Conversion to Transitional Housing

This elderly blue-clad apartment building on Holland Avenue just north of the Queensway has been purchased by the Ottawa Mission for use as transitional housing. Acording to Ms Vicki's neighborhood blog the Mission intends for its clientele to occupy about half the units. She does not identify who will occupy the other half - presumably it is market rentals.

I support the move to transitional and supportive housing. I strongly feel they need close supervision and much more "tough love" than laissez-faire.

I have three "second hand" experiences with apartment buildings undergoing similar changes. In one, my aunt was a long term tennant, along with mostly elderly people in a very stable market-rental building. A social agency bought the building and moved in a "few" clients graduating from mental health programs. Under the new owners, the building quickly fell into disrepair, the hallways dirty, vomit in the elevators, smelly stiarways, people ("weirdos") hanging about the entrances. The fire alarms went off 5 times a night. A special client was found to be doing it. He was not removed but counselled to take his medicine. The exodus of the middle class tennants accelerated, eventually my aunt moved too.

The second story is from Toronto, the Crombie Town area near St Lawrence Market. It was a mixed income building. My relative found it safe and a great place to live. Then the City started closing out Regent's Park, a notoriously bad housing project, for rebuilding. The mixed income nature of other buildings was "waived" to find room for the displaced Regent's tennants. The balanced mix of incomes, employment status, etc was lost. Security guards appeared. Taxis refused to pick up residents at the door; later they refused to drop off residents near the doors. Pizza deliveries stopped, it was too dangerous. Long term tennants fled. Gangs of menacing males clustered around the doors.

The third incidence is an elderly female aunt who lived in a high rise senior's housing building in downtown Ottawa. She enjoyed it, and the nearby Legion. Then the City (?) moved in a younger crowd. There were noise problems, rowdy parties, spaced out tennants, rumours of drug deals. She died before she could move out.

These three exemplars in my life will outweigh any number of unknown happy cohabitations in buildings. They will influence how I read and interpret "statistics" about the success (or not) of transitional and supportive housing. I note/recall stories I read in the MSM or blogs about crime in similar housing projects whether on Scott Street or in LA. As a result of these influences, I still support these housing measures but that support is dependent on strict on-site supervision. Unfortunately, such supervision will wax and wane with social work trends/fads/philosophies and the leadership (which changes over time) of the agencies involved. The housing never goes away. It does make me nervous.

Crime, Supervised Injection Site, transition housing, etc.

Throughout the past months, the issues related to drug dealing, drug using, supervised (safe) injection sites, shelters, transitional or supervised housing units, a proposed parole office, and the impact on the rest of the community, have been visited a number of times on this blog.

Recall the supervised injection site focus group. Recall the impact of shelters like Shepards of Good Hope or Union Mission on adjacent neighborhoods. The parole office issue. Recall there is another proposal coming forward for supervised transitional housing units on Booth Street, perhaps with a shelter element, we don't know yet.

Dalhousie is still a very safe neighborhood. Its appeal, however, can change quickly when a number of factors come together that conspire to drive out the "middle class" and any neighborhood can go downhill quickly. The climb out is much slower.

Here is an article from City-Journal that deals with all these issues in the ghetto of Los Angeles, a neighborhood with many of the same issues as downtown east side Vancouver. Vancouver has tried the friendly helpful approach welfare advocates for a number of years, and the problems there do not seem to be getting better. In recent weeks, I have been reading in the papers of stronger enforcement efforts - probably related to the Olympics and the dreadful black eye the DTE gives to Vancouver.

Anyhow, here's the original article, it makes a provoking read:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0928hm.html

Knock Knock, Ottawa Police

While creating the following post on double-tracked pathways in Toronto (punnily entitled: InAction), there came a knock at the front door of my house. Two Ottawa police persons were there, giving competition to the UPS men in short pants category. One officer was hanging off the end of my verandah to peer over my driveway gate, which is 7'6" high.

The cause: my elderly Cdn tire 6speed commuter bike was parked in my driveway, the front door of the house was open (although the glass aluminum door was locked). It seems there is a burglar active in our area, age 35-45, druggy-skinny, scruffy, riding an old bike. They advised I call 9-1-1 if seen, regardless of what he is doing, and the police will check it out. It looked to the police officers that they may have stumbled onto a b&e in action. No such luck for them, however, and after a social chat, they wandered off. On foot. No police car in sight.

I then realized that it must be fairly serious for the dept to have two constables on foot wandering around the neighborhood hoping to catch a burglar in action. Of course there are other benefits to having them foot patrol residential streets, but the rarity of this impressed me that the b&e's must be awfully frequent and blatant to warrant this response.

In 25 years, we have had only one b&e, which my (then) seven year old son interrupted in progress. Since then, the front window has been nailed shut and a driveway gate constructed. I maintain I live on a very safe street, and in a safe spot on said safe street. Nonetheless, resident vigilance is required (and this is not blaming the victim).