Heated exchange over Response to Vancouver’s overdose crisis

By Moira Wyton, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A Vancouver city council meeting Tuesday on a proposed overdose prevention site near upscale condos and apartments in the Yaletown  neighbourhood highlighted deep divides over the response to the deadly  overdose crisis.

More than 100 people signed up to speak to council about the proposed indoor overdose prevention site.

Some, like Overdose Prevention Society  founder Sarah Blyth, said overdose prevention sites, where substance  users are observed and supported, would save lives and reduce problems  like discarded needles.

Others, like Jon Malach of the Downtown  Community Safety Watch, said the site would harm the neighbourhood and  likened harm reduction services to making “taxpayers fund the terror  they experience every day.”

City staff, Vancouver  Coastal Health and other advocates say the transition to an indoor site  is essential to save lives in the area and will actually reduce the  kinds of issues opponents raised at the meeting.

259 people have died this year

So far in 2020, 259 people in Vancouver have died of an overdose. Across the province, 1,068 people have died this year. 

About one in seven of Vancouver’s more than  2,000 911 overdose calls so far this year happened in the area served  by the proposed site in a building two blocks from the city’s busy  Granville strip.

A prevention site would be life saving

“An overdose prevention site in this  facility would be life-changing,” said Guy Felicella, a peer advisor  with Vancouver Coastal Health and former substance user. A similar  facility “gave me that relationship with people and the confidence and  the ability for me to improve the quality of my life,” he told council.

Many housed residents raised concerns  ranging from issues with the 1101 Seymour St. site’s proximity to Emery  Barnes Park to a perceived lack of consultation.

Safer Vancouver

These speakers included organizers Michael Geldert and Dallas Brodie of Safer Vancouver, which has links to homeowner groups in the expensive Shaughnessy neighbourhood and has been raising concerns about safety downtown. 

Safer Vancouver is critical of harm  reduction services and is calling for an audit of how money is spent on  services in the Downtown Eastside.

As a health service, there are no limits on  how close an overdose prevention site can be to a playground or school  as there are for liquor and cannabis stores.

And because it is an emergency measure to  curb overdose deaths under the Public Health Act, Vancouver Coastal and  the city do not have a formal duty to consult the community before  proposing the location.

Mobile site operating 8 hrs a day

There is currently a mobile site operating  eight hours per day in a van outside the proposed permanent site. It  would move to another area once an indoor site is established, which  could be as early as November.

City staff said they had been searching for  a place to move the current overdose prevention site operating out of a  trailer outside St. Paul’s Hospital on Thurlow Street.

Capacity would remain the same, they said. Services would merely move indoors into a larger and more appropriate space.

Chris Van Veen, Vancouver Coastal Health’s  director of strategic initiatives and public health planning, said the  authority and city have engaged housed residents and business owners  through a community engagement committee, and will continue a dialogue  if the proposal is passed and operational planning begins.

Delay would lead to more deaths

“The backlash to this one  has been unique,” Van Veen told council. “But delaying the site for  months to undertake a giant community consult process would lead to more  deaths.”

“The important thing is to prove to  communities that [overdose prevention sites] can operate with little  impacts or positive impacts.”

Many residents raised concerns about  discarded needles and outdoor drug use in the neighbourhood, which they  said increased rapidly in the last six months since the city cleared the  Oppenheimer Park tent city and rehoused many people in the  newly-purchased Howard Johnson hotel near the proposed site.

Some expressed fear for their children or  elderly neighbours, who they say are anxious about walking around the  neighbourhood alone.

Work at being good neighbours

Blyth said overdose prevention sites work  at being good neighbours and that having indoor services would mean  people could use drugs safely and lessen discarded needles and supplies.

“[The sites] alleviate some of the issues  the community members were talking about,” said Blyth. “I’m at wits’ end  with all the people dying.”

While a number of residents who opposed the  sited stressed that they want these services to exist where people need  them but perhaps not near a park, several others were hostile towards  people who use drugs and those who offer life-saving services.

No respect for society or themselves

Nearby strata president Nadia Iadisernia,  also associated with Safer Vancouver, said drug users “have no respect  for society or themselves” and she didn’t want “this in her  neighbourhood.”

When asked by a councillor whether she  believed the evidence that more services would reduce the issues she’s  concerned about, Iadisernia said that was “rewarding everyone for their  bad behaviour.”

Several speakers opposed the site compared  the neighbourhood to a “war zone,” language that speakers in favour of  the motion said further stigmatizes people who use drugs, putting their  lives at greater risk.

Acting chair Christine Boyle and Mayor Kennedy Stewart intervened several times to keep speakers respectful.

Speakers in support of the new site focused  on the importance of saving lives as COVID-19 pandemic measures  contribute to an increasingly toxic drug supply and rising overdoses.

Think we are just bums

Trey Helten, a manager at Overdose  Prevention Society who has experienced homelessness and entrenched drug  use, says he lost three friends to overdoses one night years ago, just  blocks from the site.

“They didn’t have a choice to use safely,”  said Helten. “It seems many of these Yaletown folks think we are just  bums… it’s insulting.”

Garth Mullins, a board member of the  Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the BC/Yukon Association of  Drug War Survivors, spoke of his own experience using drugs in the area  as a teen, before it began to gentrify.

“People who use drugs were here before  developers came,” said Mullins. He used to use inside his apartment or a  washroom and quickly pack up his things and get outside in the hopes  someone would see him if he overdosed and call for help.

“The people opposing this, they want us to  go back… and we can’t go back,” said Mullins. By opposing this  proposal, he said, “they’re basically saying their whole neighbourhood  will continue to be an unsafe injection site.”

A number of councillors asked city staff  and speakers if the limitations of the site were reasons not to move  forward with the proposal. For example, the small space does not have a  space for inhalation of substances like crystal meth, which contribute  to an increasing number of fatal overdoses in B.C.

But advocates said that concerns about getting something perfect the first time should not eclipse the need to save lives. 

“It’s not all or nothing. You build the  safe injection site, and you fight like hell for the safe supply to go  with it,” said Mullins. “A vote against today’s motion would just be  pushing back against drug users.”

Council had heard 56 of 115 slated speakers  by Tuesday afternoon as the meeting continued into the evening. Debate  and a vote is scheduled to take place Oct. 20.