B.C. targets homeless with Riverview Project

Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, July 27, 2007

VICTORIA -- The site of B.C.'s century-old psychiatric hospital may soon be transformed into a massive real estate development that will mix the affluent, the poor, the mentally ill and the disabled, the minister responsible for housing said Thursday.

Rich Coleman said the redevelopment of the old Riverview facility, situated on 98 hectares in Coquitlam, would include market housing, social housing and housing for the mentally ill and disabled, including beds for those who need institutional care.

While firm numbers for the size of the development have not been established, Coleman said he didn't think early staff proposals for up to 7,000 units were nearly high enough.

Coleman said he didn't know when the first units of the new project would be available, if it goes ahead, but said the project wouldn't be completed until after the Olympics.

Coquitlam will have a say on what happens to the site, Coleman said, adding nothing will be shoved down the municipality's throat. And he suggested Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, who has suggested more immediate use should be made of Riverview, should butt out of the issue.

Once staff comes back with new plans, they will go to cabinet, which will agree on models for the proposed development by August or September.

This fall, the proposed models will go to public meetings in Coquitlam for input from residents there.

The redevelopment, which would be one of the biggest real estate deals in recent memory, is the B.C. government's 21st-century vision for Riverview, a controversial institution that Vancouver-historian Chuck Davis describes as having "started up about a century ago as the Hospital for the Mind ... operating out of a hay barn on 1,000 acres."

Coleman, a former real estate developer who oversees the provincial social housing file, told The Vancouver Sun Thursday he sees the institutions grounds as a new community that could be built as a P-3 -- the public, private partnerships model the Liberal government has embraced.

That P-3 model would attract private developers to raise capital to build and pay the government for social housing and beds, he said. In exchange, they would be given the right to sell thousands of newly built condos and homes at market rates on one of the Lower Mainlands last great swaths of undeveloped land.

Coleman says it will have to meet local zoning laws, pass public approval and preserve the bucolic green spaces that are one of Riverviews features.

But Colemans plans are big.

So far, early suggestions from government staff are that anywhere from 4,500 or 7,000 units be built at Riverviews expansive compound. Coleman would not say how many of those would be for the mentally ill or social housing, but said from the Ministry of Health, "Ive heard around 1,100 units is what they felt was the number they were thinking they needed integrated into the site."

But Coleman thinks his staff may be thinking far, too small given the land in question.

The minister sent them back to the drawing board, asking for more housing units on the site, adding that at a similar government site being redeveloped in Vancouver Little Mountain, which sits on six hectares (15 acres), is expected to create 2,000 units, many of them social housing.

"The reality is I dont think either one of those [Riverview] proposals is actually comprehensive enough to take to the public," said Coleman in an interview.

"Six, seven thousand units on 244 acres in an urban centre really isnt very many. So the question had to be , Are you prepared to take a look at real densities, where you protect green space and at the same time go up...?"

While Coleman stresses Coquitlam residents, and its city council, will ultimately decide what happens, hes thinking condos and towers may be the taxpayers best bet for utilization of the land.

"What wed like to do is have a comprehensive plan here where the amount of density that is on the site actually pays for the health care component so the taxpayer doesnt have to come up with additional capital."

It is unclear how the residents and political leaders will react to the idea.

But Coleman has said he believes the community, which has long housed Riverview, is ready for the debate.

Coquitlam Mayor Maxine Wilson said shes had general discussions with the provincial government on the use of Riverview, including a discussion a month or two ago with Health Minister George Abbott, but said she was only told the province is looking at ways to better use Riverview.

"If they [patients] were getting the supports they needed, had structure and were treated in a way that allowed them to be as independent as they could cope with, we would be very pleased," she told The Sun earlier.

"Our citizens ... have always been advocates that there be services for mentally ill clients and the phasing out of Riverview was inhumane and the gaps werent filled."

"At its peak, that site housed thousands of clients ...," she added. "Its always worked in the past."

Coleman has also suggested that Vancouvers mayor, who has been advocating the creation of more housing at Riverview to ease the social stresses in the Downtown Eastside, butt out. He said it is up to Coquitlam residents to decide how the mental hospital can be best utilized.

"Thats why I take some exception sometimes when the mayor of Vancouver makes his comments about Riverview," he said. "Riverview is located in the City of Coquitlam. Its not located in the City of Vancouver. The City of Coquitlam will have the public hearing process.... at the front end, in the middle and right through the rezoning process..."

"Were not going to push something down the throat of that community."

Coleman also indirectly criticized Sullivans earlier musings that some Downtown Eastside residents could be put into Riverview quickly. He was critical of people who "simplistically say move a bunch of people into the empty buildings and let them live there from the Downtown Eastside."

"It is a non-starter for us," he said. "I toured the site. And there would be no discussion in regard to doing that. One of the sites ... has asbestos, and would probably cost $5 million to tear down and remediate....Some of the old sanatorium buildings have, quite frankly, rats in them..."

Vancouvers dearth of social housing for the poor and shortage of institutional space for the disabled -- there are about 13,800 people on the waiting list for social housing across B.C., about 9,000 of them in Greater Vancouver-- has drawn international attention in recent months, as Vancouvers 2010 Olympics approach.

Downtown businessmen complained last summer that "aggressive panhandlers," many of them homeless and suffering from mental disabilities and drug addiction, have been hurting the citys tourism image and cost the province a major convention.

The Economist, a global magazine that has often praised Vancouver as one of the best cities to live, also took politicians to task last year for the grinding poverty in the downtown core.

Not long after that, Premier Gordon Campbell made a major announcement that he was reviewing how the government was dealing with its most vulnerable citizens.

Coleman said that led to both a review of how to better utilize Riverviews land and kick-started a sudden buying spree by the province of rundown hotels in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside that are now being redeveloped by Colemans ministry to deal with the housing shortage for the poor.

But that has not satisfied anti-poverty activists in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that is home to some of the citys poorest and have accused he government of only reacting to the social crisis because of the approaching Olympics. On Thursday, one of Vancouvers most powerful advocates for the citys poor accused the Liberal government of not doing enough.

"Can the tourism industry stand 60 more international articles exposing government treatment of the Downtown Eastside?" the organizers of the Carnegie Community Action Project asked.

"In the last month, both the Washington Post and the UN Population Agency have recently exposed Vancouvers Downtown Eastside as an area where residents endure horrible living conditions in the midst of a wealthy city and country.

"If similar coverage continues for each of the 30 months until the Olympics, that would be at least 60 more international audiences to learn about how government treats poor and homeless people in Vancouver."

mcernetig@png.canwest.com


© The Vancouver Sun 2007





Is this just exporting Vancouver's problems?

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, July 27, 2007

That tremor emanating from Victoria Thursday was the social welfare landscape in the province shifting beneath our feet. The earthquake may soon follow.

The Liberal government's plan for the metamorphosis of Riverview -- and a metamorphosis it is, because what will emerge will look nothing like its predecessor -- is unprecedented in scale. It's big and, if it comes to fruition, will be the largest and most complex development of its kind in Canada.

How big?

Think in terms of a new town centre -- a mixed community of market and social housing, probably in condo and highrise form, interspersed with over a thousand housing units for the homeless, addicted and mentally ill.

It will dwarf anything of its kind. Toronto's largest social housing complex, Regent Park, is now undergoing redevelopment with plans for 2,500 market units and 2,000 social housing units.

Vancouver's Little Mountain complex, recently acquired by the province and slated for redevelopment, is six hectares in size, and Housing Minister Rich Coleman has talked about putting 2,000 units on the site.

But Riverview is an enormous 98 hectares, and Coleman, who talked about the still-vague plans to Sun reporter Miro Cernetig and me Thursday, said one proposal for 4,500 units and a second for 6,000-7,000 units were deemed not ambitious enough.

Staff, Coleman said, were sent back to the drawing board because it was felt that density on the Riverview site could be much, much greater.

For such a large undertaking, the government has moved with surprising speed.

After Premier Gordon Campbell admitted in a speech last year that the deinstitutionalization of Riverview had been a disaster, a three-person committee was formed composed of Coleman, Citizens' Services Minister Olga Illich and Health Minister George Abbott.

By early this fall, the proposals they are contemplating should be ready to go in front of Coquitlam council for public hearings.

Would Coquitlam want it?

In an interview last week, Coquitlam Mayor Maxine Wilson said city council in general favours Riverview being retained for mental health services.

But she may have not been aware at the time of the ambitious scope of the proposals the province was considering. There will be a lot of questions to ask.

A big one: Is this exporting Vancouver's problems to Coquitlam?

Is there the danger of creating a Downtown Eastside in the suburbs, or can the homeless, addicted and the mentally ill be successfully integrated into the community at large?

(I believe they can, and there are smaller, lesser-known success stories scattered throughout Vancouver proving it.)

Will such an influx of people put pressure on the local health services like Royal Columbian Hospital?

(Coleman said no, that he believes the opposite, that safely housed patients will not feel the need for health services as much.)

Is this merely a ploy to clean up the Downtown Eastside before the Olympics?

The speed of the government's initiative suggests Olympic considerations likely play a part. But Coleman denied it. The problems of homelessness and the mentally ill now extend to every community in the Lower Mainland, he said, and a single development, even one the size contemplated for Riverview, will not clean up the Downtown Eastside, certainly not in time for the Olympics.

Think in terms of a new town centre -- a mixed community of market and social housing, probably in condo and highrise form, interspersed with over a thousand housing units for the homeless, addicted and mentally ill.

It will dwarf anything of its kind. Toronto's largest social housing complex, Regent Park, is now undergoing redevelopment with plans for 2,500 market units and 2,000 social housing units.

Vancouver's Little Mountain complex, recently acquired by the province and slated for redevelopment, is six hectares in size, and Housing Minister Rich Coleman has talked about putting 2,000 units on the site.

But Riverview is an enormous 98 hectares, and Coleman, who talked about the still-vague plans to Sun reporter Miro Cernetig and me Thursday, said one proposal for 4,500 units and a second for 6,000-7,000 units were deemed not ambitious enough.

Staff, Coleman said, were sent back to the drawing board because it was felt that density on the Riverview site could be much, much greater.

For such a large undertaking, the government has moved with surprising speed.

After Premier Gordon Campbell admitted in a speech last year that the deinstitutionalization of Riverview had been a disaster, a three-person committee was formed composed of Coleman, Citizens' Services Minister Olga Illich and Health Minister George Abbott.

By early this fall, the proposals they are contemplating should be ready to go in front of Coquitlam council for public hearings.

Would Coquitlam want it?

In an interview last week, Coquitlam Mayor Maxine Wilson said city council in general favours Riverview being retained for mental health services.

But she may have not been aware at the time of the ambitious scope of the proposals the province was considering. There will be a lot of questions to ask.

A big one: Is this exporting Vancouver's problems to Coquitlam?

Is there the danger of creating a Downtown Eastside in the suburbs, or can the homeless, addicted and the mentally ill be successfully integrated into the community at large?

(I believe they can, and there are smaller, lesser-known success stories scattered throughout Vancouver proving it.)

Will such an influx of people put pressure on the local health services like Royal Columbian Hospital?

(Coleman said no, that he believes the opposite, that safely housed patients will not feel the need for health services as much.)

Is this merely a ploy to clean up the Downtown Eastside before the Olympics?

The speed of the government's initiative suggests Olympic considerations likely play a part. But Coleman denied it. The problems of homelessness and the mentally ill now extend to every community in the Lower Mainland, he said, and a single development, even one the size contemplated for Riverview, will not clean up the Downtown Eastside, certainly not in time for the Olympics.

What effect this will have on the Downtown Eastside is the other unknown. The Downtown Eastside contains the highest concentration of social services in the Lower Mainland -- psychiatric and addiction clinics, needle exchanges, religious charities, food banks, social housing societies, poverty advocates.

It is a social-welfare ghetto not just situated there to be in proximity to its clientele, but one that acts as a magnet to that clientele, too. It generates its own critical mass. For the homeless, mentally ill and addicted, it is a version of community, however fractured, where they can socialize.

Will that clientele want to move to Coquitlam if their services are not there? Or will they merely drift back and forth between Coquitlam and the Downtown Eastside?

Or will those services have to begin moving outward toward the suburbs?

It is that last question, I think, that reverberates with more political significance than all the others.

The government wants to clean up the Downtown Eastside. There is also a public appetite for the kind of integrated institutionalization the Liberals are contemplating.

But that dense concentration of social services in the Downtown Eastside acts as an incubator of constant political dissent. It generates media coverage out of all proportion to size, and all of that coverage reflects badly on the government.

So, if a proposal the size of one being contemplated for Riverview has the effect of dissipating some of that concentrated dissent, I was wondering:

How loud are those social service activists going to have to shout to be heard all the way from Coquitlam?

pmcmartin@png.canwest.com


© The Vancouver Sun 2007




An old picture of Riverview
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/422781303_768232ae00_o.jpg

Of course you realize that 7000 units will require a rapid transit line on Lougheed?!?!...

Here's a pic from 2003 - there's development to the north of the site already.
BTW that's Mariner Way on the left, which leads to downtown Coquitlam (and could be extended up the hydro ROW to avoid residential areas). I saw a defunct engineering report from the early 1990s proposing a "secondary highway" bridge across the Fraser River - it would have been east of the Port Mann (but not directly linked to the TCH in any way). On the north side, it skirted the Colony Farm property and linked up to Mariner Way and had a ramp to the Mary Hill Bypass (and further east, the Mary Hill Bypass led to a new Pitt River Bridge near its mouth with the Fraser River) and on the south it linked up to a couple of the Surrey north/south arterials. That plan also still provided for the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge but has probably been superceded by the current plans.

http://www.globalairphotos.com/images/bc/coquitlam/2003/cqh2003_104.jpg

Man, that's a bummer. I have loved to go to Riverview and look at all the cool buildings for a few years now. I'm saddened to see that all everyone cares about is all the land, and opportunity's for development. What about the historic buildings that will be torn down. What about the beautiful scenery and all the different trees that were planted there. Once the development occurs, I will no longer be going there.

Let's see a plan for Riverview before arguing against it
Objecting parties offer no alternative for growing problem of social housing

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Coquitlam council is afroth. The tree-huggers are afroth. The anti-poverty activists are afroth, as they ever are, since the poor are always with us, as Jesus said.

He also said, love thy neighbour. In this case, it is proving to be an infinitely more difficult doctrine.

This case is Riverview.

The provincial government, which owns it, would like to transform it from the quasi-green space/arboretum/decaying mental institution into a new, mixed-use community that would integrate social housing for the homeless, the mentally ill and the developmentally disabled among market housing for suburbanites.

The plan is ambitious. It is big.

While there are no concrete drawings, it could entail the construction of more than 10,000 housing units, primarily condominiums and highrises. The sale of the market units, built by private industry, would subsidize the construction of the social housing component, rumoured to be more than 1,000 units.

As far as I have been able to find out, it has no counterpart in North America, either in size or application. The concept, said Housing Minister Rich Coleman, was not taken from any template. It is new territory.

Coleman discussed the still-unformed concept with The Vancouver Sun in an interview last week.

The next day, the subsequent story was greeted in Coquitlam with alarm, since it was the first anybody there had heard of it, including Mayor Maxine Wilson.

She was not impressed. Without seeing so much of a conceptual drawing, since none exist, anyway, she uttered the unlikely battle cry of "No market housing!" -- unlikely because that may have been the first time those words had ever been heard in a suburb where the practice of bulldozing down trees and then naming a subdivision after them is sacrosanct. No market housing? There's very rarely any other kind outside of Vancouver city limits, which has had to shoulder the bulk of Greater Vancouver's social housing.

But Coquitlam has a proprietary interest in Riverview, and it is a leafy one. It expressed that interest in a 2005 report entitled For the Future of Riverview. It took a two-year task force to come up with its recommendations, which called for the preservation of much of Riverview's green space and heritage trees, a continued, though limited, presence of mental health facilities, and the development of new enterprises that promote "artistic, educational, cultural, social, heritage, horticultural and passive recreational values."

An idyllic vision. A bucolic vision. And one, I'm guessing, that would have to be massaged into being by many, many tax dollars.

It was also a vision that suited local naturalists, who joined with Wilson to condemn Coleman's musings, which, they were sure, meant the destruction of Riverview's greenery.

Joining this chorus were members of the NDP and the anti-poverty lobby, whose accusations were borne along by the whiff of capitalist conspiracy. Local NDP MLA Diane Thorne claimed it was a land grab for developers, and Downtown Eastside activist Jean Swanson claimed Coleman was using the housing crisis to justify said development.

In other words, this immediate condemnation of Liberal plans by intersecting self-interests was politics as usual.

Which is perfectly understandable.

And it may even prove to be warranted in the final analysis.

But it was, I thought, a little hasty.

No one, after all, knows exactly what the Liberals' plans for Riverview entail exactly, maybe not even the Liberals themselves.

Nor did any of the objecting parties offer up any alternative ideas of what to do about the growing population of people needing social housing, a population that now numbers in the thousands and is spread throughout the entire Lower Mainland.

They also ignored the fact that this would not be the first time Riverview has built market housing on what used to be its lands. Riverview used to be just over 400 hectares, and had a resident population approaching 5,000 people. But in the 1980s, 275 hectares of it were sold and subdivided for residential use, while another 25 hectares were set aside as a forest preserve.

What in those 25 years made Riverview sacrosanct from further development, especially in light of its steadily dwindling population? After decades of deinstitutionalization, now only 300 people live on the remaining 100 hectares. This is surely the lowest population density rate in the Lower Mainland.

It is a colossal waste of space, considering the need and the very expensive cost of building social housing in a market like Vancouver's.

Meanwhile, the old tactics of demonizing the "market" not only doesn't help, it shows a sad lack of imagination.

This is not -- I repeat, not -- an argument for the Liberals' plan. You cannot make a cogent argument in favour of something you have not seen.

But the same goes for making a cogent argument against it.

pmcmartin@png.canwest.com or 604-605-2905


© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Riverview plans not current: Coleman
By Sarah Payne - The Tri-City News - February 14, 2008

The Riverview Hospital lands are safe — for now — Housing Minister Rich Coleman said Thursday, calling suggestions to the contrary "purely speculative."

Coleman was contacted by The Tri-City News to discuss reports in the Vancouver Sun and other media that the provincial government has drawn up detailed plans for dozens of highrise towers, mid-rise buildings and several condominium and apartment buildings on the 98-hectare site.

And even though the number of units suggested — about 10,000 — is the same as what Coleman hopes to see on the Riverview grounds, he emphasized the plans reported Thursday are irrelevant.

"The Vancouver Sun story is based on old plans that were developed by the health authority about a year ago," Coleman said. "They have nothing to do with what's going on today."

He further stated that no plans would be developed without consultation with Coquitlam council and residents.

When asked to confirm whether site designs were being assembled for tender to explore possible options, he said nothing of the sort is happening because the ministry is busy exploring other housing projects in the Lower Mainland.

Coleman also said the Evergreen Line's Lougheed Highway route and Riverview redevelopment are not linked, noting there have been no discussions on the issue between the Ministry of Transportation, his own ministry and Accommodation and Real Estate Services, which manages the Riverview lands.

Coquitlam politicians denounced the latest Riverview plans, their frustration mounting over what appears to be a veil of secrecy over the site.

"I still haven't heard anything substantive from the minister or the government," said Coquitlam-Maillardville NDP MLA Diane Thorne. "It's still information by the media, rather than any information for the community from the government."

Thorne suggested that with plans that seem to fulfill Coleman's wish for 10,000 units, which would bring about 30,000 people to the site, the latest rumours are closer to what the BC Liberals want for Riverview. In November a housing ministry representative said public consultations could begin this month but Thorne said she's hearing it likely won't be until the fall.

Coleman did echo Tuesday's throne speech when he said the government is pursuing another Riverview project — a mental health facility that would complement a retrofitted and reopened Willingdon, the old youth detention facility in Burnaby.

Thorne sees it as "another nail in the coffin of Riverview" and that opening Willingdon would simply mean more space for market housing at Riverview. She said she'll put forward a private members' bill calling for Riverview to be kept in public hands and remain a mental health sanctuary that would include transitional housing for the mentally ill.

Coquitlam Mayor Maxine Wilson said bringing an urban centre into Riverview is "extremely cruel."

"To put [mentally ill people] in an urban setting, when they're in a paranoid state and distrustful of people... they need to be in a healing setting. They need to get away from people, so putting 30,000 people there is totally inhumane."

Wilson said she wants to see a mental health research facility at Riverview that would focus on developing better treatments for the mentally ill, as well as a hospital-like setting for patients who need that level of care.

Coun. Mae Reid, who chairs Coquitlam's Riverview committee, said the city's 50-year economic development plan envisions a medical school campus — but no market housing.

"There isn't room for both," she said. "Why they would take a site like that and just put regular housing on it? It's just greed."

Council has stated it will not rezone the Riverview lands for market housing and Wilson said she expects widespread support from other Metro Vancouver councils to leave Riverview as a park-like setting for the mentally ill.

Still, Thorne questions whether the BC Liberals will pay much attention to such a decision.

"I don't have a lot of faith in the statement Coleman made that in the end the city will make the final decision," she said. "Call me jaded, but I just don't believe it."

As long as there is a good amount set aside for parks I think it is a great idea. Social housing should be spread thru out the region.
Thank god Jim Green is no longer a political force because he knows nothing about urban planning. He always insisted that all social housing be in the DownTown Eastside. All that has done is turn a slum into a slum with slightly better housing.
It is going to decades to undo the damge he has done.
People say it should be downtown.................that is exactly where it should NOT be.
Why do you think there are so many mentally ill and margilized down there in the first place? Because there are no alternatives. All the drug adiction services are down there and as soon as they have their 30 day dryout they throw them out...............right back into the DownTown Eastside where they will be offered drugs within 3 minutes.

There should be a true alternative for those whowant to leave the misery of the area and be able to live in the burbs like others have the option to.
The only thing I have concerns about is they have to make sure the support services are in place.
It would greatly releive some of the pressure on St.Paul's for those who do need attention. The whole point of deinstitutionalization was {atleast soppose to be} to help the mentally ill to be active members of the community and offer them a quality of life we all have the right to.

As another thought it would hopefully help the Evergreen Line to go down Lougheed where it should go as an LRT or express buses across the PortMann could connect with it.

As another thought it would hopefully help the Evergreen Line to go down Lougheed where it should go as an LRT or express buses across the PortMann could connect with it.

Agreed. I see a LRT from Coquitlam Central down Lougheed connecting with RapidBus and then heading Southeast across the planned Port Mann twin, leaving Highway 1 from 152nd Street, to Guilford, West on 104th Avenue, then South on King George. This was the original express bus plan called the Surrey-Coquitlam bullet.

It appears that the Liberals are modeling the new Riverview after an old mental hospital in London, England:


A humane plan to reclaim the asylum

Miro Cernetig
Vancouver Sun
Thursday, February 14, 2008

A walk through the lush, rolling grounds of the Riverview psychiatric hospital is still an unsettling trip down memory lane, evoking a darker age in the care of the mentally ill.

It's a welcome brush stroke of pastoral green in Metro Vancouver's suburban sprawl, with large lawns and a world-renowned collection of temperate-climate trees known as the arboretum. On that level, it's idyllic.

But the eye is inevitably drawn to the crumbling buildings, massive examples of faux-Victorian institutionalism that dominate the grounds.

They are dark and dank, full of asbestos and disturbing memories that bring to mind the hellish asylum in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

On a cold, grey day, I almost thought I glimpsed Nurse Ratched doing her rounds behind the iron-barred windows, clutching a ring of keys for doors leading into -- but rarely out of -- the asylum.

That's the sort of image -- one that was accurate not so long ago for how society dealt with the mentally ill -- that nobody wants for the new Riverview.

We all want to treat the mentally ill with humanity and give them the hope the Victorian-era asylums smothered.

But in the age Nimbyism, when even small group homes often encounter the Not-In-My-Backyard reflex, it's easier said than done to remake a massive old asylum. That's why the provincial government is keeping the lid on what will be an entirely new approach to this social policy conundrum.

The idea the province has been quietly developing in private -- plans have been circulating within the government -- is modelled after what was done with an old asylum, similar to Riverview, in London, England.

Known today as Springfield Hospital, it initially opened in 1841 as the Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. The name said it all. Not unlike Riverview in its darkest years, it became notorious for the lock-them-in-and-throw-away-the-key philosophy to treating the mentally ill. Patients were in essence excluded from the rest of us. No wonder these buildings still seem to radiate bad karma.

But a heartening new approach was taken at Springfield. Why not bring the community into the asylum?

So the old Victorian buildings were redeveloped, a residential community of condos and apartments was built on -- and around -- the old asylum grounds. And the profits were used to build a modern psychiatric facility weaved into a real-world community. Patients' neighbours will be more than just the dreaded Nurse Ratched.

"Historically, Springfield Hospital's purpose was to facilitate the exclusion of the mentally ill [from society], and that was defined very broadly," Andrew Simpson, an official at the facility, has explained to The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health. "Now . . . we are historically reclaiming the asylum. We are quite deliberately building a new bit of London around the asylum, reversing the process of exclusion."

I think the concept of using market housing / condo development to subsidize an expansion of mental heath services is an excellent idea. Riverview is MASSIVE. All the buildings are spread out, and I'd say at least half of them are vacant (and rotting with asbestos). The notion that the mentally ill must be preserved away from the public like at some sort of wild game reserve is ridiculous. If designed and arranged properly (i.e. with the mental health buildings maintaining a certain amount of peace and privacy) there's no reason both can't be accomodated on the 250 acre campus.

I do however worry about the traffic on the Lougheed, which I use daily, if 30 000 more ppl are using it to get home and to work. If they go ahead with this, the Evergreen MUST take the southern route. Otherwise the area would become a daily traffic catastrophe.

Also i worry about how seriously the province is dedicated to subsidizing mental health. After all, a hospital needs perpetual financial and resource support, not just a one time payment from developers. Once these shiny new facilities are build they'll have to be maintained for 20, 50, etc. years...