SHAME ON ME, SHAME ON YOU

As a one-time resident of Scarboro, I probably overstated my
opposition to a neighbour's building plans so some monolith didn't
block one ray of my sunshine. I rallied some of the many
lawyers-per-square inch in the community to save the school even
though it was desperately close to the bottom of the usage range. I
know I didn't want the LRT close by, to the surprise of my Toronto
friends who tried to convince me this was value-add. And by writing a
cheque to then just plain old resident-cum-single-issue crusader, John
Mar, I definitely participated in the NIMBY kibosh of the halfway
house that was supposed to go in blocks away.

Like everyone else in the big city, I'm scared of being hip-checked
into a C-Train. I worry that bottle pickers are bogeymen, squeegee
kids are vampires, and those beggars who act as gatekeepers every time
I drive out of my inner-city community are going to smash my window
with their bare, rough hands and touch me. I gather my teenage
chickadees protectively when I perceive a threat, real or imagined,
and want them to wear a helmet when they cross the street, you know,
in case a meteor falls.

So it is with huge sympathy and even bigger guilt that I am now
critical of communities that don't want low income housing, teen
halfway houses or methadone clinics in their 'hood. I was . . . we
were . . . wrong.

These facilities fix problems. In Scarboro we argued that the
cumulative effect of so many of these halfway houses, shelters and
drop-in spots already in our vicinity meant we had done our part --
but in truth, we had done nothing at all. In the more than a decade
that I lived there,

there wasn't one whiff of an actual problem coming from those places.
Most of us didn't even know they were there. The fact that we had to
trot out an American expert to tell a committee what could happen, was
kind of proof of the fact that nothing had.

We're the Les Nessman of citizens, drawing a made-up line around our
20 square blocks as if it's some kind of fort. We act like we'll be
protected from the bad that happens out there by those other people as
long as we don't let them into our tree house. It's as if we think
evil doesn't take the bus, or cross the Deerfoot; we have an invisible
cloak of invincibility. We're the communities in the plastic bubble.

Who are we kidding? Drug dealers already do home delivery. That
includes in Springbank, Mount Royal and Tuscany --no mansion, bungalow
or trailer park is immune. Methadone clinics, which actually prevent
drug use, aren't just for the icky homeless. They're for the oil crowd
that had way too much money when a hit of coke cost less than a double
of single malt at a tony lounge. They're for plumbers, teachers,
insurance agents, sales clerks and soccer Moms. Some got hooked on
painkillers after an illness or injury. Some have a mental illness.
Maybe some are just plain weak, and yes, some are wobbly and smelly.
There but for the grace of God go any one of us; there goes Michael
Jackson.

We don't just live in our community -- we live in the whole city.
Every time we take the bus, go shopping, see a movie, take the kids to
their hockey game, we step out of our protected zone and wade into the
dark morass of the infected, the perverse, the poor, the addicted.
Them. That's the world we live in and if that's what we fear--we
better not think we become safe at an arbitrary crossroad.

What gives us the right? We didn't elect hysterical, selfish,
irrational people, and I include myself in this category, to decide
how our city gets planned. This is your city. My city. Not just a mini
made-up sub-city of loud/rich/ organized isolationists called a
"community." By reacting to perception instead of reality, to fear
instead of knowledge, we let a few people decide for a million others
what services there will be in Calgary. Make no mistake; Braeside's
'win' is our loss. The 500 people who depend on that service don't
disappear. They're still among us. They are us.

Individuals who make up a community can't be expected to step beyond
themselves and sacrifice what is really fake peace of mind to do

what's right for the many. We're not after all, a herd of deer. A
community's point of view is in many ways by nature adversarial to
what's better for the rest of the city. But I do expect City
leadership not to roll over and play dead every time someone kicks up
a fuss. I want bona fide planners to take some control over what has
become a kind of "Lord of the Flies" approach to civic planning.

There's no right or easy answer, but here's a start. Do we need this
service? Yes. Is the facility zoned for it? Yes. Then get on with it.
Put it there, and then give the clinic some support so they don't have
to flap in the wind of the angry. Consult and liaise but don't ask
permission because a community will never cheerfully agree. Somebody
has to be the grown-up. Somebody has to be the big thinker.

What happened in Braeside, Scarboro and everywhere else they've
managed to keep social services out, is at best bullying, and at
worst, flat-out vigilantism. Apparently that's the rule of law in this
town. Shame on me. Shame on us.