The idea that safe available affordable housing is one of the key elements in unlocking solutions to myriad social problems, including urban crime, particularly surrounding alcohol and other drug substance abuse, along with public intoxication, which are as much public health problems, is not new nor unique to Thompson. But it is an idea with merit and worthy of "Project Northern Doorway" pursuing through their "Housing First Model" when they meet again Aug. 21.
The Project Doorway meeting is set for between 9 a.m. and noon Aug. 21 at the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba's Eaglewood Addictions Centre at 90 Princeton Dr.
When your city is awash in an epidemic of social pathologies and topping the national list for crime annually, it is time to get very serious about addressing the malaise in our midst. Agencies and individuals no longer have the luxury, if they ever did, of working independently on our social problems in silos. We're all in it together and we'll sink or swim as a community together.
Project Northern Doorway has its genesis in a two-day planning meeting here back in January, where a subcommittee (a word that seemingly warms the hearts of bureaucrats but admittedly chills many of the rest of us) was struck to review approaches to substance use, housing, withdrawal management, public intoxication and emergency services in the downtown, says John Donovan, Northern regional director of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM).
The subcommittee includes Donovan and Anita Lundie from AFM; Andrea Vystrcil, Rusty Beardy and Sally Beardy from the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA); Harold Smith, a former city councillor and executive director of the Northern Region for Manitoba Housing and Community Development's Northern Housing Operation, along with Marcella Burt from the same department; Audrey Crate from Manitoba Family Services and Labour's employment and income assistance section; Insp. John Duff, officer-in-charge of the Thompson RCMP detachment, Const. Robert Cleveland; Kane Doran from the Office of the Fire Commissioner, formerly a deputy chief of Thompson Fire and Emergency Services; Paulette Simkins, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Burntwood Region and the Nanatowiho Wikamik Homeless Shelter, also known as Thompson Homeless Shelter; and Mildred Osborne, of manager of the Keewatin Housing Association.
If some of the names look familiar, that's because they are. You don't have to go any farther back than four months ago to find some of these same folks sitting around the table at the Burntwood Hotel April 24 at the Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG) housing subcommittee (there's that word again) meeting.
To get an idea how intractable the problems being tackled have proven - and for an example of baseball legend Yogi Berra's famous malapropism, "This is like déjÀ vu all over again - think back to something called the "Thompson Community Consult on Homelessness, Addictions and Violence" held on Sept. 19, 2007 - a shade under five years ago - at the Manitoba Métis Federation Hall on Cree Road. The 2007 meeting itself was a follow-up two years after "the last community consult the issues of homelessness, violence and addictions are at the heart of many of the agency work and issues facing our clients, neighborhoods and staff," Donovan noted in a Sept. 7, 2007 e-mail.
The need for a detox centre in Thompson easily topped the most-needed list at that Sept. 19, 2007 meeting, but to date more than 20 years of local appeals to build and fund a detox have fallen on deaf ears with the both the NDP and its predecessor Progressive Conservative Governments of Manitoba.
Cecile Gousseau, a management consultant from Winnipeg, completed a feasibility study Dec. 22, 2008 for Northern Detox Programs Inc. and estimated the cost of retrofitting the old AFM building Polaris Building B at 23 Nickel Rd. for use as a detox at between $2.6 million and $4.3 million. The province killed the idea and sold the building to the Keewatin Tribal Council in 2010.
Manitoba Court of Appeal Justice Holly Beard had pushed for a detox as far back as between 1986 and 1992, when she was still a Thompson lawyer sitting on city council, before her appointment to the Court of Queen's Bench.
In an Aug. 3 e-mail from this year, Donovan explains Project Northern Doorway will need "the assistance of a whole community to realize we need the involvement of all stakeholders to make this project a success and affect change in the lives of the individuals living on our streets and in our emergency shelter."
Project Northern Doorway might then also do well getting input from Maj. Betty-Lou Topping, the new Salvation Army corps officer here, who in a few short weeks has demonstrated a capacity for fresh eyes and fresh thinking and approaches, and Lou Morissette, an old-timer (relatively speaking), who owns Setting Security Consultants and is a former RCMP staff sergeant, MLCC liquor inspector and a member until last December of the City of Thompson's public safety standing committee, and who also authored the 68-page Jan. 8, 2010 study called, City of Thompson 5 Year Public Safety Plan.
