RESIDENTS REQUEST EXPANDED HEALTH SERVICES FOR DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE DRUG ADDICTS

In a series of public hearings held last week, members of the
Vancouver Development Permit Board were asked by government officials
and a dynamic group of concerned citizens to approve plans for
expanded health services targeted towards drug addicts in the Downtown
Eastside.

The Vancouver/Richmond Health Board believes these initiatives will
help combat the area's large HIV and hepatitis C infection rates,
which are among the highest in North America.

The health board made five applications to the Permit Board, the most
controversial being a proposal to open a 24-hour health contact centre
on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel, at 166 E. Hastings Street.
Critics contend that the city is inviting trouble by keeping such a
facility open all night, and that it will attract drug users from
other parts of the city, as well as dealers.

Some members of the municipal government have also expressed fear that
the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board's own facilities may turn into
safe injection sites.

"I suggest that if this contact centre were to become a safe injection
site, the centre should be closed," said Jeff Brooks, director of
social planning for Vancouver.

The Vancouver/Richmond Health Board has maintained that the contact
centre must be open 24-hours a day so that police will have somewhere
to refer people who need to get off the street. The Vancouver Police
Department has supported the application for the development of the
contact centre.

Another service to be provided by the contact centre will be a
washroom facility, since there is currently a severe shortage of
public washrooms in the area.

Last week's public hearings drew over 200 attendants per session, and
at times the forum became emotionally charged, as health care workers,
former drug addicts, and parents of drug addicts stepped forward to
relate their experiences and ask the Permit Board to approve the
health board's applications.

However, many speakers owning businesses in the area accused the city
of fostering a drug culture in the Downtown Eastside by providing too
many services for drug addicts.

Business owner Angela Giannoulis pointed to the City of Vancouver's
own estimation that 40 per cent of drug users that congregate in the
community live somewhere other than the Downtown Eastside.

For its part, the health board claims that the applications currently
submitted constitute a bare minimum of the health services needed in
the community. Other supporters of the proposals say that the
government's drug plan must go much further than simply providing
primary care to addicts. "This is only the beginning," Liberal MP
Libby Davies told the Permit Board on Monday.

Along with the application to set up the health contact centre, the
health board is looking to establish a LifeSkills Centre at 401 E.
Cordova, to expand two existing drug treatment facilities, and to
redesign the public space at the corner of Main and Hastings in order
to make it more difficult for drug dealers to operate there.

In recent years the "problems" of the Downtown Eastside have garnered
much attention from the media and academics.

Gordon Roe, an SFU doctoral student in anthropology, recently ran a
research centre in association with the Vancouver Area Network of
Drug Users (VANDU) at the New World Hotel on Dunleavy Street. Roe and
his co-workers used the facility to welcome addicts in off the streets
and to ensure that addicts' civil rights were being upheld in the
neighbourhood.

The program encountered a major stumbling block in January of this
year, however, when VANDU was evicted by its landlord. One of the
complaints against VANDU was that they let addicts use the building's
washrooms.

"People automatically assume that if there's a bathroom and there
happens to be a drug user in it then it's a safe injection site,"
says Roe.

The public hearings will resume Tuesday February 26 at Vancouver's
Plaza Hotel. At the start of the hearings 720 individuals had signed
up to speak, and this Tuesday will start with speaker number 656.