Ten steps to clean up a drug-infested neighbourhood with hundreds of homeless and mentally ill on the streets:
(1) Hold the Olympics in your neighbourhood and have the organizing committee kick in money for beds for street youth. The Vancouver Organizing Committee of the 2010 Olympics gave $250,000 to Covenant House, a youth shelter. The money was put together with $4.75-million from the B.C. government to pay for 32 beds for youth 16 to 22 years old. The funds will enable Covenant House to have 400 more young people in their shelter during the year, doubling their capacity over the next three years. VANOC still has $250,000 to be distributed.
(2) Increase government funds for an outreach program to connect the homeless with shelters, food and clothing. The government expanded the program to 47 communities from Cranbrook to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Outreach workers put 2,500 street people into housing in the past year and about 80 per cent remained housed.
(3) Put more money into temporary shelters to enable them to remain open 24/7. Longer hours allow street workers to bring more people to the shelter and for the shelter to offer better service to the homeless. The B.C. government promised $27-million over three years, starting April 1, 2007.
(4) Spend more on providing beds in shelters. Some examples: $5-million toward a $7.7 million centre in Duncan, B.C. for 15 emergency shelter beds and 24 transition housing units for adults with mental health issues and those at risk of homelessness; $3-million toward a facility in New Westminster with 20 beds for homeless men and 15 beds for prisoners on conditional release to the community; about $7-million toward costs of a facility in Langley with 30 emergency shelter beds, 25 transitional beds and with a drop-in meal service and support services in the same building.
(5) Buy skid-row residential hotels and convert them to transitional housing. The government has bought 17 hotels in Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster. The hotels, now under renovation, will re-open with someone at the front desk 24 hours a day and staff to connect tenants with health and social services.
(6) Build social housing on municipally owned land and put support services in the same facility. Vancouver is working on 12 projects with 1,200 units; 416 additional units in supportive housing are planned for Victoria, Kelowna and Surrey. “If a city has a piece of land, the province will pay all predevelopment costs right through to working drawings for construction to get it through the zoning and accelerate it,” Housing Minister Rich Coleman says. “We identify a non profit organization to manage the facility so they can be in at the ground floor in design and development. We capitalize the project when it is done so it is there for the non profit to run. We give it operating money.”
(7) Open a community court with alternatives to sentencing chronic offenders to jail, such as sending those with mental health issues to a mental health facility and those with addictions to a treatment program.
(8) Open new facility to accommodate mental health referrals from court. The 100-bed Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addictions opened its initial 30 beds last month. The government last month also announced a $10-million government grant to the B.C. Mental Health Foundation for community programs.
(9) Step up financing for addiction treatment centres far away from the Downtown Eastside. Some examples: a $650,000 grant to the Salvation Army's Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Rehabilitation Centre in Mission, B.C., the most comprehensive addiction recovery program in Greater Vancouver: a new facility in Surrey with 20 “sobering” beds, 24 to 30 “stabilization” units, and 35 to 40 housing units with outreach program, addiction services and a mental health clinic; $5.4-million also in Surrey for a 12-person recovery house for aboriginal men who completed addiction treatment program and conversion of a Howard Johnson motel to provide 39 transitional housing units and 15 supportive housing units.
(10) Apply for grants to celebrate province's 150th anniversary. Vancouver received $10-million to fix up facades of some derelict historic buildings in the downtown eastside neighbourhood and nearby communities and to update street furniture.
