The Futurology Exchange by Okanagan Life Magazine: When Community Growth Causes Personal Pain

This past Friday (February 8) I attended a forum in Kelowna co-sponsored by the City of Kelowna and the John Howard Society of the Central Okanagan. The program was titled: Crime Prevention and Sustaining Healthy Communities.

From that, I was inclined to expect something on the theme of law and order, so the message I heard was quite a surprise.

The keynote speaker Craig Jones, a Phd, criminologist, researcher and executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, worked from the premise that "rapid economic growth does not benefit everyone equally. Some people - for a complex variety of reasons - suffer severe psycho-social dislocation. Traditional criminal justice responses usually exacerbate such situations."

Well then, certainly Kelowna qualifies under the heading of rapid economic growth. And according to statistics presented in a pre-session handout by the Poverty and Homelessness Action Team of the Central Okanagan, nearly 300 people – men, women, families with children and seniors – sleep outside and in shelters; last year the Kelowna food bank distributed nearly 30,000 hampers to low income families helping nearly 10,000 children; close to 40 per cent of the city’s homeless people are over 50 years of age; and surprisingly, 27 per cent of homeless people work full or part time.

In a city where housing prices have doubled in the last five years, the action team’s figures indicate that 5,000 households spend more than half their income on housing and 22,000 people are at risk of becoming homeless. With a zero rental vacancy rate, the city needs an additional 8,000 affordable housing units.

So I could easily buy a case for severe psycho-social dislocation.

As for the law enforcement role, his premise seemed to gibe with what I heard from Kelowna's police chief, Bill McKinnon when I interviewed him for a story in our March 2007 issue. And, since McKinnon was a member of the pannel sharing the stage with Jones, I guessed we'd hear his take on things at some point.

Jones began by citing the human toll in China as one example of the social dislocation that accompanies rapid economic growth. He said that most people handle such change well, even benefit from it. But for a small minority “the combination of severe psychological uncertainly, coupled with prolonged social displacement provokes a desperate response.”

Such people may create substitute lifestyles that involve substance abuse.

"It might seem odd to us," he said. "But the barren pleasures of a crack junkie, which amounts to membership in a stigmatized and deviant subculture, featuring the transient relief from pain and nervous thrill of petty crime, can be more sustaining than the unrelenting aimlessness of psycho-social dislocation.

“When you’re an addict who needs to find $500 a day to stave off withdrawal, you have something urgent to do with your time. You know who you are and of what your life consists.”

Jones said that increased homelessness, employability problems, lower self-esteem and self-efficacy often go along with rapid economic growth and expansion such as we're experiencing here in the Okanagan. And he added that the longer this continues, the more vulnerable affected people are to mental illness, especially depression.

Kelowna’s rapid growth will naturally attract diverse people, some of whose needs are going to be exacerbated by the expansion that so benefits others. And this is happening at a time when provincial and federal governments have been downloading responsibility for social programs to municipalities without providing the tax capacity to take up the slack.

This, Jones argued, has led to some innovative practices and a growing awareness that “traditional clean-up-this-town law enforcement responses” aren’t producing lasting results. “It’s the police who recognize this first because they see the same people in and out of the criminal justice system.”

One promising approach in minimizing the effects of psycho-social dislocation is “harm reduction.” Already well established in Switzerland and gaining currency in other parts of Europe, Canada and the US, the idea is to give people a safe place to live while beginning the process of “reducing the harm of their substance abuse,” attending to their physical and mental health needs with the goal of gradual reintegration.

"Harm reduction does this by concentrating on people as human beings first, rather than as public irritants or criminals or community problems to be swept from one location to another. Harm reduction does not fall into a Utopian of believing that social problems, like addictions or a mental illness, prostitution, can be solved once and for all."

Ottawa is trying the concept in a managed alcohol program for homeless people with chronic alcoholism. The goal is to stabilize alcohol use and decrease emergency room visits. Many would be shocked at the suggestion of giving clients a controlled diet of wine (max one glass per hour), but the treatment is based on the concept that abstinence-based programs are not right for everyone. The results, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, January 2006, were a 51 per cent decrease in police encounters (saving $91/encounter) and a 36 per cent decrease in emergency room visits (saving ($270/encounter).

When Jones interviewed the executive director of the project she told him that “the traditional system that we have in place for the clients that we care about here – when they get into trouble, that’s when they get care. They get picked up by the ambulance, they get taken to the emergency department, they’re cared for there and released back into the community. When another crisis arises they’re picked up by an ambulance, taken to the ER and the cycle starts all over. This can cost thousands of dollars. Something as simple as a seizure disorder can result in that sort of revolving door care. It’s a lot more far-sighted,” she said, “ to provide up front care rather than to wait for acute crisis, acute emergencies that require hospitalization that costs tens of thousands of dollars.”

As the Swiss, who are leading the way, have shown, the objective is not the elimination of drug addiction and substance abuse – an impossible goal despite the war on drugs – but to reduce the harm done by addiction such as transmission of blood-borne diseases.

Jones underscored that harm reduction is not enabling, not a free ride for users. He likened it to seat belt use, which don’t prevent accidents but does reduce the harm done when an accident occurs. He also pointed out that harm reduction is not aimed at eventual legalization. “The primary goal of harm reduction is to reduce the health and social problems associated with the use and control of alcohol and other drugs in individuals, their families and communities.”

In the open session following Jones’ speech, RCMP superintendent Bill McKinnon said, “I want to say one thing. Your assessment of the situation here is 100 per cent accurate. I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Mayor Sharon Shepherd, alluding to a sobering station she visited in Portland, Oregon said, “I’m not necessarily advocating that that’s what I envision that we would try and achieve in our own city. I know that there are other examples in the country of what a sobering station looks like, but it was a very successful part of the continuum of care in Portland…I know that it’s only one portion of all of the things that we have to do as a community but I know that that’s sort of on top of our list and the reason that we’re here (at the forum).”

So - does Kelowna need an easily accessible sobering and assessment centre - what Jones describes as "a safe and stable place to live to begin the process of reducing the harm of their substance abuse so that their conditions can be stabilized and they can begin the process of building relationships with treatment providers who will not judge them if they continue to use substances."

Are we ready to acknowledge that some people have fallen off the economic gravy train and they're going to be run over if we don't give our social service providers the means to help them get back on board?