To the editor:
Re: "Teenage housing nightmare opens for business in Downtown Eastside," Sept. 19.
Over the last six months, Mark Hasiuk has taken easy, emotional shots at Imouto House, the newly opened housing program for arguably the most at-risk population on the Downtown Eastside: young women without homes. He calls up images of predators, unrestrictedly knocking at the door of the premises. He suggests that one lone support worker (a "House Mom" seemingly without training) is all the assistance to be offered. He posits that Atira Women's Housing Society, without community consultation, cooked up the whole program ostensibly for its own gain, and this caused "outrage" by women's groups.
It's time to end this absurd speculation with the facts.
Imouto House is the product of 18 to 24 months of rigorous planning, consultation, development and research by many of the key stakeholders of the Downtown Eastside. These include the city of Vancouver, Vancouver Police Department, Watari Youth, Community and Family Services, VACFSS (Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society), Boys and Girls Clubs, B.C. Women's Hospital and numerous other service providers, including aforementioned "outraged women's groups," who work the front line with this group of young people to whom service provision is incredibly challenging. This group of young women are adrift; they have no fixed address, and are routinely abused and manipulated into providing sex in exchange for drugs and a place to sleep. Having no address means they are invisible to what little infrastructure could be made available. Getting a SIN card or their own cellphone with no address? Impossible.
How then, to access health care? Enrol in school? Get a job? Also impossible. How about accessing emergency police assistance for the routine abuse they face daily, at the homes of their pimps? Laughable.
Imouto House offers access to stable housing to those most in need. It offers so much more than a roof and four walls: access to drug and alcohol counselling, crucial health services, lifeskills training, access to education and employment services and support. But perhaps most importantly, Imouto House offers the chance for these young women to be truly known, understood and supported by a myriad of concerned professionals who have their fundamental wellbeing in mind.
If only the same were true for the missing women to whom Mr. Hasiuk refers.
Claire Benson-Mandl, Chair Watari Youth, Community and Family Services Board
