NIMBYISM WON'T SOLVE DESPERATE SITUATION

Wealthier Areas Need To Start Sharing The Pain

Vancouver's police chief wants thousands of drug addicts to go somewhere else.

Many of them are mentally ill, most of them steal, and nobody wants
them in their communities.

For decades, the down and out have flocked to the city's Downtown
Eastside. The closure of psychiatric facilities and the advent of
crack cocaine have turned the area into a vortex that swallows up the
vulnerable and doesn't spit them out until they're dead.

In surrounding neighbourhoods, residents suffer incessant break-ins
to vehicles and houses, as addicts steal to pay for drugs. Taxpayers
shell out for extra policing.

Having the Downtown Eastside as a repository for troubled citizens
has been extremely convenient for the rest of the Lower Mainland, and
much of Vancouver. For the provincial government, it's a handy place
to shovel money, to foster an impression that something is being done.

Now Vancouver police chief Jim Chu is asking the people of the Lower
Mainland to share the pain.

"All communities need to take their share of supportive housing,
housing where people can rehabilitate from drug addiction," Chu says.

Concentrating housing and services for mentally ill people and drug
addicts in the open-air drug bazaar of the Downtown Eastside makes no sense.

"People end up there, and they die there," Chu says.

They come from all over Canada, other parts of B.C., other
neighbourhoods of Vancouver, drawn by the weather, the cheap housing,
the soup kitchens and, in many cases, the drugs. The area is a
magnet, and it's time to take it apart.

Late last month, provincial officials announced the creation of 600
units of supportive housing around B.C. In keeping with the
provincial agenda to contain our troubled British Columbians and new
arrivals where most of us don't have to look at them, more than half
of the new housing was in the Downtown Eastside.

No more supportive housing should go into the Downtown Eastside. The
thousands of addicts living there now must be encouraged to move
outside the city's core and be provided with treatment and support to
conquer their addictions and retake control of their lives.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan takes issue with Chu's request for other
communities to share the burden. Corrigan points out that Vancouver
receives the lion's share of economic benefits flowing into the Lower Mainland.

"When it's good, Vancouver wants it all," Corrigan says. "When it's
bad, it wants to share it."

Excellent point. Vancouver's wealthier neighbourhoods -- Kitsilano,
Shaughnessy, West Point Grey, Dunbar -- need to pull their weight
along with communities outside the city, such as Burnaby, Richmond
and West Vancouver.

But consider the response of West Vancouver Mayor Pamela
Goldsmith-Jones, when asked whether her municipality would take some
Downtown Eastside addicts. She said West Vancouver is doing its part
already, helping fund a youth safe house, a shelter and a planned
addiction-recovery house.

All three are in North Vancouver.