BUYING HOTEL FOR DESPERATE WOMEN A CHRISTIAN ACT

A local Christian businessman has opened the only hotel in the Downtown
Eastside catering to drug addicted and mentally ill women.

Called the Vivian, the 24-room building is on the 500-block of East Cordova
Street in the heart of the city's low-end prostitute stroll.

Leslie Remund, shelter manager for Triage Emergency Services and Care
Society, which will operate the facility, said the building was recently
purchased by businessman David Ash.

"He called me and said I've bought you a building," said Remund, who has
worked in the Downtown Eastside for the past nine years.

The publicity shy Ash and fellow Christian Hart Molthagen already operate a
single room occupancy hotel in the Downtown Eastside as part of a "social
entrepreneur" movement among some Vancouver Christians.

Remund said Ash has supported Triage since his mother, Vivian, died alone
in a rooming house in Halifax in 1999, after losing contact with her family.

"He understands that substance use is a way to cope," Remund said.

The Vivian, which will open Dec. 1, will have 24-hour staffing paid for in
the first year by Ash. The income from renting the rooms out for $325 a
month will be used by Triage to pay for building maintenance.

Remund is hopeful that after the first year of operation, the provincial,
federal or municipal government will pay staffing costs.

The rooms in the hotel have been painted by local home school students,
while female carpentry students in special vocational programs built the
beds. Three men living in the building when Ash bought it were placed in a
B.C. Housing facility.

Remund defended opening up a rooming house for women on a prostitute
stroll, citing a U.S. model called Housing First, which advocates the
creation of transitional housing in communities the residents are already
familiar with.

"You try and house them where they are at bio-socially, then try and create
a continuum of housing," she said. "Right now women living with complex
health and social issues and who have histories of chronic housing
instability are choosing the street over unsafe hotel rooms."

The women will collectively decide if they will be permitted to use drugs
at the hotel and bring guests into their rooms.

Remund said more marginalized women live in the Downtown Eastside now than
a decade ago, and overall their health and living conditions have worsened.
HIV runs rampant among them.

"We are seeing way more women in the community and I was surprised by the
number of women that met the criteria to get into the Vivian," Remund said.

Those criteria include repeat visits to shelters and overlapping problems
with mental illness, drug addiction and health.

"We expect to see survival type behaviours," she said.

Remund believes once the women are living in the hotel, they will be more
easily channelled toward social services, mental health teams, treatment
centres and detox programs.

Mayor Larry Campbell will open the hotel Tuesday.

Ash, who is a Pentecostal Christian, said he paid $460,000 for the Vivian
building and that it was done purely for charity.

"This was not bought as a real estate investment. It's a way to give back
to the community," said Ash, who is a professional real estate investor and
venture capitalist.

Ash said that if and when the government decides to fund the staffing at
the Vivian, he will purchase another hotel in the neighbourhood and hand it
over to Triage.