Street Sleeper

An article by Ethan Baron was published in The Province, a small daily out of BC, on June 4th, 2009 titled "Lock up the addicts until they're clean".

The online version indicates it was published under the Health section of the paper but doesn't specify whether the piece is opinion or not. Given that I'm not familiar with the columnist or the paper for that matter, I won't go futher with that. But I do have some serious qualms with what the columnist is trying to say.

The article is about the social chaos going on right now on the Downtown East Side of Vancouver, which I've blogged about a few times on here.

Baron argues, as the title suggests, that we should lock up all of the addicts on the DTES and force treatment upon them. His logic is that forcing them to be clean would save more money than is being poured into the area now for policing and other services that the homeless take advantage of everyday.

While there may not be much logic to the situation on the DTES as Baron says, I also don't think there is much logic to his solution either.

First of all, while many of the people on the DTES are addicted, they also face a number of other issues. Many face mental health issues which aren't going to go away with simple treatment. If it was that simple, addiction wouldn't exist in our society.

Second, while it is easy to force someone to become clean by detoxing them, or locking them up, that's not going to erase the addiction. Therapy might, but that requires the person to be willing and ready to tackle whatever issues are behind their addictions. And as one of the officers in Baron's story admits, many of these people do have underlying issues which has resulted in the addiction.

So, say that we lock up all of the addicts on the DTES. And we'll say that they detox so technically they are leaving treatment chemical-free. What then? While there are many services in the DTES to help people put their lives back together and find employment, where are they going to live? Certainly short-term housing isn't an issue in the DTES, but long-term housing is. And of course, all of this requires a person motivated to leave a life of addiction and poverty.

I've spoken to people directly involved in the community while researching for a piece I wrote back in March about the problem. The main consensus with all of the people I talked to was that the first step to addressing the issues in the DTES is safe housing. For someone trying to rebuild their life and stay off of drugs, if you can't afford to live somewhere in which you can maintain your dignity, it's rough.

But, alas, there is not one easy fix to the DTES. Just as there is no easy fix for kicking addiction. While programs like InSite, Vancouver's controversial safe injection site, do not necessarily intend to send every addict that walks through the door into detox or treatment, they offer a piece of dignity to these people. Yes, they're injecting drugs, but they're not doing it in a dirty alleyway and the risk of overdose or AIDS is reduced.

The thing that struck me the most when I was reading this article by Baron is something that Mark Townsend of The Portland Hotel Society told me when I was doing research for my DTES article. He told me that developing a sense of community is important to the DTES. A neighbourhood of poor people doesn't have to be a negative thing. Addiction, of course is a negative thing, but the fact that many overlook is that the DTES doesn't consist entirely of addicts.

As far as I'm concerned, poverty is just as big of an issue as addiction in this country, and that needs to be solved before we can take on the issues of this community and the issues of addiction. Give them safe housing, support and treatment for those who face addictions or other issues, and perhaps a change will happen.

But you can't "fix" anything if they're going to back to sleeping on the street or in dilapidated, overpriced and unsanitary housing. I think that's the one thing that Baron overlooks in his article.

You can lock up the addicts which will provide a band-aid fix, but if you want to solve the problem permanently, you must address the issue of poverty and everything that goes with that.

Everyone has their opinion on how we should tackle a community that faces a challenge like the DTES. Mine is that people need to bloom where they are. Turn a negative into a positive and build a strong community.

And that's why I had trouble digesting Baron's take on the situation.

Street Sleeper, Grand Theft Bus