- Throughout their FAQ they refer to their 25 years of experience when in fact they have NO experience with "abstinence based supportive housing for mentally ill drug addicts in residential neighbourhoods". Their "experts" have admitted this in the Draft Supportive Housing public meetings held recently. 1
- They refer to irrelevant science that is about other types of housing for other types of patients using different operational plans.
- They make "expert opinion" statements with no evidence to back up their claims.
Here are 3 typical examples from City of Vancouver's website "Supportive Housing FAQ", followed by NIABY's evidence based response.
- What are the long term substance use recovery rates following discharge from a treatment program? (Learn more »)
- Is there evidence of increased crime rates in communities with supported housing? (Learn more »)
- Will property values be affected? (Learn more »)
The City has failed to produce any relevant safety data on abstinence-based supportive housing for mentally ill drug addicts. They have presented no referenced data to show that the mentally ill drug addicted tenants will be able to maintain a sustained abstinence in proposed supportive housing policy.
In short, we are being asked to accept an indeterminate amount of risk in exchange for a program that could end up providing no significant long-term benefit towards the reformation of drug addicts in our community. The enormous drain on tax dollars to introduce this experiment is perhaps better spent on alternative addict recovery programs that have better track records.
Published May 23, 2007.