New role eyed for View Royal youth facility
The former youth detention centre in View Royal could soon play a pivotal role in breaking the seemingly endless cycle that spins some from the streets to jail and back to the streets again.
Don Evans, executive director of Our Place Society, says the prospects of recovery for many street-entrenched homeless individuals are dim — even if they have found their way into detox or stabilization.
Many are dealing with severe addictions, as well as underlying complex issues such as trauma, brain injuries or a history of abuse. They generally are well known to police and the courts.
Released from jail, hungry to turn their lives around but with no place to go, they don’t stand a chance, Evans said.
“They end up coming out of jail and they’re still homeless. We see them coming to Our Place and they’ve gained weight and they look good and they’ve had time to think,” he said.
“They want to change their lives and they’ve got all this hope and they’re excited about things and they’ve come off drugs and then it’s days, sometimes hours, and they’re back with their friends on the street doing drugs.
“To watch it happen is devastating for us and we know that we’ve got such a limited time to be able to catch them in that moment and we can’t do it.”
That could change if Evans is successful with plans to transform the former youth detention facility, at 94 Talcott Rd. in View Royal, into an abstinence-based therapeutic recovery community.
Patterned after similar therapeutic communities — such as in San Patrignano, Italy, or Baldy Hughes, in Prince George — the facility would offer a communitybased approach to recovery in which an anticipated 40 to 50 residents would stay for between 14 and 24 months.
That compares to traditional public residential treatment of four weeks, and private treatment of six weeks to three months.
The longer stays allow people to address issues underlying their addictions in a community environment, to develop life, social and job skills, and to engage in relapse prevention, family healing and return to a healthy lifestyle.
Clients will participate in all aspects of the community — growing their own food, cooking, cleaning and undertaking social enterprise projects (such as catering or sale of products built on site) — and learning valuable skills in the process.
“People are actually going to be actually working in jobs outside in the community before they leave the therapeutic community,” Evans said.
“We’re partnering with large employers on that. And everyone will be housed as well [before they leave].”
Professional addictions counsellors, physicians, psychiatrists and case managers will guide residents through an abstinencebased, peer- and communityguided recovery program. Clients who arrive on opioid replacement drugs will be weaned off of them.
The plan is for clients to be drawn from three areas: • The courts, as an alternative to traditional custodial sentences. • B.C. Corrections, for individuals completing custodial sentences. • Island Health, for homeless individuals who have undergone detox and stabilization and, perhaps, completed a short-term residential program.
Drug and alcohol counsellor Sue Donaldson, founder and director of Pegasus Recovery Solutions, said the new facility will fill a critical need in the community.
“This is what we know about addiction: It’s not a quick fix where you spin people through 28 days and then send them out there and expect them to succeed,” she said.
Donaldson’s comments were echoed by Marshall Smith, chairman of the B.C. Recovery council.
“It’s very exciting and it has the opportunity to be transformative in terms of the capital region and the way that we’re looking at moving people beyond homelessness, particularly for a substanceusing population,” Smith said.
The estimated cost is $1.8 million a year. Operating costs are expected to drop as the operation matures and residents participate in running it.
Our Place has asked the province for $4.7 million in transitional funding. The hope that the facility becomes fully self-supporting in seven years.
“We want to fund this in the long term through our own private dollars because then if there’s changes of government or changes of will or cuts or anything like that, it doesn’t destroy the integrity of the program,” Evans said.
The estimated annual per person cost for the therapeutic community is $36,000. That compares with $130,000 for a hospital bed, $74,000 for provincial jail, and $40,000 for transitional housing, he said.
Currently called Choices, the former youth jail has been operated by Our Place for the past couple of years as low-barrier transitional housing.
Those clients will move out next month. The hope is to open as a therapeutic community in the fall pending a rezoning by View Royal council and funding from the province.
View Royal Mayor David Screech says there is cautious support for the idea from his council, but notes the community might be somewhat jaded after hosting Choices for two years when the original plan was for it to stay for six months. Choices follows a harm-reduction model so drug and alcohol consumption is permitted on site.
Just how the proposed rezoning for the therapeutic community will be met by neighbours is anyone’s guess.
Choices brought some legitimate neighbourhood concerns over the likes of petty theft, nuisance and loitering, Screech said.
“I think what will bring the neighbourhood some comfort is that there will be no on-site consumption of drugs and alcohol [in the new facility] as there is now and it will be a dry facility and there will be restrictions on comings and going and on visitors,” Screech said.
“I think the community is certainly more open to the idea of the facility, but I think what they really need is more information.”