GIRLS NEED HOUSING, SERVICES OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE

To the editor:

Re: "Teenage housing nightmare part of growing Atira empire," Aug. 24.

While [columnist Mark] Hasiuk has already named some of those
responsible, the key culprit must be named: the Ministry of Children
and Family Development is failing these girls and neglecting to
provide them with the necessities of life, such as adequate housing.
The ministry's low-housing allowances already pay for teen girls'
rooms in derelict insect-infested hotels in the Downtown Eastside.
And, a representative of the child welfare ministry was on the
advisory panel of the Imouto project. The child welfare ministry must
answer for its compounding human rights failures that push girls into
the Downtown Eastside in the first place, for allowing this project to
go forward, and for failing to provide the resources that girls
struggling with addictions and poverty require: girl-only drug detox
that girls can enter without waiting, girl-only voluntary residential
drug treatment and transition houses specifically for girls. We must
demand housing and drug treatment services for ! abused and neglected
girls, outside of the Downtown Eastside, and based on standards of
dignity and freedom from abuse.

Asia Czapska

Vancouver