ADDICTS, HOMELESS ON MAYORS AGENDA

Leaders Of Canada'S Major Cities Are Convening Here

Drugs, homelessness and the need for national programs to address them
will be at the top of the agenda when Canada's big-city mayors meet
here today.

"We need a national drug strategy. There will be no safe injection
sites here in Vancouver until there is a national strategy," and
Vancouver Mayor Phillip Owen, who will be asking the other 12 city
representatives present to support him in asking the federal
government to establish a program.

"We need a four-pillar approach: prevention, treatment, harm
reduction, and enforcement. At this point prevention and treatment are
non existent."

But Vancouver can not go it alone, he said.

If we do what Bud Osborn wants, we''' have 10,000 drug users in the
city within days."

Osborn, a Vancouver/Richmond health board member and downtown eastside
activist, has been a proponent of safe injection sites and wants to
eliminate laws that criminalize drug use.

46rom the other side of the country, Toronto Councilor Jack Layton
will be asking mayors to again declare homelessness a national
disaster. They endorsed the first declaration exactly a year ago. The
federal government has done little since and the problem has
intensified, said Layton, who has led a push to get Ottawa back into
social housing, a program it withdrew from in 1993.

"We've got a catastrophe. Two or three people die every week in
Toronto. We're having to open new hostels all the time. Calgary is
probably the next in line after Toronto, and Ottawa is picking up
steadily;" said Layton. A report form Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation released Thursday showed vacancy rates dropping and rents
rising across the country.

Layton want to see the federal government act on something the
Federation of Canadian Municipalities has asked for already; Put 2-2.5
billion into housing for low income people through and infrastructure
program. The existing infrastructure program puts money into roads and
public buildings, with the federal, provincial, and municipal
governments sharing the cost.

Owen is supporting all of those moves, even though Vancouver is
actually not seeing the kinds of dramatic rise in homelessness that
Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton are
experiencing.

"If they don't solve this problem nationally, we're going to face the
same crisis here" own said.

Vancouver is managing to hold some kind of line on the problem because
B.C. is one of the few provinces still putting money into building
housing for low-income people and because the has supported that with
it's own contributions of land and money;.

However, local housing activists say Vancouver is at risk of seeing a
similar kind of escalation in housing and homelessness problems.

"We're still seeing the visible homeless here and there's now a threat
from the new high tech developments planned for False Creek flats,
which will put pressure on the residential hotels near there," Said
Linda Mix of the Tenants Right Action Coalition. her group is backing
the call for federal action.