HOMELESS WONDER WHETHER NEW FUNDING WILL TRICKLE DOWN

Life's not so bad for Howie at the moment, mostly because he's back on
methadone, a prescription drug that can make life functional again for
people addicted to heroin. Victoria police needed him cleaned up so he
could testify as a witness at a murder trial, so they covered the
$300-a-month cost of the methadone until Howie could get on income
assistance and have his prescription funded. He was glad for the help.
But every welfare day reminds him of how quickly it could all change.
Time's already up on the two months of assistance he was approved for,
and he's not going to get another cheque unless he comes up with a
doctor's letter declaring him unfit to work. No welfare cheque, no
meth-adone -- simple as that.

"When welfare first cut me off two years ago, I had to go back to
selling drugs to try to pay for my methadone," says Howie. "I get
depressed at the end of every month thinking about how I'm going to
have to deal with them again. I don't want to go back to selling."

Like many on the street, Howie keeps up with the news on homelessness,
and knows all about the Mayor's Task Force I served on, which looked
into solutions for problems downtown. As the day unfolds, several
people on the streets mention to me the $7.6 million that the
Vancouver Island Health Authority has put on the table, and speculate
about whether any of it will trickle down to them.

"One thing that's needed for sure is a different way of getting a
detox bed," notes a rumpled, weary-looking fellow seated in the Our
Place courtyard. He's been addicted for 30 years and homeless for a
decade.

"They put you on a wait list and tell you they'll call. But if you're
homeless, you don't have a phone. I leave the number for Our Place,
but if I'm not here when they call, that's it -- I'm off the list."

Out in front of city hall, Terry Cound is logging his customary two
hours of daily protest, which he's been trying to get in every
morning. Wrapped in a thick layer of old coats and sweaters, he pushes
his overloaded shopping cart back and forth along the sidewalk, hoping
Mayor Alan Lowe will come out one day to talk to him.

At 48, Cound is an old man in street terms, and feeling it. He's lived
on the streets for the better part of 25 years -- clean and sober for
the last two, but still no housing in sight. He used to be on welfare,
but gave it up a few months ago after a frustrating attempt to qualify
for disability assistance.

"They were shooting too many things at me, too many forms," says
Cound. "Living in a doorway is less stressful, to tell you the truth."

Old-timers like Cound report dramatic changes on Victoria's streets in
recent years. Drugs like crystal methamphetamine are ramping up the
violence, they tell me. Homeless people from Vancouver are also
starting to show up, displaced from their own city by aggressive
"cleanup" efforts underway in the Downtown Eastside.

Some worry the sheer number of people and problems on the streets is
desensitizing those on the front lines of the issue.

"Take Royal Jubilee Hospital, for instance," says Dave, homeless for
12 years. "There are some real angels up there, don't get me wrong.
But a lot of the people at the hospital are becoming so damaged from
what they're seeing that they're losing their compassion."

Closing the big mental institutions in the 1990s definitely
intensified the Victoria street scene, notes Dave and his friend
Steven over a coffee at the Honeybun cafe. We've taken a table close
to the window, the better to keep an eye on Dave's shopping cart
outside. Steven, who is wearing two baseball hats, says Dave is the
smartest guy on the streets.

"When I first got here, they were closing down all the mental
institutions. Up until that point, those people had been deemed
incapable of caring for themselves. But the government just went ahead
and changed the regulations so they could deem that they were
[capable]," says Dave.

Asked why he remains homeless, Dave says he can't get out from under
his depression.

"Three or four things in the right sequence is all it takes to put you
out here. Once you're on the street, you get caught up in a cycle -- a
rut. Everything around you reinforces that rut," he says.

"And there's so much psychosis out here. Even at Our Place -- and God
bless Reverend Al for trying -- you end up surrounded by users who are
on their way either up or down. The energy in that place is so
negative that I can't even go there much anymore. You could walk in
having just won the lottery and be contemplating suicide within minutes."

Spend any time in the downtown and you'll quickly figure out the "hot
spots." The sidewalk outside the Streetlink emergency shelter.
Cormorant Street near the needle exchange. The railway station,
although not so much anymore now that the city has dug up the bushes
where people used to hide. And lately, Centennial Square, which is
developing into the default hangout for people rousted from other locations.

On duty outside the public washroom in the square, city commissionaire
Mac MacDonald has seen it all. His job is to keep things civil in the
washroom, one of the only facilities in the downtown available to
people on the streets. The yellow lighting is supposed to make it hard
for people to see their veins well enough to inject drugs, but
MacDonald says some people will trace their veins with a pen before
going in.

He sounds like a hard-liner at first, talking about the "crackers and
the whackers" and the garbage and disorder they bring with them. But
pretty soon he's joking good-naturedly with those lining up, all of
whom he seems to know by name. It's plain to see he likes them, and
that the feeling is mutual.

"If they hang around too long or if there's any trouble, I call the
police, the police come, and everybody takes off. Then they're back in
10 minutes," says MacDonald, who has been pulling 12-hour shifts
outside the washroom since April.

"They've got no place to go, and they've lost their ability to realize
that most of society doesn't want to see them using drugs. But a lot
of them have really interesting stories. There's one guy who used to
be a major-league baseball player [Frank Williams], and now he's on
the street drinking rubbing alcohol mixed with water."

As nightfall comes, MacDonald finds himself managing an
ever-lengthening lineup -- one that has to be carefully sorted by
gender, behaviour and level of desperation if scenes are to be
avoided. MacDonald gives people five minutes in the washroom and then
checks up on them: "How's things going in there?"

A mother and her small child -- in a zebra costume, headed for a
Halloween event at McPherson Theatre -- emerge from the parkade on the
square and make their way past the jittery group. Somebody waiting for
the bathroom calls out a reminder to the group to hide their drug use.
"We don't want kids to be seeing any of this, guys," he says.

Over on Cormorant Street, I find a sick and shivering group of young
addicts huddled in the doorway of AIDS Vancouver Island. While they
don't know it yet, this will be one of the last nights they'll find
shelter there: Feeling pressure from the neighbourhood, AVI is gating
off its alcoves.

A block away in the shadow of the Health Ministry building, young
people gather for marijuana activist Ted Smith's weekly Hempology 101
group, and a rowdy game of "Reach for the Pot." The party atmosphere
is incongruous with the sombre scene playing out in the cramped doorway.

Bad things had happened earlier in the day at a nearby cafe. One of
the drug users who frequent the AVI needle exchange on Cormorant
Street was spotted injecting at an outside cafe table. Blood had
spattered across a chair. The ensuing uproar left the young people in
no doubt as to their pariah status in the neighbourhood.

I speak with one of the men in the group, a skinny and hollow-eyed
28-year-old who at first assumes I'm there to buy drugs. What needs to
happen? I ask him. With no hope in sight at that moment, he wishes
only for a corner to hide in.

"Every time we find a place away from the public where people won't
have to see us sticking needles in our arms, somebody cages it up so
we can't go there anymore," he says. "So then we're back out in the
open and they're giving us shit -- chasing us around, giving us tickets.

"There's no place left for us to go. Somebody's going to have to turn
a blind eye somewhere if they don't want to have to look at us."