Michelle Fortin knew immediately that the very idea of housing at-risk young women in the Downtown Eastside would, to use her word, be incendiary. But that didnt stop the executive director of Watari Youth Community and Family Services from approaching Janice Abbott with the idea. Abbott runs Atira, the organization that, among other things, builds and operates non-profit housing for women in that neighbourhood. Fortin wanted Abbott to find a space for those hard-to-house young women and Fortins staff would oversee their care.
Fortin says her volunteer board was prepared for the worst: My board is ready for the shit to hit the fan. But this is a population that needs our attention. From that deal with Abbott, and with the approval of city council, a project called Imouto Housing for Young Women was developed right in the bowels of the area at 120 Jackson. Its designed to house 18 women between the ages of 16 and 24.
The money to buy the property was originally lent by Vancity Credit Union. (For full disclosure, while Vancity is no longer involved in the project, I am on the Vancity board.) Vancity was replaced as a lender by B.C. Housing and that created another controversy. Abbott happens to be married to Shayne Ramsay, B.C. Housings CEO. And even though Ramsay signed a letter at the time the deal went through creating an information wall between himself and Abbott, some still see a conflict.
Then, as regular readers of the Courier know, there was the reaction from a number of voices in the neighborhood outraged at the idea that these young and vulnerable women would be housed in a neighbourhood riddled with pimps and drug dealers. Why werent we consulted before the city approved this?
How could this happen?
First lets look at who these young women are. The project is exclusively targeting women who already live in the area. These are not young women who ran away from home because their daddy told them they couldnt go to the Saturday dance, Abbott says. They are women who have had traumatic lives and probably fled from predators where ever they came from. They likely have been sexually exploited and suffer from substance abuse.
And, what was demonstrated in the most recent homeless count, while other groups of homeless appear to be declining in numbers, this cohort is growing.
A couple of more points: These women are too damaged to be accepted in higher barrier shelters such as Covenant House. And while there are undoubtedly predators in this neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside is where these young women feel most welcome. Besides, most of them have achieved the age of majority and can live wherever they want.
If thats the case, then who is supporting this project? Well you may be surprised.
The funding is coming from the Vancouver Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in this neck of the woods and not one with a reputation for being either reckless with its money or radical.
There is an advisory group that monitors the project, which includes the Vancouver police, social workers, B.C. Womens Hospital, Sheway (the health and social services agency for women) and the Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society.
Finally there is this question: Will it work? As counterintuitive as it may seem, what we have seen with lower barrier shelters and projects like Insite is that, for people in these desperate straights, the first step is to get them inside and connected once again.
At Imouto these young women will be far safer than pursuing their precarious existences on the street. Some will move on to rehabilitation centres, some may eventually be re-united with their families and some will inevitably fail and fall back. But as Michelle Fortin says, this is a population that needs our attention. Now at least a few of them will get it.
