Mental Health: February 2009 Archives

CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun files Thousands of Downtown Eastside residents have problems that aren't being dealt with, Police Chief Jim Chu says.

Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu is calling on the federal and provincial governments to create an agency to deal exclusively with the unmanageable social problems that afflict thousands of people living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES).

Chu says the agency should be under the control of a "director for the most vulnerable," a civil servant with the type of power given to heads of Crown corporations and agencies.

It would be the director's job to oversee all the government programs that now found in the area and hold the agencies that deliver them accountable for producing measurable results.

The recommendation is contained in the 59-page document Project Lockstep, a united effort to save lives in the Downtown Eastside, to be released today.

Chu also called for the VPD to move back to the Downtown Eastside to aid in the area's rehabilitation.

The report argues that while there have been major efforts to improve the state of affairs in the Downtown Eastside, they have failed. It says "deliberate and unintended policies and changes have played significant roles in the continuation and, or, worsening of the problems that are concentrated in the area."