Rewards one proposal from Vancouver's civil city commissioner

Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, November 12, 2007

VANCOUVER - Young people in Vancouver might find themselves getting rewarded by police for good behaviour with tickets to sports or cultural events, a swim pass, or an afternoon at the skating rink.

That's one proposal in the first progress report from Vancouver's "civil city commissioner" Geoff Plant, who was hired in May to carry out the project's goals of reducing homelessness, panhandling, and the open drug market by half in time for the Olympics.

Plant has also recommended the city hold a forum on homelessness to examine ideas on tackling homelessness, mental health and addiction. He is planning to convene a working group to explore how Vancouver could deliver services better to people with those problems.

And his office is working with local agencies to do a panhandler survey to learn more about them.

But his report also acknowledges it will be difficult to measure progress made to meet the goals that Mayor Sam Sullivan set out near the end of 2006.

"We soon discovered there are no counts of the homeless or the incidence of aggressive panhandling that can be expressed precisely as of December 2006," the report says. "There is, at present, no actual measurement of the 'open drug market' and there is no existing process for measuring public satisfaction with the city's handling of public nuisance and annoyance complaints."

However, Plant said, what's ultimately most important is that people in Vancouver see a real difference on their streets and that's what he's working towards.

But the city's political opposition says the Civil City report shows little sign that anything is being accomplished.

Instead, says Coun. Raymond Louie, taxpayers are shelling out $300,000 a year for someone who has done little more than list the work that various city departments are already doing and studying problems that have already been studied endlessly.

"Why do we need a panhandler survey? We understand quite well that panhandling is a symptom of other problems of homelessness and addiction. Why are we undertaking even more studies?" said Louie.

He noted that a major part of Plant's report simply outlines what was already being done to deal with homelessness and public disorder. The report lists 30 different projects that were already underway in nine different police and city departments, ranging from the police experiment in shutting down Granville Street to car traffic on the busiest bar nights, to the city's outreach program to get homeless people on welfare and into housing.

But Sullivan defended Civil City and Plant's progress report, saying it performs the key function of focusing everyone's attention on city problems.

He acknowledges trying to solve huge social problems is daunting, "but I'm still very convinced that we are going to achieve these goals." Sullivan said the city has made huge progress on homelessness, with major announcements from the provincial government that it will build social housing on 12 city sites, keep shelters open 24 hours, and have the residential hotels it bought in the Downtown Eastside run by local non-profit groups.

Sullivan said a lot of the work Plant has been doing might not be evident from the report. "Geoff Plant understands intimately how the provincial government works, how to communicate, which people to talk to. There are some discussions taking place and they're not in [the report]. Sullivan said Plant's role is key to making sure different government departments talk to each other. "A lot of the problems are in communication and coordination."

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