Ahead of Games, city reaches out to Vancouver homeless

Mental health effort aims to take hundreds of people off streets of Downtown Eastside
IAN BAILEY
From Friday's Globe and Mail
September 5, 2008 at 3:46 AM EDT

VANCOUVER — As many as 300 homeless people, largely from the Downtown Eastside, are to be moved off the streets and into housing next summer as part of a project by the Mental Health Commission of Canada that will have the side effect of helping clear the poverty stricken area before the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Globe and Mail has learned that the three-year project is part of a five-city effort first announced in this year's federal budget. There has never been any explicit link to the Olympics, which are expected to bring global attention to the Vancouver region that includes Canada's poorest postal code.

But the timing of the effort and some early details, disclosed to The Globe in a briefing, could have an impact on the homeless situation in the neighbourhood - a 10-block area where open drug dealing and use occurs.

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