It appears B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is finally coming to the realization there is a problem verging on a crisis here - homelessness.
Last week, Mr. Campbell promised to boost the province's obscenely low monthly shelter allowance for its poorest people. It had been frozen for a dozen years and forced many out on the streets.
The week before, his Housing Minister announced a rental aid program for families with an annual income of $20,000 or less - helping many of them to avoid becoming homeless.
And there have been strong hints the next provincial budget will contain more homeless initiatives worth tens of millions of dollars.
The most troublesome cohort among the homeless has always been those with mental-health issues. The group's numbers began growing in the 1960s, when the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill became all the rage. During the 15-year period from 1960 to 1976, nearly two-thirds of Canada's 47,633 beds for the mentally ill were closed.
The policy was designed to free those with mental-health problems from the often inhumane, white-coated asylums made famous by the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Deinstitutionalization may go down as the worst public-health policy decision of the past 50 years. Not because it wasn't a noble idea, but because there was no support system in place to help these people once they were released.
Often, their new institutional addresses were prisons, rat-infested boarding rooms, streets or alleyways. At one point in the 1990s, a quarter of inmates in B.C. jails were mentally ill.
The Criminal Code became the de facto Mental Health Act.
In a speech last week, Mr. Campbell became one of the first politicians to acknowledge that deinstitutionalization has been a "failed experiment." While far from being specific, the Premier vowed to make long-overdue changes in the approach now taken with those suffering from mental problems.
"But I'm not suggesting we go back to what we had," he added.
I was glad to hear the Premier say this because that is exactly what many hope will now happen: that we'll lock the mentally ill up again.
That would be a mistake.
If Mr. Campbell is looking for some direction on this issue, he's in luck. Only last spring, a Senate social-affairs committee released a 500-page report on mental illness in Canada. Out of the Shadows At Last was the culmination of a three-year investigation led by Senator Michael Kirby. It is likely the most thorough and thought-provoking look at the problem that's ever been undertaken in this country.
The report contains several recommendations, but one of the first is the call to move remaining patients out of psychiatric institutions and into homes in their communities. Once there, the patients would have access to a wide range of publicly funded services and support programs that would help them survive from one day to the next.
"There is strong evidence that with the proper program supports in place, those living with serious mental illness cannot only live in the community but can lead fulfilling and productive lives," the committee reported.
In other words, restocking psychiatric wards is the last thing we should be doing.
The committee recommended a federal fund for the development of new, affordable and appropriate housing to accommodate the mentally ill already out on the streets, as well as those who would be released from psychiatric hospitals under its plan.
The committee estimated that 27 per cent of those living with mental-health problems - about 140,000 across Canada - are without adequate, suitable or affordable housing.
"It would be hard to overestimate the importance of adequate housing for people living with mental illness," the Senate report said, "in particular those whose illnesses are serious."
There it is again - housing.
If Mr. Campbell is going to attack the problem of homelessness in B.C. - if we're going to attack the problem as a country - then housing is going to have to be provided. There's no way around it.
The fact the Premier is now talking about the unique challenges posed by our homeless with mental-health problems is a critical development in the fight to get our citizens off the streets.
It's also a conversation that is long overdue. gmason@globeandmail.com
Gary Mason