ACTION JUST MORE ALLIANCE HOT AIR

The Vancouver Community Alliance continues to huff and puff, but still can't blow Philip Owen's plans to relieve the city's drug problems off course.

The Alliance, ironically made up of many of Owen's NPA supporters-Gastown and Chinatown business types and merchants and residents from Strathcona-has certainly managed to put a drag on the process. Two summers ago, the shrieks of protest from the Alliance over introducing more drug treatment facilities in the Downtown Eastside grew so shrill that Owen declared a 90-day moratorium on new drug related facilities. Given the timing of the moratorium, it didn't change much at all. But the Alliance was certainly feeling its oats.

What did make a difference was the Alliance appeal to the Vancouver Board of Variance. The Alliance wanted to stop five Downtown Eastside drug projects funded by the Vancouver-Richmond Health Board and approved by the city.

An appeal hearing held last April was a bit of a charade. Alliance members turned up for a few minutes of guerrilla theatre then split-fearing for their safety, they claimed. It cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The Alliance lost. But the very fact of the hearings slowed down planning and construction of two health clinics, a life skills centre, a contact centre and renovations of the public space in front of The Carnegie Centre at Hastings and Main. They were supposed to open by summer. Now we may see them up and running by the end of the year.

The latest stunt by the Alliance was reported last week. One-time NPA candidate and municipal law guy Jonathan Baker has been hired to launch a legal challenge to one of the projects, the contact centre for drug addicts planned for the Roosevelt Hotel at 166 East Hastings. He is apparently claiming the centre violates city zoning bylaws that require only commercial operations in that space.

At the risk of offending one of my favorite municipal windmill tilters, Baker and his client don't stand a chance. It's all ho-hum in the city's legal department. The court action has stopped nothing. Baker told a reporter the Alliance is not pushing for an early court date because construction at Roosevelt is not yet under way. He should check. Not only is it well under way, some workers' tools have already been stolen from the job site. Junkies, eh.

The Alliance is continuing to battle on, along with the two city councillors, Don and Daniel Lee, who are exclusively devoted to the interests of Chinatown and Gastown. Some folks have a ward system. Most of us don't.

They've all been lobbying the new Liberal government in Victoria and the old Liberal government in Ottawa to try and stop the drug policy initiative the two senior levels of government are funding. My sources say nobody is budging. Even the penny pinching people in Victoria are still committed to forking over whatever money was promised by the previous government.

What is still in question is Gordon Campbell's commitment to social housing. Decent housing is key to solving the drug problem. It's part of rehabilitation. As we heard at city council last week, Vancouver has benefited tremendously in the past decade by a combination of development levies imposed by the city when Campbell was mayor and money kicked in by the NDP, all targeted at low-cost or affordable housing.

As a result of those policies, Vancouver has avoided the massive amount of homelessness we see in Toronto, where affordable housing was never high on Mike Harris's common sense revolution to-do list. The provincial Liberals being run by the same Gordon Campbell are now putting all social housing projects on hold.

Not a problem for Don "The Kvetch" Lee. His complaint is that too much has been built you-know-where. Fortunately, when Lee and his Alliance pals stir up the air, everyone tends to ignore them. Expect that once the five projects are underway, drug courts and safe fixing sites won't be far behind.