Pubdate: Mon, 01 Mar 2004
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: Allen Garr
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

CRYSTAL METH EASIER TO FIND THAN HOUSING

When Judy Graves was in the phase of her life she now refers to as "young 
and wild," back in the '60s, living in Vancouver was easy. The West End 
still had rows of big houses, former homes of the wealthy, tattered at the 
edges, with "room for rent" signs in their windows. Food was cheap and 
unemployment insurance was a snap to get.

Graves grew up to become the Mother Teresa of the homeless on Vancouver 
city staff. And Vancouver grew up to be anything but easy.

Her official title is coordinator of the tenant assistance program. She's 
the one who walks the streets in the early hours of the morning a few times 
a year, rousing people sleeping in doorways and under bridges to do a 
census, to find out a bit about their circumstances, to give them advice on 
finding a warm place to sleep. She was on the front line at the Woodward's 
squat trying to separate the shit-disturbers from the people who needed 
shelter.

She knows all the discreet places in the parks, stairwells and alleys where 
people who live rough spend the night.

In a presentation to council on homelessness last week, Graves and the 
city's senior housing planner, Jill Davidson, talked about how times have 
changed.

Forty years ago, the few people in the city who were homeless were American 
draft dodgers who camped out in Stanley Park for fear of being caught and 
shipped south.

They are long gone. Also long gone are those old West End houses and their 
rooms for rent, which were replaced with up-scale accommodations.

At the same time, the number of people looking for affordable housing has 
risen considerably. The decision to deinstitutionalize mental patients 
flooded streets and shelters across the country with people who were 
neither capable of making their own way nor, in many cases, able to avoid 
drug addiction. The supply of shelter beds increased but not nearly fast 
enough to make up for the numbers of people being driven off the welfare 
rolls and onto the streets by more stringent regulations.

Graves told council that as recently as half a dozen years ago, it was rare 
to see a homeless person on the streets. Being homeless was a kind of 
social taboo. Now it's commonplace.

According to Graves' most recent surveys, the number of homeless people in 
the city has doubled in the past few years. During the winter, about 500 
spend their nights outside. In the summer, it soars to over 1,200.

She also says the kinds of people who are on the street are changing. For 
the first time, she's finding post-secondary students caught out by late 
approval of student loans in the fall and a shortage of funds in the spring.

People who actually have jobs are homeless too, because they can't put 
together enough money at one time to afford rent. In fact the number of 
families now paying out more than 50 per cent of their income for housing 
has doubled since 1991 and now stands at 41,000. And the number of young 
adults, aboriginals and Asians among the homeless is on the rise.

There's something else: crystal meth, an extremely addictive synthetic 
drug. Graves says it's the drug of homeless people across the country. It 
blocks hunger and sleep and fear and destroys your brain. It's cheap and 
available, which housing and welfare are not.

In spite of Graves' best efforts and a plan by the city to tackle 
homelessness, it's likely the situation will continue to get worse. Federal 
and provincial housing money has been cut off or diverted to other projects.

The province continues to make welfare, even for those who are eligible, 
more difficult to get. And crystal meth is easier to find than those "room 
for rent" signs back in the days when Judy Graves was young and wild.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom