NEIGHBOURS SHOULD TALK

Add the Shepherds of Good Hope to the list of groups that do good work
in Ottawa but sabotage their own reputations with contemptuous
treatment of neighbours.

The Shepherds are devoted to helping the poorest Ottawans: the addicted, the
sick, and the homeless. They extend a kind hand to people most of us pass
with a shudder on our downtown streets. We might give one unfortunate a
loonie once in awhile; the Shepherds feed them, shelter them, and help them
get the professional treatment so many of them need. By their count, they
served more than 121,000 soup-kitchen meals last year, or 330 a day, and
provided half that many nights of shelter to people with nowhere else to go.

But for some reason, they've now chosen to follow the tawdry trail
blazed by doctors who opened a methadone clinic on Somerset Street
last summer and cleared by the Correctional Service of Canada's new
parole office on Elgin Street, which opened earlier this fall. They're
moving into a new building on Lowertown's St. Andrew Street, and they
didn't tell anybody they were doing it until it could be sprung on the
residents as a fait accompli.

They say they're consolidating two ramshackle residences for
recovering addicts with mental illnesses. They'll be able to keep
better control of one facility, they say, and they'll even be reducing
their capacity considerably. It's clear the Shepherds and their
clients will benefit, and they make a persuasive case that the change
will be a net improvement for Lowertown as a whole.

But existing tenants in the building the Shepherds are buying got most
of their information through gossip and rumour until recently. Even
the city councillor for the area, Georges Bedard, complains about
having been kept in the dark.

The Shepherds don't have to ask anyone's permission for their move.
But Shepherds president John Peters told Citizen reporter Juliet
O'Neill that they didn't tell anybody because they knew Lowertowners
would object. In a later interview, spokesman Rob Eady said the
Shepherds are now having problems with all the "misinformation" going
around. Perhaps these problems are connected?

Residents should give proposals for their neighbourhoods respectful
hearings and make constructive suggestions, rather than reflexively
opposing ideas for helping people they might consider undesirable. But
Lowertown people, like the people of Elgin Street and Somerset West,
never got the chance. The Shepherds should have soothed their
concerns, not dismissed them.

Instead, the fragile people they plan to move into 208 St. Andrew St.
will be met by many livid, resentful neighbours. The next time the
Shepherds do need public permission for a plan, they can expect
hostile scrutiny of every detail. The collateral damage from the
Shepherds' bombshell will hurt other such groups, too. They do good
work, but they'll betray you if it suits them, the Shepherds' secrecy
says -- better to keep them out of your neighbourhood.

The Shepherds, methadone clinics, and parole offices have to be
somewhere. Ottawa needs them. But their cavalier attitudes toward
their communities are hurting them, and ultimately the clients they
want to help. The Shepherds should begin repairs with a convincing
apology to their Lowertown neighbours.