To the editor:
Re: “Social housing project generates 729 police calls in first 16 months,” Sept. 24.
VPD Chief Jim Chu, in this article, reinforces the belief prominently held by many, including many Vision councillors that the hard to house “should not be just dumped in the Downtown Eastside.”
In this case, it appears as though in pursuit of a grand social experiment these residents have now been, in fact, dumped into an area they have no social engagement with, no community support to fall back on and all in a virtual dead zone where their only neighbours are warehouses, small businesses and strata owners that despise and fear them.
How can we expect people who are barely coping with desperate frailties to cope in this kind of environment? Those who are so eager to see the Downtown Eastside flushed clear of these kinds of projects might ask themselves how many police calls would have come through had this same facility been built within that neighbourhood.
Sites there that offer housing to people with special needs never rack up trouble calls in volumes like this because the residents are supported daily by street contact, peer connectivity as well as professional therapeutic intervention where needed.
A great disservice has been done to these people by setting them up for failure in this pathetic sterile environment in the middle of nowhere.
It will be most interesting to compare the wellbeing of these tenants to those who will soon be moving into the new Princess Street premises next year where residents will be housed within an existing neighbourhood that is accustomed to behavioural shortcomings that many will have and will offer a better measure of support than is now instead only misery for just about everyone in and around the Marguerite Ford Apartments.
Ian MacRae,
Vancouver
