A CHILLING TREND SPREADS AMONG OUR NEIGHBOURS

Not In Anybody's Backyard Movement Branches Out To Wherever Cities
Want To Put Addiction Treatment Centres

There is something chilling in the idea behind the group called Not in
Anybody's Backyard, which has spawned a chapter in Richmond to oppose
an addiction treatment centre.

If the NIABYs are serious about not allowing treatment facilities in
anyone's backyard, what's their plan for all of the broken people who
desperately want to return to something approaching normal? Let them
die in the streets? Drop them in the ocean with a heavy anchor and
then go home to a good, old-fashioned family dinner?

The idea that addicts aren't worthy of treatment seems particularly
perverse this week after we've all read or heard what the relatives of
Robert Pickton's six murder victims had to say about their loved ones.
I can't help but see those dead women's faces and hear the voices
lamenting their deaths when I think of the devastation that
masquerades as a neighbourhood in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Most of the more than 50 women police acknowledge are "missing" from
there were addicts. Many were mothers, all were daughters. Many could
not escape the horrors of addiction because when they wanted treatment
there was no bed available. The lack of treatment facilities is the
gravest failing of Vancouver's much-vaunted four pillars plan.

It's important to realize that most of the missing women aren't from
Vancouver. Like most of the people who wash up in the Downtown
Eastside, that's only where they last lived. They come from all over.

There was such an acute shortage of treatment in Richmond in 2004 that
the city's substance abuse committee report said Richmond residents
were "regularly" sent to treatment services in Vancouver where "they
are frequently thrust into the harsher and more hostile environment of
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside."

Today, Richmond has only nine treatment beds and they're only for men.
Turning Point Society, which has been in the recovery business for 25
years and claims a 75-per-cent success rate, runs the facility. In all
of its years of operation, it has never had a complaint about traffic,
attracting drug dealers or increasing the crime rate.

Which brings us back to Richmond's 11,000 NIABYs who have signed a
petition opposing Turning Point's application to build a treatment
facility for 32 people. The plan includes two houses -- one for up to
10 men, the other for up to 10 women in a structured, support and
recovery program. Behind them, Turning Point plans to build 11 suites,
which would provide affordable housing mainly for women with children
and infants, who have graduated from the structured program.

The centre is in a residential area. But the site is zoned
institutional and, up until recently, there was a group home there for
troubled teens.

According to Richmond's own statistics, there are 130 Richmond
residents on a waiting list for detox and rehabilitation. So, despite
what the NIABYs are saying, far from busing recovering addicts in from
Vancouver, the flow has been and continues to go the other way.

Perhaps the NIABYs ought to change their name to Not in Anybody's
Backyard Unless They Live in Vancouver. Or, maybe Keremeos because its
vice-chair Ernie Mendoza wrote favourably to Richmond council about a
planned 42-bed facility in a "remote area" in Keremeos, noting that,
"Confinement and isolation are positive factors in making sure its
residents submit themselves to treatment."

If you want to know more about what NIABY-Richmond (ironically, it's
also goes by the name Caring Citizens of Richmond) has to say, it's
got a video on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uF-89z2Eek=related
) and a website ( www.niaby-richmond.com )

They say the same stuff about bringing chaos to the neighbourhood,
drug dealers, more traffic and crime that NIABYs said before the
Triage Emergency Service and Care Society opened a similar-sized
facility on Fraser Street at 41st Avenue. (Since Triage opened in
August, neighbours report that things are going fine.)

It's what the NIABYs are saying about a proposed recovery house at
Dunbar and 16th on the sacred ground of Vancouver's west side.

It's what Coquitlam's NIABY mayor and council are saying about plans
to put housing for the disabled, mentally ill and developmentally
disabled in the Riverview land, which -- hello -- the province bought
in 1904 to house the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.

Many NIABY supporters in Richmond are Chinese, as the majority of
Richmond residents are Chinese. But that brings us to the ugliest
underbelly of the Richmond NIABYs.

Anyone who disagrees with them is apt to be labelled a racist even
though SUCCESS, one of the most influential Chinese organizations in
the Lower Mainland, was a member of the committee that urged more
addiction treatment services.

Still, any whiff of the R-word and people run for cover. Anybody who
needed a reminder of the power of ethnic politics got one when more
than 1,000 people -- mainly Indo-Canadian -- blocked the deportation
of Laibar Singh and vowed never again to vote Conservative.

Municipal elections are less than a year away, a federal election
could be any day soon, and the next provincial election is May 17,
2009.

But this is the time for leadership and education. Politicians and
aspiring ones would do well to heed the words of Ontario human rights
commissioner Barbara Hall, who recently wrote a response to NIABYs in
her province:

"Efforts to keep out persons with disabilities, including mental
illness, are no less offensive than preventing racialized persons from
moving into a neighbourhood."

Addiction isn't a crime. It isn't something people choose. It is a
debilitating illness that affects people at all levels of every
society and costs us all dearly.