelling and attempted to give chase. People blocked his way and told him to forget it.
There are a lot of people that have had tough lives but manage to pull up their boot straps and make something of their lives. But, when you have groups of ‘advocates’ telling you there is nothing wrong with you, it is everybody else – then why change? It is much easier to carry on as is.
And it is a povery industry in the DTES – a very profitable poverty industry.
17 Silly Season // Oct 11, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Never mind Point Grey.
The “law” is different down on the DTES, too.
18 Raingurl // Oct 12, 2012 at 10:18 am
@Silly Season………17. Of course the law is different DTES. It hasn’t really changed in the 120 ODD years this city has been a city. It’s the forgotten land. It’s where buildings (USED) to go to die. It’s where change is gonna start but we can’t do it until we run VANDU and the others out of town. WE are the future, WE are gonna make this city WHOLE again. I am not saying this to ignore the fact that we do have problems but the enablers are not helping. It’s time for a new Sheriff in town.
19 MB // Oct 12, 2012 at 12:22 pm
@ Raingurl 18
Of course the law is different DTES. It hasn’t really changed in the 120 ODD years this city has been a city. It’s the forgotten land.
Bravo!
A little history: The neighbourhood existed with various and changing socio-economic challenges generations before the “poverty industry” appeared.
It will likely do so in future, even in the offchance that radical policies, like drugs being issued by the state in controlled conditions, or exiling drug dealers and addicts (often one and the same) to Triangle Island or some kind of Canadian Gulag for life.
Poverty and all its changing attributes was always attracted to cheap rooming houses, a century ago doesn’t change the root causes. The community cannot be faulted for society’s failures, but it did concentrate the conditions of failure there.
I lived in a rooming house in Strathcona for two years and saw the long term effects of alcoholism or depression close up on the older residents, many of whom were living on measly disability pensions from a lifetime of physical hardship and injuries in the logging industry or the docks.
Back then (late 70s) I could walk through Chinatown at midnight a feel perfectly safe.
Then crack cocaine appeared and the game changed again, yet it also remained the same, using the tried and true technique of targetting the vulnerable. The 30-year War on Drugs followed at great public expense, and still nothing has changed.
Perhaps learning from our failures as a society is now in order, but belittling the effort with monochromatic terminology like “poverty industry” isn’t the answer. Some groups do a lot of good, others don’t. It’s time to make the distinction.
And this isn’t just a Vancouver problem. It’s national in scope.
20 teririch // Oct 12, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Hastings and Main once was the heart of Vancouver. It was what Granville and Robson are now.
Look at archived history and photos – it was a far cry from what the DTES is now.
….’this area was the centre of the city at the turn of the 20th century, with the city hall, the courthouse, and the Carnegie Library all located there. The headquarters of the BC Electric Railway Company was also in the area, making the DTES the hub of rail transit not only of Vancouver, but the entire region.[citation needed] It was also the main shopping area for the city, which centred around the Woodward’s department store. The surrounding stretch of Hastings Street was a major cultural and entertainment district. Prior to the Second World War, there was a large Japanese community in Japantown.’
and now:
…’The Downtown Eastside has a high incidence of HIV infection.[12] Vancouver’s drug problem has grown steadily worse over the last decade[citation needed] with the most common drugs being heroin, crack cocaine, cocaine in powdered form (which is often taken intravenously as well as simply insufflated/snorted), and—increasingly—crystal methamphetamine.’
21 Stephanie // Oct 13, 2012 at 7:09 pm
You’re mythologizing the old DTES. The neighbourhood has always been the centre of the drug trade in Vancouver, and that cultural hub you refer to was also its epicentre in the 1950s.
http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/past-tense-dope-craze-s-terrorizing-vancouver
22 Lewis N. Villegas // Oct 19, 2012 at 10:24 pm
Gosh, sorry to join the p-a-r-t-y so late. This one has success written all over it—no matter what anybody else says. Here’s why:
Direct, hard-wired federal to city contact.
For the uninitiated, and those too bored to listen, the issue in the so-called DTES is mental health + PLUS. Plus you name it… poverty, head trauma, abuse, addiction, etc.
Most often two or three combined.
So, comb thru your files. Know anybody with a depression issue? An addiction that needs to be kicked? Raised by foster parents? Abuse in the home? Etc.?
Any of our social foibles, combined with a little bit of this, or a little bit of that, and there your are, stuck not in the DTES, but in the ‘black hole’ in our social safety net.
Let’s read the report. Learn from the findings. Put them to work for us. And laugh all the way to the bank on the millions of tax dollars we save—never mind the lives we mainstream—all the way to a better Canada!
O!
Leave a Comment