A former premier's prescription for crime in the city.

Vancouver is on the edge of urban disaster, Mike Harcourt believes. Action
now is imperative. House the homeless. Decriminalize drug addiction.
Divert our young from idleness' embrace.

Mike Harcourt ... once the mayor of Vancouver and premier of B.C. and now a
member of the Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of B.C.

Vancouver is in peril. Our city is one of the world's great and livable
cities. yet the poor amongst us are becoming homeless, drug addicts are
inundating us under a wave of criminal activity and too many of our youth
are unskilled and unemployed and, consequently, idle.

The rejuvenation of our downtown is chasing lowincome residents from their
homes in the single room occupancy hotels and rooming houses. Heroin and
cocaine addicts are inflicting most of the break and enters, car thefts,
robberies, home invasions and street prostitution and pimping we are
enduring. And more than 20 per cent of our underskilled youth are
unemployed in an increasingly hightech and highskill servicesector
economy.

Will Vancouver in the next century just two years away be just another
American city? With thousands homeless? With the drug bazaar at Main and
Hastings spread throughout the downtown? With no resident's life, home, car
safe from drugaddict crime? With increasingly embittered and unemployable
youth on the streets with the homeless and the heroin and cocaine abusers?
Must this be our nightmare?

Of course not. If we act now:

* If we build housing for the homeless and nearhomeless.

* If we decriminalize the use of heroin and cocaine.

* And if we expand and accelerate the workworld preparation courses
and guidance our secondary schools have begun to offer our young women and
men.

We could support capable housingdevelopment organizations such as Central
City Mission, St. James First United, VanCity, Greystone Properties.

The federal, provincial and municipal governments could enter a partnership
with those privatesector groups to acquire and renovate or replace a
thousand units annually, not just in Vancouver, but throughout B.C.

The federal government could provide 250 units through its Canada Mortgage
and Housing Corp. The province could double its existing
housingforthehomeless efforts and provide another 125 to 250 units. The
city could bring a lot of leverage to the partnership: Its Property
Endowment Fund; its land bank; and its requirement that major developers
set aside 20 per cent of their projects for nonmarket housing or provide
funds in lieu. Then business and the notforprofit sector our unions and
churches, foundations and charities could match the government efforts.

We could treat our addictiondriven criminals as a medical and social
challenge.

That means providing adequate detox and counselling services. That means
experimenting with treatment and maintenance initiatives, including
medically supervised heroin distribution to addicts, as the Swiss are doing
with their addicts. That means diverting our youth away from drugs and
crime. It means beefing up our "Kids at Risk" programs; targeting those
professional criminals who control the propertycrime forays of drug
addicts and youth with too much time on their hands; targeting johns and
pimps AND insisting our judges treat child and street prostitution as more
than jaywalking offences, as too many of them do now. It means enlarging
our alternative schools like Bladerunner and training programs like
Tradeworks.

We could add to the "Skills Now" partnership of our public schools and
province's employers. Business leaders could each commit to mentoring,
training and employing one unemployed young person at risk. Many successful
models, which we could follow, exist throughout North America.

Some people will say we can't afford to build housing for the homeless.
they will say that the decriminalization of heroin and cocaine will only
encourage more addiction. They will say that business and government can't
"create" more jobs artificially, that only a stable investment climate and
an effective market do. I answer this way: We have to take some risks
because the future of Vancouver is at risk.

It's unacceptable:

That thousands of homeless people will roam Vancouver's streets once the
last of the 7,000 hotel and roominghouse are demolished or converted,
because our downtown is a "success." That can't be the attribute of a
livable city.

That only two per cent of heroin and cocaine coming into Vancouver is
seized by the police; the other 98 per cent gets snorted or shot into
veins. That ratio has been constant in discussions with police during my 30
years as a criminal lawyer, mayor, MLA for Vancouver/Mount Pleasant and
premier. Even the lower figure disguises the fact that most of the seizures
are from lowlevel street dealer addicts. Arresting them is like picking
cherries off a tree, whenever the drug squads want to have another big drug
bust.

The costs of this endless pathetic cycle of drug abuse, criminal activity,
arrest and imprisonment is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not
in the billions of dollars. As well, Vancouver residents pay with security
systems, insurance with higher and higher deductibles and the trauma that
comes when a home is invaded, a car stolen, a purse is snatched, a store
robbed. Our druguse prohibitions aren't working.

That we couldn't muster the wherewithal to attack youth unemployment.
Business and government may not be able to create jobs artificially. But
business and government leaders could provide the mentoring and workplace
experience our young need to complement the training and skilldevelopment
courses they received at school. Many employers have told me over the years
that skilled work ready employees are in short supply; these are typically
employers in the rapidly growing computer, hightech and tourismservice
sectors. Our youth can be successful employees and entrepreneurs.

Lets show some courage and commit ourselves as "Friends of Vancouver."