A mayor's pre-emptive, enlightened war on homelessness

(Surrey's mayor Dianne Watt is determined to prevent the creation of a Vancouver-style, drug-infested "Downtown Eastside" skid row due to pro-drug liberalism)

Surrey homeless fight starts at the top

by Glenda Luymes, The Province: Friday, September 10, 2010

Erin Barber was running out of options.

After several hours trying to get a heroin addict into detox, the Surrey outreach worker had come up dry.

And as night came on, emergency room staff at Surrey Memorial Hospital said the sick man had to go.

“He’d gone through the worst part of withdrawal,” said Barber. “If he could get into detox, he might have a chance [at recovery]. If he was released on to the street, he’d find a way to use again.”

Barber scrolled through the numbers in her cellphone and decided to make one last call — to the mayor.

You might not expect a desperate outreach worker to call the mayor, but in Surrey, Dianne Watts has made the city’s social issues a personal — and council — priority.

The city was the first in B.C. to establish a homelessness and housing fund armed with $9.7 million for projects aimed at reducing homelessness. The mayor also established a task force of various government, business and community partners to find service gaps and increase communication between service providers.

“The last thing any of us wanted was a Downtown Eastside,” Watts said on a recent tour of the city’s homeless projects. “We made sure we were very hands on.”

And the strategy is working.

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The 2008 Metro Vancouver homeless count identified 402 homeless people in shelters and on the streets of Surrey.

Since 2009, 307 have found permanent housing.

Surrey has also taken advantage of a B.C. Housing initiative to build supportive housing units on city-owned sites. The province is funding construction of 106 units on two city-owned properties.

Permanent housing is a priority for Watts, who is blunt about her dislike for temporary housing, such as shelters.

“We don’t want to warehouse the poor. That’s never going to solve the problem,” she said.

Her vision of a city where the most vulnerable are supported and included in the community doesn’t lead to an instant political payoff, but it is making a difference.

Last winter, when her cellphone rang, the mayor was at an evening event.

On the other end of the line was Barber, looking for help for the drug-sick man.

“I knew she had a very small window to get that man into detox,” said Watts. “If that opportunity passed, he would be lost.”

The mayor made a few calls to her contacts in Fraser Health.

The man went into detox later that night.

“Dianne’s a doer,” said Barber, who has worked with the homeless for 11 years, first in Vancouver and now in Surrey.

“I’ve never met a politician like her.”

At Surrey Urban Mission, the doors are open to anyone — homeless and politicians alike.

The only exception might be a dog named Whalley, and only when the mayor of Surrey is in the house. The dog barked and scratched at the door as Watts sat down with a group of five formerly homeless men to hear about their experiences.

“He’s one of the family,” apologized director Jonquil Hallgate.

“Oh, let him in,” said Watts, who has two dogs and fosters a third.

Ralph Wagner lived on the streets for 2½ years before finding permanent housing through the mission.

“We want people to see us differently,” he told the mayor. “We want to be part of the community.”

Wagner collects bottles for money and often stops in at the mission, where he feels he has a family.

During the Olympics, the mission ran a volunteer squad that recycled cans and bottles at Surrey’s celebration site at Holland Park.

“We had dollar signs in our eyes, but we only made $700,” said Hallgate. “Good still came of it.”

The innovative recycling project put more homeless in touch with the mission and its services.

Watts, who was highly supportive of the program, is very clear she doesn’t want homeless people to feel their community is only those who live on the street.

“They are part of the City of Surrey. We are all members of the same community,” she said.

“We have had to become very creative, innovative and really flexible, but we don’t want to make excuses. We have the responsibility . . . This is our city and our people.”

By The Numbers:

■ Metro Vancouver initiates a homeless count every three years, with the next one set for the spring of 2011. In the 2008 count, Surrey had 402 homeless, about 15 per cent of the regional total and a three-per-cent increase over 2005. By comparison, Vancouver had 1,576 homeless, about 60 per cent of the regional total and a 16-per-cent increase.

■ According to the provincial Homeless Integration Program, since March 2009 about 307 Surrey homeless have found permanent housing. Data collected by B.C. Housing and provided by the City of Vancouver show about 316 Vancouver homeless went from shelters to permanent housing in the same period.

■ There are 199 supportive housing units in Surrey, with 106 more on the way. There are 600

supportive housing units in Vancouver, with about 1,400 more on the way.

■ According to the 2006 census, Vancouver had a population of 578,000; Surrey 394,900.

gluymes@theprovince.com

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