MORE CO-OPERATION AND LESS SQUABBLING IS NEEDED TO CLEAN UP THE
DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE

Here we go again. The United Nations Population Fund has declared
Vancouver to be a "breathtakingly gorgeous" paradise on earth. But,
oh, the Downtown Eastside.

A feature story attached to a population fund report on urban
development calls the area "a two-kilometre-square stretch of decaying
rooming houses, seedy strip bars and shady pawnshops" and "one of
North America's most blighted and drug-infested neighbourhoods."

The story says Vancouver is paying the price "that a city -- any city
- -- will pay if it fails to support, plan for or house an expanding
population of the urban poor. What makes the Downtown Eastside so
different is that it is located in one of the most prosperous cities
in one of the world's most prosperous countries."

There is sadness amid the sparkle. We agree. It is the contrast that
grabs you when you see this sad, blighted area in an otherwise
sparkling city.

Increasingly, as the 2010 Winter Games draw near, visitors to the city
will include the world's news media. They will be looking for angles,
and the story of this black hole of poverty, addiction and
homelessness is a hard one to miss. Their impressions will, in part,
shape how the world sees Vancouver for decades to come.

Some Olympic cities have dealt with similar problems -- though rarely
on such a scale -- by sweeping the unsightly poor off the streets,
housing them temporarily somewhere out of sight and doing a cosmetic
cleanup of the blighted area.

That is, of course, the wrong way to go. The means are available to
greatly reduce the chaos in the Downtown Eastside by delivering
low-cost housing, adequate levels of social assistance and access to
it, real help for the psychiatric patients who have been abandoned on
the streets, and implementation of all elements of the four-pillars
drug strategy.

There are signs of a growing consensus that we can and will tackle
those priorities. Many steps have already been taken. We will discuss
them in more detail on Monday.

But in the meantime, the provincial government may want to rein in
B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman. Coleman's impatience with
obstacles to affordable housing developments that are often erected by
local municipalities is a welcome change in the housing debate. But
his musing about relocating some of the Downtown Eastside's residents
to other B.C. communities shows a disregard for the civil liberties of
the people involved.

Besides, without dealing with the root causes of homelessness, nothing
would be gained. A solution to Vancouver's problem that creates
problems for other municipalities is no solution at all.

Coleman also needs to show more concern for meeting housing goals
related to the Olympics. The housing minister has said he will not be
bound by "some goal set up by a bunch of people sitting around a table."

Coleman should recall that "that bunch of people" and the goals they
set were part of Vancouver's successful bid for the 2010 Olympics, and
that they included the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, the
City of Vancouver, the federal government and his own provincial government.

What's holding back at least some of those goals is lack of federal
and provincial funding. Admittedly, some Vancouver councillors and
affordable housing activists are playing politics with the issue.

Despite the rhetoric from all sides, the tentative plan reported
recently in The Sun to redevelop the Little Mountain housing site is a
good sign that on at least some levels the province is working with
Vancouver officials.

We need the same co-operative approach to the endemic problems of the
Downtown Eastside. Otherwise, it will remain a monument to the failure
of our rich society to clean up our own backyard and a huge black eye
for B.C. when the world visits in 2010.

Monday: Almost imperceptibly, progress is being made.