Good story on this issue. It is great to see the Post, as a local paper, continuing to show its readers the many pieces of the puzzle that are involved in homelessness and drug use. With the increases in these groups forcing them to the forefront of public attention, it is vital that the public be given a full rounded view of the scope and issues involved. Without understanding the reality of the actual conditions that exist, any decisions made will fail to bring about positive changes. The refusal to see reality when setting policies is what resulted in the current growing problems we face. We need to make choices that will have positive results in helping the people branded as either homeless bums or druggies in getting back their lives and all of us together in building stronger, more vibrant communities.

To have any real chance of working recovery must be a choice made by the addict, it cannot be imposed from outside. Addiction is powerful, with a strong grip on its victims, which means that any delay in getting the addict into treatment allows the addiction to re-establish its grip and pull the person back into their addiction. I have seen to many instances where delay has granted the addiction time to do just that. I do not think one can over stress just how important it is for those in need of treatment to be able to get help NOW.

People need to work hard to see what the real situation is, since it is so tempting and easy to see what we want to see or base decision on what we think should be. Then reality bites our …butts and we end up creating some other nasty mess(es). One of the goals that citizens and the City want to achieve in addressing the question of recovery houses is to keep the “good” and close down/reform the “bad”. My first impulse when this is discussed is YES!, we need to weed out the “bad” houses. Which would make me as guilty of ignoring reality as I chastise the public, City and government for being. I was reminded this week, in one of those twists of fate the universe likes to get our attention with, that those recovery houses oft called or considered bad serve a very necessary purpose. The day before the City held a meeting to address the question of recovery homes I was in a conversation with someone on the front lines of the homeless situation in Surrey. During the conversation the existence of “bad” recovery homes came up and it was pointed out just how necessary a part they play in addressing the needs of the homeless and drug users. Arrrgggh. I thus find myself in the unpleasant and decidedly uncomfortable position of having to argue that, as much as we all might like to, we cannot blindly go around closing recovery houses without first putting in place the needed resources to replace the vital function they serve.

Yes, some of the “bad” recovery houses are no more than flop houses for drug users. The problem with just running around closing them or forcing them to only deal with those who are ready to start or are in recovery is what happens to all the residents who are not ready – yet – for recovery. Remember the closing of the Fraser Valley Inn? The View from the Streets by the homeless of this event was very different than that of those snug in their homes. Closing down the Inn created 20 homeless people as only a couple of the people who had been living in the Inn found someplace else to shelter. Some of them had been living in the woods on Sumas Way for months before it became know as Compassion Park. It is a year later and some of them are, shamefully, still on the streets today. I say shamefully as the City, as our representatives, thoughtlessly threw these people onto the streets effectively saying to them “tough luck; to bad; you’re not worth our consideration or help”.

Yes there were many problems with the Inn, as there are problems with some recovery houses. I am not saying you should not want to close the substandard among them. I am saying you cannot close them until you have available alternatives for housing and services. Closing the Inn did not solve anything; it merely spread the people and problems around the city, in reality making them harder to deal with. Until such time as we have invested in the resources required to deliver support to these people, our fellow human beings and citizens, we need all the housing spots for them that we have. Faced with the same situation the more rational and caring of our neighbouring cities have chosen to work with those houses considered to be undesirable in order to minimize any problems and to maximize the help rendered to their residents.

One fairly small piece of the puzzle and what do we have? A complex reality that denies simple solutions and denies us the right to go with our impulses, even if they embody good intentions, because of the harm they would cause the very people we would claim to be helping. One of the prices our society must pay for having swept this under the rug until it became a problem to large to ignore, is that we are playing catch up. Sometimes we are just going to have to live with aspects of the problems until the resources are marshalled and in place to properly address the situation. Such is the current situation with recovery houses. We will have to live with compromises in the immediate future, while working on longer term strategies and supportive resources. Or live with the fallout from dumping 100+ more homeless, all at once, onto the streets.