PIONEERING DRUG-ADDICT CENTRE PROVES TOO POPULAR

'Overwhelmed' Quarters Undergoing Renovation

Some call it a success, some a failure, but everyone monitoring the city's
first health centre designated primarily for drug users says it has been
swamped by demand.

It was so swamped that the tiny centre in the heart of Vancouver's open
drug market on Hastings Street is now temporarily closed and is retooling
to be better equipped for the crowds of much-sicker-than-expected addicts
who flooded the place from the day it opened two months ago.

"We were overwhelmed with the numbers of people," says Heather Hay, the
director who is leading the efforts of the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority to develop an integrated health system for the Downtown Eastside.
"It was packed."

The centre, which is about the size of a large convenience store, had as
many as 87 people in it at times and staff found themselves dealing with
violent incidents that spilled in from the street or erupted between visitors.

The centre closed for renovations shortly after one visitor stabbed another
Feb. 5 over a remark about his race and sexual orientation. In an earlier
incident, a man hit over the head in a nearby alley with a pipe staggered
into the centre and collapsed, prompting rumours throughout the community
that someone had been murdered there.

But, in spite of the difficulties that are prompting changes in security,
staff training, food offerings (there won't be any once it reopens) and
bathroom monitoring, Hay and others see the crowded conditions as a sign of
success.

"It demonstrated that there's definitely a need. And we were seeing people
here who don't come to our other health services."

Hay said the centre will also work better once the other pieces of the
health program -- a life-skills centre near Oppenheimer Park, a health
centre at Princess and Powell and the health centre on Powell Street -- are
all open and running.

But others are less optimistic about the centre's first six weeks of
operation, although from quite different points of view.

Bryce Rositch, a Gastown architect and member of the centre's neighbourhood
liaison committee, said he and others are concerned that the centre doesn't
show any sign of achieving any of its goals.

"It's raising alarms," said Rositch, who is affiliated with a group,
Community Alliance, that has consistently taken a position opposed to
additional government services in the Downtown Eastside which support or
enable illegal drug use. "It was supposed to decrease the open drug dealing
and achieve increased civility. It hasn't decreased it and it might have
increased it. It was supposed to separate the addicts from the dealers, but
there seem to be more people in that area."

Rositch said he's heard the argument that it all takes time. "But that's
been the argument for everything here -- the street program, the needle
exchange." Even though those programs have now been running for years, they
still show no signs of success, he said.

On the opposite side of the fence, but also critical of the health centre,
is Ann Livingston of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, the first
group to propose that health authorities create a resource centre for drug
users as a way of tackling the epidemic of HIV, Hepatitis C and other
infections in the Downtown Eastside.

Livingston says it's no surprise to her that the centre is swamped. "Its
biggest problem is that it's only a little piece of what was originally
proposed. We have 5,000 active addicts down here who are very ill. All of
them have Hep C, 40 per cent have AIDS, they live in very substandard
housing. Then we opened a place that about 30 people can go into. You're
pretty much dooming a little facility like that by forcing it to solve
every social problem in the area."

She's not surprised that Rositch and others who share his views are
dismayed at the lack of change.

"Is it going to decrease homelessness? No, and neither is your living room.
It's too little."

Vancouver Police Inspector Ken Frail, who is responsible for the Downtown
Eastside, said there appears to have been more people on the street lately
around Main and Hastings, but he's not sure whether any of that is
attributable to the centre.

He noted that First United Church, which runs a food service and allows
people to sleep in its church pews, was closed for a week, which would have
pushed people to look for another service. As well, the past month was a
"five-week month" for people on welfare, which always produces extra crowds
on the street as more people run out of money between one welfare cheque
and another.

Frail agreed there have been learning pains, but said the contact centre is
doing exactly what he imagined it would do when he gave his support to it.
"We wanted the contact centre because we felt it would be a barometer for
the area."