Homelessness

Pharmacy paid addict kickback for prescription: hidden camera

Posted by Shemuses from CBC

Downtown Eastside doctors complained to authorities about practice months ago

Some pharmacists in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside routinely pay cash to drug addicts for filling their prescriptions, a CBC hidden-camera investigation has found. The practice was revealed after several doctors complained that pharmacies were giving $10 a week or more to clients for each prescription filled if the drugs were dispensed daily. In the drug-ravaged neighbourhood, $10 buys a "rock" of crack cocaine.

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Welcome to Nickelsville - Seattle Homeless Take on Mayor's Image

Posted by Jeff from Seattle Weekly

Though it took root this summer, the seed for Nickelsville was planted years ago with the creation of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. The idea, as the name suggests, is to end homelessness by building more permanent low-income housing, and to lead people toward self-sufficiency by weaning them (and cities) off stopgap measures like shelters. It's an idea that Nickels has bought into-and one that is arguably not working.

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A buyer's market in Vancouver still no bargain

Posted by Shemuses from CBC

According to The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, Canada's most expensive market is in "a buyer's phase," but the cost of an average detached home is still $305,878 higher than the national average. The Canadian Real Estate Association lists the average price in May 2008 for a property in Canada as $318, 761, where houses in Vancouver are listed at an average of $624,639. According to the numbers from June 2008 released by REBGV, a typical detached residential property in Greater Vancouver sells for $765,654. That's a change of seven per cent over one year and 89.5 per cent over five years. A typical apartment will cost $388,722, a change of 7.8 per cent over one year and 105.2% over five years.

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What the Housing Crisis Can Tell Us about Racism, Sexism and Homelessness

Posted by Shemuses from Blog Critics

If we choose to view each of these problems and its race dynamics as separate issues, then we are guilty of ignoring the points of origin which connect them all together. According to Max Rameau, an organizer with the Center for Pan-African Development in Miami, Florida, the root problems of gentrification in the 2000s are the same as the root problems of segregation in the 1960s: people of colors' lack of power and control over land, and white supremacy.

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Danny Westneat | Homeless: new growth industry

Posted by Jeff from Seattle Times

Something is ragged in the Emerald City. We've had our frenzies, like the dot-coms and real estate. Now it feels like there's an anti-boom, an echo of the others. A week ago Friday wasn't especially cold or windy or any of the other things that drive street people inside. But at Operation Nightwatch, a ministry for the homeless, it was a night for the record books anyway. Near midnight, after finding spots to sleep for 175 people, workers gave bus tickets and blankets to 42 more. Then sent them wandering off down the street.

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Doctors to visit poorest Vancouver residents to free up hospital beds

Posted by Shemuses from CBC

In a bid to reduce the number of hospital beds being taken up by the homeless and drug addicts in Vancouver, doctors will soon be making house-calls to those who live in single room occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Downtown Eastside. Many residents of the Downtown Eastside are seriously ill, often the result of drug use and hard living on the streets, said Lorna House, the director of mental health for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. By the time they get to a hospital, she said, they often need long-term care.

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Operators go to court to protect injection site

Posted by Shemuses from Globe and Mail

With just two months to go before its doors may be closed by the Conservative government, operators of North America's only supervised injection site for users of illegal drugs have gone to court to stay open. The facility saves lives, reduces harm to drug addicts and increases their motivation to seek treatment, lawyers argued in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday. As a result, they said, federal drug laws against possession of heroin and cocaine should not apply there. "The criminal approach leads to death. Harm reduction leads to life," said John Conroy, representing the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.

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