PROPOSED RECOVERY HOUSE WORRIES RESIDENTS

Christian Organizations Focus on East Side Neighbourhood

The city's director of planning will seek city council's advice
before deciding on a proposed 10-bed alcohol and drug recovery house
at 49th and Fraser.

Brent Toderian will also hear concerns of area residents and
businesses at a planning and environment meeting at city hall Feb. 14.

Planning staff received 17 letters from citizens opposed to the
proposal, and petitions from the South Hill (Fraser Street) Business
Association, the B.C. Khalsa Darbar Society, the Universal Buddhist
Temple and the community in response to 141 notifications distributed
to neighbouring property owners. Staff heard concerns about crime and parking.

A resident who lives five doors from the proposed location at 655
East 49th doesn't want to see another drug and alcohol recovery
treatment in the area. "I got a list of all the residential alcohol
and drug recovery places in Vancouver, of which there are 11, and
this proposed one is the twelfth one," said Jenny Chin Peterson, a
principal of a Vancouver elementary school outside the area. "This
would be the third one along the Fraser corridor, so it'll be the
third one in two miles... There's nowhere else in the city that I
could see, after I mapped it out, that there's that many condensed in
one area."

However, a city staff report states: "The proposed location at 655 E.
49th Ave. is in the Sunset local area, which has among the lowest
number of [special needs residential facility] beds in the city, with
1.4 beds per 1,000 population, compared to a city average of 10.4
beds per 1,000."

The Place of Refuge Society, a Christian organization sponsored by
five area Mennonite Churches, has applied for the facility's
development permit. The Hope for Freedom Society, also a Christian
organization that runs six similar houses in Port Coquitlam, is to
operate the program that is based on alcoholics and narcotics
anonymous. The facility would be staffed 24 hours. Facility
residents, who must be drug and alcohol-free for at least 90 days,
could stay up to 13 weeks or longer.

The Place of Refuge Society's volunteer chair, Erich Krause, and his
wife, Gerda, bought the property on East 49th. The society is to buy
it from them at cost after a fundriasing drive. Krause can't
understand why residents aren't pleased that a home for people
committed to abstinence will replace the boarding house that was
there before. He said it previously functioned as a crack house used
by sex trade workers.

Chin Peterson agrees that the area has been plagued by crime and drug
dealing. But said she wasn't familiar with problems stemming from the
proposed facility site. She wonders how recovery house staff are
going to ensure tenants are drug-free without onsite drug testing,
and about the wisdom of placing the facility two blocks from a
methadone clinic.

Chin Peterson doesn't doubt that the Hope for Freedom Society has
seen success in Port Coquitlam, but she presumes their success
occurred in a more stable community. "This community is a community
that is struggling."

If the facility is approved, the Hope for Freedom Society will be
required to name a liaison person, likely a staff person, to whom
neighbours can direct concerns. It will also have a time-limited
permit, likely a year.

Chin Peterson worries if the facility fails, the building will revert
back to a rooming house.

Kelly Gill, who lives next to the proposed site and owns four
commercial properties on Fraser, is annoyed by what he sees as an
inadequate notification process. The city notifies land owners
identified on its tax rolls, not tenants. Gill expects the facility
will drive down property values and put a greater strain on the
already insufficient parking in the area.

The director of planning is expected to make his decision within two
weeks of Thursday's 2 p.m. city hall meeting.