FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE-TO-HOUSE, IT'S A REAL HOME

Refuge From The Storm: Municipal Housing Offers A Safe Haven While The
Addicted Cope With Their Demons

The city-owned Stanley Hotel in downtown Vancouver, opened more than two
years ago as a last resort for difficult-to-house people, is a haven for
crystal-meth addicts, say medical authorities, police -- and drug users
themselves.

The single-room-occupancy hotel is, according to one resident, "ground
zero" for meth abuse among street kids.

Karlos is 35 and has lived in the hotel since it opened. He claims that at
least 75 per cent of residents are using the drug.

That comes as little surprise to Mark Townsend, spokesman for the
non-profit Portland Hotel Society that runs the Stanley, though he puts the
percentage of users at about 40.

"When people are hard to house, one of the issues they have is crystal-meth
addiction," says Townsend, 43.

For Karlos, sitting on a bed in his tiny three-metre-by-three-metre room,
the Stanley is the one place he's found respite.

His room is stuffed with a collection of toy cars in glass display cases,
bikes and bike parts are piled by the door and the front grille of a police
car hangs on a wall. It smells of stale cigarettes and musky weed. The
sound of slamming doors and thumping bass lines is constant.

"The living conditions are deplorable, but it's nice to be part of a
group," Karlos says with an easy smile. "I can go to sleep and leave my
door unlocked. Nobody bothers me. In the middle of the hurricane, the calm
is at the centre of that."

The harsh reality of life in the Stanley Hotel highlights a growing problem
as the abuse of methamphetamine soars across B.C.

Townsend says his society is financially hamstrung when it comes to
offering much more than four walls and a bed to those who live at the
Stanley. The society receives no government money and has no outside source
of revenue other than the $325 each resident pays in monthly rent.

Townsend admits that shelter is not a solution in itself.

"The issue is recovery. You can't force people to recover," he says.

"People want to feel loved and they want the pain to go away. What we're
trying to do is make people as comfortable as possible. These people
deserve a roof over their heads."

One doctor who devotes part of his time to fighting the Stanley Hotel
scourge is Bill MacEwan, a 49-year-old psychiatrist and director of the
University of B.C.'s schizophrenia program.

MacEwan, who also works at St. Paul's Hospital, is a specialist in
drug-induced psychosis. He began making weekly visits to the hotel in the
heart of Gastown and other similar hotels in the area, last year. There
were no other doctors willing to go there, and St. Paul's was eager to stem
its flood of drug-addicted patients.

At times, MacEwan says, 40 to 50 per cent of patients on the ward were
struggling with mental illnesses and addiction, many under the influence of
crystal meth.

MacEwan's goal is to encourage meth addicts at the Stanley to volunteer for
treatment before they become psychotic, and to keep former patients from
becoming "frequent flyers" at St. Paul's.

Couple the paranoia and aggressive tendencies of the addicts with mental
illness, malnourishment and a profound lack of basic life skills and
MacEwan's job is tough.

He chose the Stanley because "no one else would go there . . . The Stanley
is a very dangerous place. When I walked in there, it curled my grey hair.
You look at the thing and say, 'How can this exist in our city?'"

But if the Stanley did not exist, the people who live behind its scuffed
and graffiti-covered blue doors would be on the street, he says.

"They are not able to care for themselves. There is nowhere else they can
stay. With these individuals, the devil is so strong, the [addiction to]
meth is so strong. These aren't guys you're going to cure overnight, if ever."

On a walkaround last week, MacEwan chatted with one of his more hopeful
clients -- a schizophrenic meth addict (a self-described "investigator")
who continues to use the drug but is improving after hospitalization.

Another resident refused to answer MacEwan's knock and, after a few words,
refused to talk at all.

City Coun. Sam Sullivan concedes that a city-owned hotel catering to
crystal-meth addicts doesn't look good and "there are certainly people in
the community that wish something different would happen there."

But he echoes MacEwan and Townsend: If not the Stanley, then what?

As bad as it seems now, the situation at the Stanley has actually improved
over the past eight months, says

Const. Cameron Hemphill, a 34-year-old beat cop.

"That said, the centre of that [meth-using street and youth] community in
the Downtown Eastside is out of the Stanley Hotel," Hemphill says, and the
issues with meth in that area "radiate" from the hotel.

Before police and Stanley staff were able to evict several key players in
the downtown drug scene, Hemphill and his partner would frequently find
themselves in the cluttered hallways of the hotel, dealing with fights,
mischief and break-ins.

The call load was so high (at least once a night, with half of the calls
related in some way to crystal meth), police had to do something.

"It was dangerous. We made it a point to be in there, not because they
called us, but as a presence, at least once a shift," Hemphill says.

Working with Portland staff, the officers and society established basic
ground rules that have gone a long way to calming the environment.

Still, "a lot of [the problems at the hotel] is the crystal meth."

Drug users, living in their tiny and bizarrely cluttered rooms, have "lost
basic living skills," says Hemphill. And, because of the long-term effects
of meth abuse on cognitive skills and basic brain chemistry, "some of these
people will never learn."

Dr. Ian Martin, founder of a crystal meth anonymous group at Three Bridges
Community Health Centre, is a key player in provincewide efforts to reduce
the drug's growing impact.

"In a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom of a much larger problem," he
says.

"There are clearly not enough resources to help those affected."