[iwantaskyline]

Downtown Eastside costs $1 million a day

Philip Owen stands at 65 East Hastings Street in front of a soon-to-open, nine-storey social housing complex.

The former Vancouver mayor looks west to the intersection of Carrall Street and points to a just- opened social housing project.

There’s a charity-owned art gallery a few buildings down, more social housing across the road as well as two pharmacies and a church-run drop in centre.

A similar potpourri of housing and services is replicated in the blocks around him.

“Someone has to try and find the sort of money being spent here,” pleads Owen. “Nobody really knows the numbers. The services are funded from different groups and organizations, non-profits, churches and they go down and rent some space and open up and they’re looking after this or that or they respond to this or they’re part of some other organization down there. We need an audit.”

The Province took on the task of finding out what is being spent in the Downtown Eastside.

A Province investigation has found that in 2007 alone the three levels of government and others spent about $360 million providing housing and support for residents.

That’s nearly $1 million a day, with most of that for the roughly 5,000 disabled people in the community.

The spending continues unabated with no one in control of the purse-strings as conditions continue to deteriorate at street level.

“It’s just unknown how much has been spent,” says Dr. Julian Somers, director of Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addictions.

“Even if we knew the value, the effectiveness of distributing the money is less than optimal due to administrative inefficiency. We know no one is co-ordinating it all.”

The 34-year-old psychologist’s primary focus is how to deal with mental illness and addiction on a large scale, leading him to research on the DTES.

That research includes a July 2008 report for the City of Vancouver titled Collaboration and Change: Evidence Related to Reforming Housing, Mental Health and Addiction Care in Vancouver.

Two key statements to come out of the B.C. report are that there is “no mechanism for co-ordinating the efforts and priorities of different funding sources” and that “the roles of different services are not clear and collaboration does not take place consistently. Each agency has its own linkages and some agencies compete with each other.”

Somers also unearthed a disturbing lack of co-ordinated financial information on the Downtown Eastside.

He says that on top of the direct costs of caring for the marginalized population, there are a number of costs borne by society that are “really costs of neglect.”

“We may be able to tally the cost of hospitalizations and corrections but we will always be unable to quantify things like the impact on tourism and trade. Our system is biased toward responding to crisis.”

Somers has been able to come up with general service figures — that there are “over 90 agencies in Vancouver providing mental health or addictions services, plus others providing broader health care and housing for high-risk people.”

Those services are provided by several provincial and federal ministries, Providence Health Care, Vancouver Coastal Health and numerous not-for-profit societies and foundations.

According to DTES.ca, there are 174 groups providing services of some sort in the community.

In Somers report for the city, he said there are more resources becoming available but “no enhancements to the processes that serve to integrate them.”

His theory is backed by a recent City of Vancouver report stating “existing service delivery models are not reaching this population” and supported by the Vancouver Police Department’s recent call for the creation of a Downtown Eastside director for the most vulnerable people.

There’s no shortage of community groups wanting to address the problem.

The Network of Inner City Community Services was established three years ago and is still going, at a cost of $690,000 a year.

More recently, a group called the Downtown Eastside Community Land Use Principles was formed — backed by groups such as the $720,000-a-year Pivot Legal Society and the $190,000-a-year Carnegie Community Centre Association — which aims to get groups working together.

There’s the recently-formed Streetohome Foundation channelling donor and government money into DTES housing projects.

In February 2008, the City of Vancouver launched its Collaboration for Change program also aimed at co-ordinating services.

Owen says none of these groups has attempted to determine costs of the Downtown Eastside and that an immediate audit is needed. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the $360-million annual bill for the neighbourhood simply isn’t good value for money.

“There’s nowhere near enough money targeted at solutions,” he said. “It’s far more cost-effective to be investing in housing and health care versus expensive emergency services. The situation won’t change much until we deal with the causes rather than crisis management of the symptoms.”

However, an audit of services by either the provincial or federal auditor-general isn’t necessary, said Robertson, because the majority of services receiving money are using it effectively.

“An audit is misleading,” he said. “The bigger question is value for money. Could $10 million spent on security in the Downtown Eastside be better spent on drug treatment? These are the types of questions we should be asking.”

Maureen Bader, B.C. president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said a review of the programs in the Downtown Eastside is in order.

“If that’s how much they’re spending there, then they’re wasting an awful lot of money,” she said.

“Someone should review what’s going on, put in place effective programs, and just quit throwing good money after bad.”

Without co-ordination, she said, it’s impossible to know whether the money is being spent effectively.

“A lot of times, government in all levels will just be overlapping a program into another without knowing how much is being spent and where,” she said.

“That’s a big cause of waste and it’s doing no good for the taxpayer and no good for the people who live down there.”

The Vancouver Agreement, a landmark alliance signed in 2000 that attempted to co-ordinate federal, provincial, and municipal efforts in the Downtown Eastside, has largely “fallen by the wayside” because of a lack of political will, said NDP MLA Jenny Kwan, one of the architects of the agreement, along with Owen and Liberal MP Hedy Fry.

“For lasting solutions, we need to co-ordinate our efforts to ensure we get the best value for our dollars,” said Kwan.

“Unfortunately, there is no follow-through.”

Current spending in the Downtown Eastside is being used inefficiently, she said, because it doesn’t address the root problems or offer long-term solutions.

“So many of the dollars invested in the Downtown Eastside are put in there to cope with the emergency, but are not targeted to deal with initiatives that will build our way out of the crisis.”

Prof. Dan Simunic, of UBC’s Sauder School of Business, said it’s up to the federal and provincial auditors-general to determine whether the government is getting value for money in the DTES.

Morris Sydor, B.C. assistant auditor-general, said his office has never audited spending in the Downtown Eastside. “There are a number of ministries involved,” he said. “It would be quite a chore to pull it all together.”

Similar article from the Province.