IHA FIRES BACK AT CRITICS

The Interior Health Authority have no plans to let the controversial
St. Paul's Street transitional housing complex turn into a lawless
drug-house, say IHA top brass.

Wednesday morning the health authority called a press conference
responding to allegations levied at a community meeting held by the
St. Paul's Business Committee, which attracted more than 250
residents and business people the night before.

"The current site is selected blocks away from known downtown drug
areas or better known by the judicial process as the red zone and I
don't want the red zone to grow," said business frontman Jim Carta in
a speech in which he accused the IHA and city of everything from poor
fiscal planning to creating a haven for addicts from across the country.

In the weeks leading up to the Tuesday meeting, the IHA has
continually been questioned on the impact the project will have on
the neighbouring businesses, in particular whether the apartments
will draw a crowd of addicts (and dealers) similar to the Gospel Mission.

"This initiative is an apartment building," Ira Roness, IHA manager
of alcohol and drug services, clarified Wednesday. "It's not the
Gospel Mission. We're talking about serving a different population."

The facility in question is a 30-unit apartment block where homeless
and mentally ill Kelowna residents struggling with addiction can
begin reducing or eliminating their abusive habits by making
connections with counsellors and community services.

Residents will not be required to make the cold-turkey leap to an
abstinent lifestyle, but must attend counselling services aimed at
improving their health.

"We're going to gear services to people who really want to engage in
services, who want to see their counsellor, who want to improve their
health," said Roness.

Although he stopped short of calling information provided the
previous evening misleading, Roness said many of the harm
reduction-style addiction projects drawn to the public's attention
over the last three months have nothing to do with Kelowna's apartments.

"We want to make it very clear what we are doing and what we're not
doing. Part of the issue is that there has been information presented
to the community that talks about certain initiatives that we're not
incorporating within this model " Roness said.

"This is not a drop-in centre, it's not a place where people will
come and access services who are not living there.

"Those services are needed but this is not what this is.

"We're not encouraging free drug use. We're not encouraging drug use.
We're not giving out free alcohol.

"These are all things that have been raised by people in our
community and the record needs to be set straight that that is not
what we're doing."

St. Paul's business community stakeholders formed an ad hoc group
shortly after the project was announced, led by Carta, whose
financial planning firm Peak Investment Services lies blocks from the
proposed site, and developers Mel and Dina Kotler who are planning a
high-end condominium one block from the St. Paul's location.

They are questioning the site selected, whether the project can be
controlled and the harm reduction philosophy of allowing the addicts
participating to use drugs or alcohol without being evicted.

"It has always been my belief that no matter how difficult it is to
get off addictions, that the ultimate goal is to become drug free,"
said Carta, in his opening speech at Tuesday's public meeting.

"That was not the principle focus in designing this particular
program, so it leads me to believe (and the fact that we have CMHC
(Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.) involved in this project as a
silent partner on the federal side that this is very much a housing
project--a place where people will come and access services--a
project that's aimed at getting people off the street, but not
necessarily rehabilitated."

Pointing out that 75 per cent of Kelowna's homeless are also mentally
ill, Roness, director of mental health services Dr. Don Duncan and
senior medical health officer Dr. Paul Hasselback told reporters that
providing housing will provide the first step in efforts to curtail
addictive behaviour.

Their comments were a rebuttal to the Tuesday meeting's featured
speaker Dr. Colin Mangham, whose anti-harm reduction speech focused
on saving family values and preventing addiction in youth. "Harm
reduction has ceased to be a tool and has become a way of thinking,"
Mangham told the crowd.

"We have a false belief that all values are equal and I just would
say that the very key to a civilization's survival is transmission of
healthy values from generation to generation that support personal
responsibility, respect for one's self and others The (harm reduction
way of) thinking is pervasive, seductive and I would encourage you to
be watchful of it."

The Kelowna project is open to those 19 and above, although the
predominant age of homeless and addicted clients likely to use the
facility is roughly 40 years old.

Tuesday evening the St. Paul group called on members of a
Christian-based abstinence program to provide testimony as to
alternative approaches to dealing with addiction rehabilitation.