Seeking shelter
Saturday, September 16, 2006 at 09:02AM
Four-year-old Jabrile leans out the hallway window and reaches for a crumpled plastic bag lying on the ground. His mother reacts instinctively. “Don’t touch that! It’s dirty,” says Joscelyne Addison. “You don’t touch outside, Jabrile, you know that.”
She gingerly looks inside the bag; some soiled clothing. Addison wrinkles her nose and shuts the hallway window.
A few weeks ago, Addison found something more troublesome in the same spot: “C-O-N-D-O-M-S,” she spells out softly, so Jabrile and daughter Khadija, 7, don’t overhear.
They’re left there, she says, by the drug addicts who use literally outside her window.
“I don’t want my kids growing up here,” says Addison. “When they go outside there’s some woman tweaking out in the stairwell. I’ve come home and phoned the police six times about people [overdosing], and there’s a guy lying half-naked on the grass. This is what we have to see everyday?”
Addison wants out. The problem is, she can’t move. The 25-year-old single mom can’t afford to.
13,000 Applicants on BC Housing registry wait list
6,000 Greater Vancouver families on that list
Addison lives in Stamps Place, a government-owned housing project spread over four blocks on the eastern edge of the Downtown Eastside. Almost 400 families live there as well, including 135 seniors.
Addison lives in a stretch of suites on the north side of the complex. Metres away lies a stroll used by street prostitutes.
In the mornings, Addison walks her daughter, who's in Grade 2, across the train tracks to Seymour Elementary. It's not something she looks forward to.
"What parent wants to explain to their kid what a needle is?" she says. "But these kids have to know these things."
Residents in other parts of the complex reported feeling relatively secure, but Addison says she and her neighbours are not.
The situation is so bad a social worker has written a letter on her behalf to BC Housing, demanding a transfer – a government funded agency telling another government funded agency its housing is unsafe.
“The public is using the staircase for sleeping, defecating and injecting drugs,” reads the letter, written last year. “This is a dangerous situation for Joscelyne and her two children.”
The police down here have become the orderlies of a mental institution called the Downtown Eastside
Over at the Ray-Cam community centre, the area’s problems haven’t gone unnoticed.
“Oh gee, where do I begin,” sighs Ray-Cam board president Steve Bouchard, who describes a bicycle drug-courier operation that was thwarted only recently.
“A vehicle would drop the drugs off, throw them in a box, then they would all wheel up on their bikes, pick up their drugs, and distribute them in the neighbourhoods. This happened right under the viaduct,” Bouchard says, referring to the sex-trade stroll metres away.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in prostitution and drug related criminal activity. It’s really tied our hands.”
Vancouver Police know how bad the situation has become.
“There are places where it’s more concentrated than others, and this neighbourhood is one of them,” says VPD Insp. John McKay, a district commander.
The reasons for the Downtown Eastside’s troubles are numerous and well-debated – not enough housing, not enough treatment, not enough welfare, not enough enforcement, perhaps.
But McKay says the root cause is the provincial government’s deinstitutionalization, over many years and many administrations, of facilities for the mentally ill.
3% Percentage of city population living in DTES
20% Percentage of mental health cases in city served by Strathcona Mental Health Team
“They downsized Riverview, and they housed them en masse in the Downtown Eastside,” McKay says, adding bluntly, “The police down here have become the orderlies of a mental institution called the Downtown Eastside.”
He describes three Hastings Street hotels that, between them, were responsible for 1,000 separate 9-1-1 calls in 2005.
“We can’t not attend,” says McKay. “But 15 years ago, these issues were dealt with by doctors, orderlies and nurses. Now it’s the police.
“People describe these people as ‘aggressive panhandlers’. What they are, are mentally ill people who have major issues. They should be properly looked after, and we’re not seeing that.”
If Downtown Eastside residents like those at Stamps Place want change, says McKay, they need to lobby the government.
“Get involved politically,” he says. “People are expected to put up with this, but I don’t think they should have to.”
“… The public is using the staircase for sleeping, defecating and injecting drugs. This is a dangerous situation for Joscelyne and her two children.
… The parking lot is being used for sex trade, drug deals and street people.
… This current living situation is unacceptable and I am writing in support for Joscelyne and her two children … to be transferred to another housing complex immediately. This is a priority.”
- letter from Westcoast Family Resources Society to BC Housing, Nov. 29, 2005
It’s a warm Sunday morning outside the apartment, and Joscelyne Addison is taking her four-year-old in for a snack. A used condom and a syringe casing are lying on the ground nearby.
Suddenly, police sirens pierce the air, followed by the sound of screeching tires. A kid on a bicycle pedals, languidly, down Hastings, chased on foot by two officers.
Addison gestures towards the bizarre scene unfolding. “You see what this neighbourhood is like?” she says.
BC Housing has approved her transfer request. She’s been told, unofficially, it’ll take seven years.
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