Canada

If you lived in a neighbourhood where people were dying from poisoned drugs, and over 2,000 were homeless, what would you say the solution is? At the Carnegie Housing Project we asked residents at various Downtown Eastside groups like the Aboriginal Front Door Society, Carnegie Community Centre, Our Streets and the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society.

They said things like: housing people can afford, places to be, safer drugs, more garbage cans on the streets, jobs and job training, more greenery, more washrooms, access to detox and treatment — not a wait-list — and keeping essential service organizations funded. Aboriginal Front Door’s funding has not been renewed and is set to expire in September, bringing an end to this well-loved Downtown Eastside service that stores belongings for hundreds of homeless people, as well as providing food, rest, cultural programs, advocacy and dozens of emergency shelter beds.

No one said the Downtown Eastside, or DTES, needs 32-storey market-rental housing towers with only a tiny percentage affordable to low-income residents. But that’s what the city is about to propose in a report to council this fall.