NIABY.COM
(*Not In Anyone's Back Yard) "The Vancouver Police estimated that roughly a third of all police calls dealt with the mentally ill."-- Vancouver Sun February 14th 2008.
Dear Mayor Sullivan and Vancouver City Councillors,
The City is about to embark on a major supportive housing strategy (Draft Supportive Housing Strategy Report) that proposes to disperse mentally ill drug addicts in large 30 to 50 unit "supportive apartments" wherever there is appropriate (apartment) zoning.
If you support the current supportive housing policy, created by your "planning" staff in its present form, you will be supporting a policy that:
- The current peer reviewed medical science concludes this "abstinence-based" supportive housing strategy does not work. (Learn more »)
- There is not a shred of relevant evidence to show that it is safe. (Learn more »)
The hired "expert analysis" reports you bought are rife with fundamental errors. Evidence presented is almost all about small group homes housing populations other than mentally ill drug addicts, and ignores current poor outcome medical data on community treatments and well documented problems with violence and criminal behaviour with mentally ill drug addicts. (Learn more »)
Your hired experts and bureaucrats are ignoring and trying to "explain away" scientific data which shows that mentally ill drug addicts cannot achieve a sustained abstinence in community abstinence-based housing. 1
Linda Thomas, Supportive Housing "expert" from Vancouver Coastal Health reluctantly admitted at the Supportive Housing meeting on March 26th, 2007, and we quote,
"We [Vancouver Coastal Health and City Hall] are in a dilemma because we do not have any safety data for the size of the facility proposed [30 to 50 unit apartment building] and the population [drug addicts and/or mentally ill drug addicts]." 2
Jill Davidson, one of your senior planning staff said recently at a public meeting when asked about locating addict housing near schools,
"... about people's worrie[s] and that really how kind of you get through these [public meetings] cause when there is an opportunity to ... kind of talk back and forth and say I'm worried about crime and why you are locating it [drug addict supportive housing] near a school and we [City Hall] can say, "well... yeah... there's no safety issue with kids." 3
How can your staff possibly say there's "no safety issue with kids" (or anyone else in the neighbourhood) when you don't have any relevant safety data to support the supportive housing policy for mentally ill drug addicts you want to impose on Vancouver neighbourhoods?
Your experts are recommending large "abstinence-based" supportive apartments for mentally ill drug addicts without any proof of safety to neighbourhoods and your own City Hall FAQ on supportive housing admits most will return to using drugs. 4 (Learn more »)
You and the "experts" owe it to Vancouver taxpayers to present a housing policy which is effective, proven safe, transparent, relevant and accountable. Your current draft supportive housing policy does none of these. You should adopt an evidence based approach, using proven successful programs that have no negative impacts on host neighbourhoods:
Here's what the Medical Journal Addiction recommends:
"The majority of patients and programs can agree that stopping substance use, obtaining and keeping a job and eliminating crime are legitimate achievable goals. This means that treatment providers should be willing to accept responsibility and accountability for achieving and maintaining these goals in their patients - at least during active treatment. Indeed, if patient and programs cannot be expected to achieve these goals even during drug treatment, it is reasonable to question the value of treatment for either the patient (addict) or society." 5
Stop ignoring the science. Be accountable. Go back to the drawing board and design a Supportive Housing Policy based on evidence.
Sincerely, NIABY.com. We welcome your comments.
Published May, 2007.