CRYSTAL METH EASIER TO FIND THAN HOUSING

When Judy Graves was in the phase of her life she now refers to as "young
and wild," back in the '60s, living in Vancouver was easy. The West End
still had rows of big houses, former homes of the wealthy, tattered at the
edges, with "room for rent" signs in their windows. Food was cheap and
unemployment insurance was a snap to get.

Graves grew up to become the Mother Teresa of the homeless on Vancouver
city staff. And Vancouver grew up to be anything but easy.

Her official title is coordinator of the tenant assistance program. She's
the one who walks the streets in the early hours of the morning a few times
a year, rousing people sleeping in doorways and under bridges to do a
census, to find out a bit about their circumstances, to give them advice on
finding a warm place to sleep. She was on the front line at the Woodward's
squat trying to separate the shit-disturbers from the people who needed
shelter.

She knows all the discreet places in the parks, stairwells and alleys where
people who live rough spend the night.

In a presentation to council on homelessness last week, Graves and the
city's senior housing planner, Jill Davidson, talked about how times have
changed.

Forty years ago, the few people in the city who were homeless were American
draft dodgers who camped out in Stanley Park for fear of being caught and
shipped south.

They are long gone. Also long gone are those old West End houses and their
rooms for rent, which were replaced with up-scale accommodations.

At the same time, the number of people looking for affordable housing has
risen considerably. The decision to deinstitutionalize mental patients
flooded streets and shelters across the country with people who were
neither capable of making their own way nor, in many cases, able to avoid
drug addiction. The supply of shelter beds increased but not nearly fast
enough to make up for the numbers of people being driven off the welfare
rolls and onto the streets by more stringent regulations.

Graves told council that as recently as half a dozen years ago, it was rare
to see a homeless person on the streets. Being homeless was a kind of
social taboo. Now it's commonplace.

According to Graves' most recent surveys, the number of homeless people in
the city has doubled in the past few years. During the winter, about 500
spend their nights outside. In the summer, it soars to over 1,200.

She also says the kinds of people who are on the street are changing. For
the first time, she's finding post-secondary students caught out by late
approval of student loans in the fall and a shortage of funds in the spring.

People who actually have jobs are homeless too, because they can't put
together enough money at one time to afford rent. In fact the number of
families now paying out more than 50 per cent of their income for housing
has doubled since 1991 and now stands at 41,000. And the number of young
adults, aboriginals and Asians among the homeless is on the rise.

There's something else: crystal meth, an extremely addictive synthetic
drug. Graves says it's the drug of homeless people across the country. It
blocks hunger and sleep and fear and destroys your brain. It's cheap and
available, which housing and welfare are not.

In spite of Graves' best efforts and a plan by the city to tackle
homelessness, it's likely the situation will continue to get worse. Federal
and provincial housing money has been cut off or diverted to other projects.

The province continues to make welfare, even for those who are eligible,
more difficult to get. And crystal meth is easier to find than those "room
for rent" signs back in the days when Judy Graves was young and wild.