Editor:
I am very much in agreement with BC Housings’ commitment to recovery, accountability for efforts and actions.
If you take these expectations and put them in a location with all the available temptations and peer pressures with no alternative, physical activities or coping tools , you court failure.
Burdock House on Winnipeg is an example, a “wet” facility, yet this morning at 9:30 a.m. three or four young people were doing drugs on the nearby church property. Hanging out with the “friends,” buying what you have to have because that’s all there is to do.
While BC Housing has grasped a new concept , they continue to ignore old realities, ones proven over and over. The realities are human nature, availability and alternatives.
No on-site consumption means the drugs will be bought and done off site with all the needles, garbage, expenses and sadness that follows drug use.
Why not re-open Ashnola at the Crossing?
Why would BC Housing place this new model, with the same problems, in the same type of location?
Why would they put it in a residential/ business mix and in close proximity to the best tourist attraction in Penticton? Yes, a world renown park, Skaha Lake Park, the greenest in the city.
Lynn Crassweller
Penticton
