Mount Edwards wrong facility in the wrong place

On April 18, about two dozen neighbours defied the “niceties” of the Cool Aid Society open house regarding the use of Mount Edwards Court.

Just as with the sewage-treatment “consultation,” these open houses are lifted out of a publicrelations firm’s book of “ways to ensure no one gets to say anything of substance, but we get to say we consulted the public.”

We were given three-by-threeinch Post-It notes to give “feedback” on the nicely printed boards showing all the wonders of the new facility. We chose a different approach. It started with me introducing myself to the crowd and asking how many of the people in the room (excluding the Cool Aid paid staff and volunteer board members) did not want a facility in which people with various stages of addictions, problems and complexities would be warehoused in a single-room-occupancy facility in a residential neighbourhood, across the street from an elementary school? The vast majority either raised their hands or applauded.

I stepped back to let the many frustrated people have their say. It turns out, just as many comments came from neighbours we had never met before. One elderly woman looked at Cool Aid CEO Kathy Stinson, saying: “Shame on you.” After all, it was Stinson who told the parents of the school next door, Christ Church Cathedral School, that “no” she had not given any consideration to the location of her planned no-restriction housing of 101 people.

But one of the neighbours who, with her husband, has been among the earliest critics of the Mount Edwards plan, was the most eloquent. She said: “To all kinds of criticism, we warned of the dangers of putting too many of the ‘hardest to house’ in one place. We now know from the activities in and around the Johnson Street facility that our predictions have unfortunately come true.”

Of course, she’s referring to the many instances reported in the Times Colonist where people (and a church) have had to put up fences just to keep people from not only loitering, but from drug use and other illegal activities on their property. Coincidentally, a couple of hours before Tuesday’s meeting, I was in a business that is a stone’s throw from the Johnson Street facility.

The owner took me outside, showing me the $5,000 fence he built, just to keep illegal activities from overtaking his business. He mentioned how repair trucks are at the facility on a regular basis to deal with the damage taking place inside (recently noted in the Times Colonist).

When one gentleman at the meeting asked us: “Where are they going to go?” he got a chorus of responses, including: “Clearly, not beside your grandchild’s school.”

We don’t know the critical mass of people needed in this kind of facility to create the havoc and the illegal and dangerous activity in the neighbouring community, but we know the more people you “warehouse,” the more problems occur. Stinson was quoted in the Times Colonist this month saying: “Typically, there were fewer than six calls for service each month.” With just 38 people, it seems that adds up to about 80 incidents since the government housed people in Mount Edwards in February 2016. She wants to more than double the number of residents.

As much as we’d like to trust that Cool Aid will put in the right people, to reduce the risk, we can’t. Their mandate is to house as many people as Housing Minister Rich Coleman tells them to.

According to the Canada Revenue Agency website records for its last reported year (2016), with revenues of more than $22 million, Cool Aid received a mere two per cent from charitable gifts and fundraising. The rest came directly from our provincial and municipal taxes, and the rents it receives from clients, the vast majority also coming from our pockets.

This organization is more or less a front for our government. However, we get no say in what it does. And Cool Aid certainly isn’t going to be critical of the hand that feeds it.

Christy Clark’s government has made a huge mistake with the purchase of this building. If it wants to warehouse too many people with unpredictable behaviours in one facility, it should not be done in a residential neighbourhood, and certainly not across the street from an elementary school.

Sorry, I couldn’t fit that onto a Post-It note.