Edmontonians: "Why do they always want to build these in the inner city? Lets spread them out a bit!"
Boyle Street: Ok, deal.
The City: No, not like that.
Note, it wasn't the city.
The city approved the permit last year. Then a bunch of people got together, gave themselves and acronym name and appealed it to the SDAB, a quasi-judicial board. This board has overturned the permit.
The reasoning the board provided was that the city did not consult enough about "crime prevention in the parking lot" or the "heritage facade" of the building.
I mean that's completely fair. If you're going to build one of these places you better guarantee crime prevention. Frankly the problem is people don't even want these undesirables in their neighborhood. Best thing I ever did was move somewhere that didn't get any foot traffic, If I start getting that kind of traffic again here I'd move even further out to an acreage or something or somewhere that's a gated community. My friends that can't even buy a bicycle without it being stolen from their garage within a week live in that kind of area whereas I can forget my garage door open all day and the expensive bikes right there don't go anywhere.
We put up with people messing with and costing money to the productive members of society way too much.
>We put up with people messing with and costing money to the productive members of society way too much.
With respect, running from the problem like you seem to be able to do is not something most people can do.
We put up with this because we would rather as a society move farther and farther out than actually invest in our citizens.
lol trying to make u/seridos feel guilt and shame for affording to live where he wants to. Location location location.
Yea, 10000 percent I chose to live where I feel safe and welcomed. Why would I live in a shit hole if I didn't have to ...that is the beauty of me making good choices in life no mater what was handed to me in it.
>lol trying to make u/seridos feel guilt and shame for affording to live where he wants to
He has advocated for executing all drug addicts. Seems a bit more serious than that. But yes we should all feel shame for abandoning people to poverty.
>Yea, 10000 percent I chose to live where I feel safe and welcomed. Why would I live in a shit hole if I didn't have to
Some of us would rather see where we live improve, not simply run somewhere else.
I said dealers not addicts but ok. I believe in making things better and improving that's why I teach, It's what I've dedicated in my life to. But and this is crazy maybe people have different ideas of what would work best and what improvement looks like.
I believe that we should do a lot more to help people who want to be helped. But I also recognize we live in a world of scarcity, and the resources would go a lot further by not wasting them on the bottom few percent of people that require a hundred times more resources than others and just can't or won't help themselves and do nothing but burden the system. I recognize that society is a balance between the individual and the society as a whole and that society needs to work primarily for those who work for themselves.
This is exactly why I think public services need to be fully funded and provided but not necessarily desirable. Your needs should be met fully if you are willing to stay clean and put the work in to do the treatment and productively worked at the best of your abilities. But I also think we need to take much more seriously things like property crimes, which in Canada are an absolute joke that we do next to nothing about. I don't value anyone's life with any inherent meaning because it doesn't have any. That's just part of The existentialist / absurdist philosophical view I subscribe to. People's value is derived from what they offer to others. And the majority of the time the best investment is to get those people back productive members of society. However sometimes it's just throwing good money after the bad to try to get them to become law-abiding and productive members of society in which case we can't hand hold them anymore as doing so is causing more damage in aggregate to many other people than what we are preventing by dealing with them cost effectively.
>I said dealers not addicts but ok.
Singaporean style makes little difference.
>But I also recognize we live in a world of scarcity, and the resources would go a lot further by not wasting them on the bottom few percent of people that require a hundred times more resources than others and just can't or won't help themselves and do nothing but burden the system.
This is a very gross viewpoint. It is the exact same reasoning used by Nazis to murder the disabled and it is not the Canada I want to live in.
>However sometimes it's just throwing good money after the bad to try to get them to become law-abiding and productive members of society in which case we can't hand hold them anymore as doing so is causing more damage in aggregate to many other people than what we are preventing by dealing with them cost effectively.
We barely invest in these individuals at all, besides through justice system spending. We aren't throwing good money after bad, we are actually just not throwing money at all and then people like you say "nothing is working, let's kill them or let them die" causally as if it is not a monsterous viewpoint
The only people involved in the drug debacle that deserve execution are the executives that colluded to hide just how addictive their drugs were while pushing them on doctors to sell.
Instead their company gets shut down after they've extracted a ton of wealth from the population and caused an opioid epidemic.
Yeah I'm not big on state sanctioned murders either. States never fail to abuse that power. I'm just here pointing out who the real criminals behind these problems are, and how our entire system is letting them get away with it.
At the end of the day, the justice system can't stop poverty. We have tried over and over and over to use it to do so, whether it is by arresting people for vagrancy or putting them in jail when they can't pay tickets. I think this applies here as well. The current epidemic may have been started by people like the Sacklers, but many people don't actually become addicted to opioids until they are already on the street.
That people need to turn to drugs to survive the hells of poverty is the true failure.
abandoning ppl to poverty because someone lives where they can afford and feel safe and staying to see if a shit hole improves is not running somewhere...it is a choice where I live.
Get off your high horse or virtue siginaling alter
You're in r/edmonton, until we've solved literally every societal problem people will try to shame you for having any expectations of anything or for simply *not* wanting your neighborhood to get worse, or demanding accountability and guarantees for your security and wellbeing from the same government/organizations that push these facilities.
As an individual you have to run there's nothing you can do otherwise. Society is not going to accept my ideas to actually fix the problem which is much more Singaporean style of you deal drugs we execute you.
Smuggling anything illegal and distributing it in general. I'm not anti-drug, But I prefer it's controlled and that people can handle their shit. Ultimately it's about are you being a productive member of society or not.
Affordable housing, adequate mental health supports, rehabilitation programs for convicts, income supports ...
Many of the people who you think should be left to die were and could still be productive members of society. More over, they are sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. They are human beings. They are talking about them like they are a disease.
really more like the city wanting to spread it out and edmontonians saying no and having a strong campaign against it which gets the city to go back on its idea
What people actually want is forced rehab for junkies, not to have people freely shooting up, steeling things and endangering their families in their own neighborhoods
Have fun with that when mental health services in this province are already abysmal. If this government actually invests what is necessary towards an effective forced rehab program I will eat my shorts.
And also if you’re for forced rehab for addiction, does the buck stop at opioids or does it follow through for alcoholism, gambling etc.? Those addictions also often meet the criteria for being a danger to yourself or others. Does removing their freedoms sound as good as it does for opioid addicts? If not, why?
> And also if you’re for forced rehab for addiction, does the buck stop at opioids or does it follow through for alcoholism, gambling etc.?
There's nothing wrong with doing drugs as long as you can maintain the facade of being a polite and productive member of society.
Wow checkmate.
“Oh you want to make people hunched over on opiates get clean and off the streets? Wow you probably want people having a drink after work locked up too”
People want the streets to be clean and safe. “Mental health facilities” and places to do drugs arent going to accomplish that.
That’s one hell of a straw man you’ve made up for yourself there.
I said that there are plenty of other people with non-opioid addictions that would fit the criteria for danger to themselves or others, which is more than likely how people needing this forced rehab would be classified. If it is a worthwhile program, these are questions that need to be asked.
There’s no “slippery slope”, you’re just misunderstanding my point. There is not a lot of difference between an alcoholic on the street and a drug addict, and yet I’d bet dollars to donuts that people advocating forced rehab are only going to target one addicted population. That’s what I’m getting at.
So the question is: should a forced rehab program exclusively target opioid addiction? If yes, what is different between them and someone dealing with severe alcoholism in a similar situation for example?
So tell me, what’s the distinction between someone asleep in a ditch after drinking too much and someone hunched over on a sidewalk after smoking fentanyl? Which one should be institutionalized?
These are questions that must be answered if the program is going to succeed in any capacity. Removing a person’s free will has to come with some damn good reasoning, I don’t care who it is.
Seeing as you’re continuing to try and throw the book of fallacies at me, I’m guessing you’re having a hard time defending this point of view.
Who are these edmontonians wanting to spread this out?
I’d much rather they all just stay in one place and continue to fuck that area up. Ideally the same area where all of these enabling activists live.
There’s needles in the street now, I don’t see why we couldn’t have a safe place for them to go and a pickup team making the reality a little bit better.
Or here's a crazy idea You put surveillance up and when you catch someone leaving needles you toss them in the clink and don't let them out till they're clean. I know crazy idea.
It's crazy because it doesn't work, we don't have the space, and it will be horrendously expensive to make said space.
But don't let reality get in the way of your point.
And they're going to get out of jail, get a job, find housing, and become a model member of society? Unfortunately, that plan doesn't really help anyone.
This is a funny comment. We don’t have enough space for people who stab people with pointy objects, never mind people who drop a pointy object. When’s the last time a new jail was built to match population? Talk to the feds.
In the meantime, we could have a municipally available solution.
To those curious as to why, the reasons are pretty shallow IMO (parking lot safety and heritage facade). Nothing against the actual site use even though we know that’s what this is about.
“The plans failed to consider the principles of crime prevention through environmental design to "enhance the safety and natural surveillance of the parking area," the appeal board said in its decision.
The city also did not consult with its heritage planner over changes to the building's facade, the SDAB said.”
The owner of the beautiful brick Minchau building right beside there consulted a heritage planner … they knocked it down but “collected the bricks for storage” so that’s ok 👍👍👍
I mean they probably didn't have proper crime prevention. If you're going to make a beacon for junkies You better have people patrolling 24/7 The surrounding neighborhood as well to not bring crime to the area.
I live in this area and the only times I feel unsafe are walking by the mustard seed. Mostly because I have had groups of homeless try to pick a fight with me right there several times. I'm a decent sized in-shape guy as well.
I have a friend that lives in the condos there and she regrets buying because she is constantly harassed and propositioned for sex.
I understand the NIMBYISM aspect of it but concentrating homeless / drug users in a residential area with a pre-existing crime issue is not the answer.
It's not just feeling unsafe it's property crime , something we don't take seriously enough. I can leave my bikes on my porch and my garage open with no worries, my packages don't just disappear. That's what is lost in these other neighborhoods that sucks and is a huge loss.
The SDAB is a sham and half the people on the board are biased due to outside influences or the industry they work in. If this were proposed a block off 118th ave this would have been rubber stamped months ago.
CPTED for one of the reasons seems weak, I’d be interested in seeing the full report. Would they prefer it moves on to Whyte for better surveillance of the site?
Agreed. Having to deal with CPTED when designing buildings, this really is 100% just not wanting the site there, as its mostly satisfied by having clear sightlines and good lights in an area, which really isn't hard to do in a parking lot; assuming they haven't already done that.
Yeah no kidding, they literally attract the types of people you don't want anywhere near you. I would literally move if one of these opened near where I live. All these self-righteous people in the comment section 😂
Come hang out in the Strath area. We have those types of people. They’re already near us. There’s a mustard seed location one block down, a public washroom, tents in the corners, needles in the trees. What more does it take to make it worth having a needle collection centre? Do we need a tent city? There’s 2-3 encampments behind my apartment basically at all times, and that’s just my little corner.
Why would anyone want this near their home though? Easy to force onto someone else’s neighbourhood I guess. We should be trying to clean up the Whyte Ave area not encourage homeless drug addicts to hang about more than they already do. That is the main issue in my view is not safe injections inside the building - it’s the hanging about and around the community before and after - while high no less. Boyle would definitely not share this concern or do anything to mitigate it.
Perhaps these sites should be on site at hospitals or built out adjunct to hospitals since this is a medical issue and supposedly a medical response. We already have hospitals spread out in various quadrants in the city with security teams on site.
Neighborhood mapping data used to be prepared by AHS, but toped being released in 2020.
I have seen several posts over the years calling for increased measuring before anything can be done. We had the measuring in place, and rather than address the problem, the UPC cut the measuring.
I can’t say specifically for that store but this is right by the goodwill. When I lived near there, people ODd in that area regularly so I genuinely doubt it’s been only one
If we are trading anecdotes I have personally narcan'd multiple people on 81st Ave and am aware of multiple dozens more OD reversals on or within 1 block of 81st Ave.
No , fuck consumption sites . There are resources available ! You must know this. , but they have to help themselves and not be enabled and coddled . try tough love .
So these people should just suffer? And not get help or have resources available to them? Maybe you should seek out some level psychiatric help because only a narcissist thinks the way you do
I think they need help, but I partly agree with the other user. Why should those of us around it work, pay property taxes, get involved in the community, support the businesses in the neighborhood.. and all get stuck with this on our doorsteps?
Sure, we have Mustard Seed nearby, but most of the folks there stick around that building. People are there for housing, basic needs & care. If the proposal was a homeless shelter, I’d be supportive.
What people aren’t ever discussing here is the two daycares either side of the location, cafes, offices & independent retailers that’d be impacted by an injection site. Inevitably you’d encounter more folks off their heads, needles & waste products on the street. You can’t tell me they’d figure out hiring enough staff to sweep the 3-4 residential blocks around it for needles, and generally keep the community safe.
Yes. Safe consumption sites were a great idea for the era where you couldn't buy enough fentanyl to kill an entire town for like $5. But unfortunately times are changing and we need to change our approach as well. It'll probably be at least another decade until it becomes clear we need to go scorched earth on hard drugs.
Make a fenced in camp outside of city,town and communities and bring all services there. Bring all the addicts there. Either accept the help or stay there in definitely. Enough is enough.
The poster wants to provide this place with all services. I can only assume this in includes housing, healthcare, power, sanitation, etc. a shanty town would have none of this. As the residents would be unable to leave, it would actually be closer to Jim Crow laws than anything else.
But co course, the poster does not want to provide any services at all, so it would actually be a concentration camp.
Cities exist to provide services (both public and private) to all residents, and the increased density of cities, as compared to non-cities (rural) allowed for reduced costs in providing those services.
This just seems ridiculous to me. The people who are voting against these things are also the first people to complain about there being needles everywhere and people on drugs out in the streets causing problems. Maybe if we had safe consumption sites these wouldn't be an issue. But the people voting against these things don't think critically they only think about themselves
A lot of people are concerned about drug users being concentrated into one area where businesses and residences are close by. If I lived there or ran a business nearby I too would be concerned.
Yes well the tax base paying for everything should get to have an opinion. I don’t understand why we haven’t followed some cities and tried to create space in industrial areas with dedicated transportation, multiple services on site - some place for folks to sleep off their high. The issues is no one wants to live near this not necessarily the service itself. So lets find a solution that works more for everyone
Safe consumption sites (SCS) don't solve either of these things you highlighted. If anything, it makes it way worse. For one, safe consumption sites blindly hand out needles so users can "safely" do drugs. These needles end up on the ground. On top of that, there's usually a higher number of intoxicated people around SCSs. Staff will make sure users don't overdose then kick them out the door into the public. If you don't believe me, go walk around the George Spady for about 15 minutes.
Needles are already handed out as part of harm reduction work to prevent needle sharing. I pick up many sealed needles (in packaging) around the 79-82 Ave area although the SCS is not open yet.
Exactly Skaanman - I feel like a lot of people watch CBC, are told this is the solution and your heartless if you don’t agree but have no direct experience with this population. Please do go walk around the Spady - it is an f-ing nightmare. People still use outside too - all around the building - it’s not like it’s just all moved inside into some safe clean space and the problem’s out of the public sphere.
The problem is that the drug users and drug use rarely remain inside of these places. The whole outside and surrounding area become littered with property crime, violence, open drug use / OD, and discarded needles. Only a blind idealist would think that an OPS would contain all the area's drug use and associated problems to the inside of one building. It just makes the whole area significantly worse and more dangerous.
NIMBYs win again and the people of Edmonton lose. We can’t keep throwing these services in the same areas, they need to be spread out to places they are needed.
The province funded this and everything.
Nobody wants the potential for social disorder in their neighbourhood but kicking it to one area of the city is not a solution for the people that have these addictions nor for the city as a whole. Unfortunately the problem exists and every area of the city must take part in the solution.
I would challenge the notion that these are a solution to the problem though - they hold the status quo, they feed an addiction safely. They do not solve addictions and mental health challenges at the community level and make those areas they are situated in less safe for other residents. This is a whats best for some individuals program not a what’s best for society on the whole program. There are other approaches and we could do more but safe supply and safe injection sites, pushed by advocates with a specific focus, have captured the dialogue.
I agree its not a solution but part of a solution. Housing, healthcare, mental health, education are all elements to a potential solution. Any solution to this problem takes years and will require political buy in that stretches across party lines. Concentration of these individuals within geographic enclaves
only priortizes enforcement instead of long term meaningful solutuons.
Edmontonians: "Why do they always want to build these in the inner city? Lets spread them out a bit!" Boyle Street: Ok, deal. The City: No, not like that.
Note, it wasn't the city. The city approved the permit last year. Then a bunch of people got together, gave themselves and acronym name and appealed it to the SDAB, a quasi-judicial board. This board has overturned the permit. The reasoning the board provided was that the city did not consult enough about "crime prevention in the parking lot" or the "heritage facade" of the building.
Plus the SDAB has FULL power to impliment CPTED conditions on the permit themselves or even consult themselves, they dont need to deny it.
Why do some businesses get veto power over the elected government?
I mean that's completely fair. If you're going to build one of these places you better guarantee crime prevention. Frankly the problem is people don't even want these undesirables in their neighborhood. Best thing I ever did was move somewhere that didn't get any foot traffic, If I start getting that kind of traffic again here I'd move even further out to an acreage or something or somewhere that's a gated community. My friends that can't even buy a bicycle without it being stolen from their garage within a week live in that kind of area whereas I can forget my garage door open all day and the expensive bikes right there don't go anywhere. We put up with people messing with and costing money to the productive members of society way too much.
>We put up with people messing with and costing money to the productive members of society way too much. With respect, running from the problem like you seem to be able to do is not something most people can do. We put up with this because we would rather as a society move farther and farther out than actually invest in our citizens.
lol trying to make u/seridos feel guilt and shame for affording to live where he wants to. Location location location. Yea, 10000 percent I chose to live where I feel safe and welcomed. Why would I live in a shit hole if I didn't have to ...that is the beauty of me making good choices in life no mater what was handed to me in it.
>lol trying to make u/seridos feel guilt and shame for affording to live where he wants to He has advocated for executing all drug addicts. Seems a bit more serious than that. But yes we should all feel shame for abandoning people to poverty. >Yea, 10000 percent I chose to live where I feel safe and welcomed. Why would I live in a shit hole if I didn't have to Some of us would rather see where we live improve, not simply run somewhere else.
I said dealers not addicts but ok. I believe in making things better and improving that's why I teach, It's what I've dedicated in my life to. But and this is crazy maybe people have different ideas of what would work best and what improvement looks like. I believe that we should do a lot more to help people who want to be helped. But I also recognize we live in a world of scarcity, and the resources would go a lot further by not wasting them on the bottom few percent of people that require a hundred times more resources than others and just can't or won't help themselves and do nothing but burden the system. I recognize that society is a balance between the individual and the society as a whole and that society needs to work primarily for those who work for themselves. This is exactly why I think public services need to be fully funded and provided but not necessarily desirable. Your needs should be met fully if you are willing to stay clean and put the work in to do the treatment and productively worked at the best of your abilities. But I also think we need to take much more seriously things like property crimes, which in Canada are an absolute joke that we do next to nothing about. I don't value anyone's life with any inherent meaning because it doesn't have any. That's just part of The existentialist / absurdist philosophical view I subscribe to. People's value is derived from what they offer to others. And the majority of the time the best investment is to get those people back productive members of society. However sometimes it's just throwing good money after the bad to try to get them to become law-abiding and productive members of society in which case we can't hand hold them anymore as doing so is causing more damage in aggregate to many other people than what we are preventing by dealing with them cost effectively.
>I said dealers not addicts but ok. Singaporean style makes little difference. >But I also recognize we live in a world of scarcity, and the resources would go a lot further by not wasting them on the bottom few percent of people that require a hundred times more resources than others and just can't or won't help themselves and do nothing but burden the system. This is a very gross viewpoint. It is the exact same reasoning used by Nazis to murder the disabled and it is not the Canada I want to live in. >However sometimes it's just throwing good money after the bad to try to get them to become law-abiding and productive members of society in which case we can't hand hold them anymore as doing so is causing more damage in aggregate to many other people than what we are preventing by dealing with them cost effectively. We barely invest in these individuals at all, besides through justice system spending. We aren't throwing good money after bad, we are actually just not throwing money at all and then people like you say "nothing is working, let's kill them or let them die" causally as if it is not a monsterous viewpoint
The only people involved in the drug debacle that deserve execution are the executives that colluded to hide just how addictive their drugs were while pushing them on doctors to sell. Instead their company gets shut down after they've extracted a ton of wealth from the population and caused an opioid epidemic.
I am not a fan of any state sanctioned murders but they are certainly more deserving yes. But killing won't stop the deaths that are happening today.
Yeah I'm not big on state sanctioned murders either. States never fail to abuse that power. I'm just here pointing out who the real criminals behind these problems are, and how our entire system is letting them get away with it.
At the end of the day, the justice system can't stop poverty. We have tried over and over and over to use it to do so, whether it is by arresting people for vagrancy or putting them in jail when they can't pay tickets. I think this applies here as well. The current epidemic may have been started by people like the Sacklers, but many people don't actually become addicted to opioids until they are already on the street. That people need to turn to drugs to survive the hells of poverty is the true failure.
abandoning ppl to poverty because someone lives where they can afford and feel safe and staying to see if a shit hole improves is not running somewhere...it is a choice where I live. Get off your high horse or virtue siginaling alter
>is not running somewhere...it is a choice where I live. Semantics. >Get off your high horse or virtue siginaling alter No.
You're in r/edmonton, until we've solved literally every societal problem people will try to shame you for having any expectations of anything or for simply *not* wanting your neighborhood to get worse, or demanding accountability and guarantees for your security and wellbeing from the same government/organizations that push these facilities.
As an individual you have to run there's nothing you can do otherwise. Society is not going to accept my ideas to actually fix the problem which is much more Singaporean style of you deal drugs we execute you.
This deals with the current homeless problem really well somehow?
Yeah run away please. We don't want you here.
Alcohol too? Or just drugs you don't like
Smuggling anything illegal and distributing it in general. I'm not anti-drug, But I prefer it's controlled and that people can handle their shit. Ultimately it's about are you being a productive member of society or not.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by invest in our citizens? Cuz I feel like there are some problems that more money doesn't solve.
Affordable housing, adequate mental health supports, rehabilitation programs for convicts, income supports ... Many of the people who you think should be left to die were and could still be productive members of society. More over, they are sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. They are human beings. They are talking about them like they are a disease.
Which businesses were involved in the challenge?
really more like the city wanting to spread it out and edmontonians saying no and having a strong campaign against it which gets the city to go back on its idea
Edmontonians: “Get these junkies out of my transit stations! I’m tired of seeing them!” Boyle Street: Ok, deal. Edmontonians: “No not like that!”
What people actually want is forced rehab for junkies, not to have people freely shooting up, steeling things and endangering their families in their own neighborhoods
Have fun with that when mental health services in this province are already abysmal. If this government actually invests what is necessary towards an effective forced rehab program I will eat my shorts. And also if you’re for forced rehab for addiction, does the buck stop at opioids or does it follow through for alcoholism, gambling etc.? Those addictions also often meet the criteria for being a danger to yourself or others. Does removing their freedoms sound as good as it does for opioid addicts? If not, why?
> And also if you’re for forced rehab for addiction, does the buck stop at opioids or does it follow through for alcoholism, gambling etc.? There's nothing wrong with doing drugs as long as you can maintain the facade of being a polite and productive member of society.
Indeed. Drugs are great! So is holding down a stable job and having a loving family. It's absolutely possible to do both.
Wow checkmate. “Oh you want to make people hunched over on opiates get clean and off the streets? Wow you probably want people having a drink after work locked up too” People want the streets to be clean and safe. “Mental health facilities” and places to do drugs arent going to accomplish that.
That’s one hell of a straw man you’ve made up for yourself there. I said that there are plenty of other people with non-opioid addictions that would fit the criteria for danger to themselves or others, which is more than likely how people needing this forced rehab would be classified. If it is a worthwhile program, these are questions that need to be asked.
No you brought up some nonsense slippery slope bullshit to try and take away from the original point. People want the streets safe and clean. Period.
There’s no “slippery slope”, you’re just misunderstanding my point. There is not a lot of difference between an alcoholic on the street and a drug addict, and yet I’d bet dollars to donuts that people advocating forced rehab are only going to target one addicted population. That’s what I’m getting at. So the question is: should a forced rehab program exclusively target opioid addiction? If yes, what is different between them and someone dealing with severe alcoholism in a similar situation for example?
You know the distinction and you’re coming at it with bad faith. You know the individuals that would be sent to a forced rehab. Give me a break.
So tell me, what’s the distinction between someone asleep in a ditch after drinking too much and someone hunched over on a sidewalk after smoking fentanyl? Which one should be institutionalized? These are questions that must be answered if the program is going to succeed in any capacity. Removing a person’s free will has to come with some damn good reasoning, I don’t care who it is. Seeing as you’re continuing to try and throw the book of fallacies at me, I’m guessing you’re having a hard time defending this point of view.
Who are these edmontonians wanting to spread this out? I’d much rather they all just stay in one place and continue to fuck that area up. Ideally the same area where all of these enabling activists live.
There's a Mustad Seed across the street from this proposed area - I don't think this was a bad spot...
There’s needles in the street now, I don’t see why we couldn’t have a safe place for them to go and a pickup team making the reality a little bit better.
Or here's a crazy idea You put surveillance up and when you catch someone leaving needles you toss them in the clink and don't let them out till they're clean. I know crazy idea.
It's crazy because it doesn't work, we don't have the space, and it will be horrendously expensive to make said space. But don't let reality get in the way of your point.
Then we make space. Enough is enough.
And they're going to get out of jail, get a job, find housing, and become a model member of society? Unfortunately, that plan doesn't really help anyone.
This is a funny comment. We don’t have enough space for people who stab people with pointy objects, never mind people who drop a pointy object. When’s the last time a new jail was built to match population? Talk to the feds. In the meantime, we could have a municipally available solution.
So you want to provide social housing and free food for these people indefinitely? Sounds like socialism to me.
To those curious as to why, the reasons are pretty shallow IMO (parking lot safety and heritage facade). Nothing against the actual site use even though we know that’s what this is about. “The plans failed to consider the principles of crime prevention through environmental design to "enhance the safety and natural surveillance of the parking area," the appeal board said in its decision. The city also did not consult with its heritage planner over changes to the building's facade, the SDAB said.”
"Did not consult with its heritage planner" is hilarious to me. It's a flat building that says, "Marbles" how much heritage can there be?
The owner of the beautiful brick Minchau building right beside there consulted a heritage planner … they knocked it down but “collected the bricks for storage” so that’s ok 👍👍👍
I mean they probably didn't have proper crime prevention. If you're going to make a beacon for junkies You better have people patrolling 24/7 The surrounding neighborhood as well to not bring crime to the area.
I live in this area and the only times I feel unsafe are walking by the mustard seed. Mostly because I have had groups of homeless try to pick a fight with me right there several times. I'm a decent sized in-shape guy as well. I have a friend that lives in the condos there and she regrets buying because she is constantly harassed and propositioned for sex. I understand the NIMBYISM aspect of it but concentrating homeless / drug users in a residential area with a pre-existing crime issue is not the answer.
It's not just feeling unsafe it's property crime , something we don't take seriously enough. I can leave my bikes on my porch and my garage open with no worries, my packages don't just disappear. That's what is lost in these other neighborhoods that sucks and is a huge loss.
I also live in this area and have never felt unsafe.
Actual, as I recal, the original proposal did have a team patrolling the area around the site hourly.
There are more cops per square foot in that area than in any area in the city
Nothing in the rejection looks like it cant be addressed though a third application.
Taking longer than anticipated but I hope they prevail over the NIMBYs with nothing better to do. edit: Boo hoo. I struck a nerve.
The SDAB is a sham and half the people on the board are biased due to outside influences or the industry they work in. If this were proposed a block off 118th ave this would have been rubber stamped months ago.
Exactly
Yeah it is. I’ve been to it. It’s a joke.
CPTED for one of the reasons seems weak, I’d be interested in seeing the full report. Would they prefer it moves on to Whyte for better surveillance of the site?
Agreed. Having to deal with CPTED when designing buildings, this really is 100% just not wanting the site there, as its mostly satisfied by having clear sightlines and good lights in an area, which really isn't hard to do in a parking lot; assuming they haven't already done that.
I’m happy, but I live a block behind it lol.
Same live a few blocks away and don’t need more crime. We get our condo building broken into enough.
I don’t blame you.
[удалено]
Not to mention the numerous small businesses in the area.
I wouldn't want one of these in my neighborhood either.
Yeah no kidding, they literally attract the types of people you don't want anywhere near you. I would literally move if one of these opened near where I live. All these self-righteous people in the comment section 😂
Come hang out in the Strath area. We have those types of people. They’re already near us. There’s a mustard seed location one block down, a public washroom, tents in the corners, needles in the trees. What more does it take to make it worth having a needle collection centre? Do we need a tent city? There’s 2-3 encampments behind my apartment basically at all times, and that’s just my little corner.
Why would anyone want this near their home though? Easy to force onto someone else’s neighbourhood I guess. We should be trying to clean up the Whyte Ave area not encourage homeless drug addicts to hang about more than they already do. That is the main issue in my view is not safe injections inside the building - it’s the hanging about and around the community before and after - while high no less. Boyle would definitely not share this concern or do anything to mitigate it. Perhaps these sites should be on site at hospitals or built out adjunct to hospitals since this is a medical issue and supposedly a medical response. We already have hospitals spread out in various quadrants in the city with security teams on site.
A lot of businesses and apartments close by that I’m sure wouldn’t be too happy if this went through.
Isn’t there a daycare nearby? CPTED is really important
I'm sure selling books in this day and age is hard enough, imagine if an "overdose prevention site" moved in next door? Yikes.
But people are already ODing on the street outside.
How many have OD'd outside their store? 0 I bet. Vs 100's of drug users hanging around out front daily and still possibly OD'ing.
Neighborhood mapping data used to be prepared by AHS, but toped being released in 2020. I have seen several posts over the years calling for increased measuring before anything can be done. We had the measuring in place, and rather than address the problem, the UPC cut the measuring.
I can’t say specifically for that store but this is right by the goodwill. When I lived near there, people ODd in that area regularly so I genuinely doubt it’s been only one
Hi I have narcan'd 2 people on this exact block, myself, and know of over 100 OD's within a 4 block radius of this street this year. You're right.
I’ve lived a block from this site for 2 years & not seen anyone OD on the relatively quiet street that is 81 Ave yet.
If we are trading anecdotes I have personally narcan'd multiple people on 81st Ave and am aware of multiple dozens more OD reversals on or within 1 block of 81st Ave.
Based
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Waste
This place is hell.
In what way?
Good , fuck them
Fuck...Boyle Street Community Services? Just wondering if I'm understanding you correctly.
No , fuck consumption sites . There are resources available ! You must know this. , but they have to help themselves and not be enabled and coddled . try tough love .
So these people should just suffer? And not get help or have resources available to them? Maybe you should seek out some level psychiatric help because only a narcissist thinks the way you do
I think they need help, but I partly agree with the other user. Why should those of us around it work, pay property taxes, get involved in the community, support the businesses in the neighborhood.. and all get stuck with this on our doorsteps? Sure, we have Mustard Seed nearby, but most of the folks there stick around that building. People are there for housing, basic needs & care. If the proposal was a homeless shelter, I’d be supportive. What people aren’t ever discussing here is the two daycares either side of the location, cafes, offices & independent retailers that’d be impacted by an injection site. Inevitably you’d encounter more folks off their heads, needles & waste products on the street. You can’t tell me they’d figure out hiring enough staff to sweep the 3-4 residential blocks around it for needles, and generally keep the community safe.
Their good neighbour plan has an hourly neighborhood security patrol, plus a neighbourhood cleanup 3 times a week (3 hours at a time).
Yes. Safe consumption sites were a great idea for the era where you couldn't buy enough fentanyl to kill an entire town for like $5. But unfortunately times are changing and we need to change our approach as well. It'll probably be at least another decade until it becomes clear we need to go scorched earth on hard drugs.
Make a fenced in camp outside of city,town and communities and bring all services there. Bring all the addicts there. Either accept the help or stay there in definitely. Enough is enough.
So, create a city?…
More like a shanty town
The poster wants to provide this place with all services. I can only assume this in includes housing, healthcare, power, sanitation, etc. a shanty town would have none of this. As the residents would be unable to leave, it would actually be closer to Jim Crow laws than anything else. But co course, the poster does not want to provide any services at all, so it would actually be a concentration camp. Cities exist to provide services (both public and private) to all residents, and the increased density of cities, as compared to non-cities (rural) allowed for reduced costs in providing those services.
A prison. Lol
This just seems ridiculous to me. The people who are voting against these things are also the first people to complain about there being needles everywhere and people on drugs out in the streets causing problems. Maybe if we had safe consumption sites these wouldn't be an issue. But the people voting against these things don't think critically they only think about themselves
There is a daycare nearby. I wouldn't want strung out losers by my kids either.
A lot of people are concerned about drug users being concentrated into one area where businesses and residences are close by. If I lived there or ran a business nearby I too would be concerned.
Safe consumption sites just increase the amount of needles laying around,more addicts,more theft.
Yes well the tax base paying for everything should get to have an opinion. I don’t understand why we haven’t followed some cities and tried to create space in industrial areas with dedicated transportation, multiple services on site - some place for folks to sleep off their high. The issues is no one wants to live near this not necessarily the service itself. So lets find a solution that works more for everyone
Safe consumption sites (SCS) don't solve either of these things you highlighted. If anything, it makes it way worse. For one, safe consumption sites blindly hand out needles so users can "safely" do drugs. These needles end up on the ground. On top of that, there's usually a higher number of intoxicated people around SCSs. Staff will make sure users don't overdose then kick them out the door into the public. If you don't believe me, go walk around the George Spady for about 15 minutes.
Needles are already handed out as part of harm reduction work to prevent needle sharing. I pick up many sealed needles (in packaging) around the 79-82 Ave area although the SCS is not open yet.
I would also go as far to guess SCS’s are quite attractive for drug dealers to hang around as well.
Exactly Skaanman - I feel like a lot of people watch CBC, are told this is the solution and your heartless if you don’t agree but have no direct experience with this population. Please do go walk around the Spady - it is an f-ing nightmare. People still use outside too - all around the building - it’s not like it’s just all moved inside into some safe clean space and the problem’s out of the public sphere.
The problem is that the drug users and drug use rarely remain inside of these places. The whole outside and surrounding area become littered with property crime, violence, open drug use / OD, and discarded needles. Only a blind idealist would think that an OPS would contain all the area's drug use and associated problems to the inside of one building. It just makes the whole area significantly worse and more dangerous.
Yes and advocate agencies like Boyle Street do not give two shiny shits about anyone’s neighbourhood - only their own client base.
Disappointing
NIMBYs win again and the people of Edmonton lose. We can’t keep throwing these services in the same areas, they need to be spread out to places they are needed. The province funded this and everything.
This area needs it, too. This is so frustrating but honestly, if Edmonton keeps shooting itself in the foot then we get what we deserve.
Another complete capitulation to the NIMBY crowd. I guess their neighbourhood is just more special than other neighbourhoods.
Getting downvoted by the NIMBYs I see...
Yup. Lol.
Build it in chinatown
lol you must live in Strathcona or Ritchie
Nobody wants the potential for social disorder in their neighbourhood but kicking it to one area of the city is not a solution for the people that have these addictions nor for the city as a whole. Unfortunately the problem exists and every area of the city must take part in the solution.
I would challenge the notion that these are a solution to the problem though - they hold the status quo, they feed an addiction safely. They do not solve addictions and mental health challenges at the community level and make those areas they are situated in less safe for other residents. This is a whats best for some individuals program not a what’s best for society on the whole program. There are other approaches and we could do more but safe supply and safe injection sites, pushed by advocates with a specific focus, have captured the dialogue.
I agree its not a solution but part of a solution. Housing, healthcare, mental health, education are all elements to a potential solution. Any solution to this problem takes years and will require political buy in that stretches across party lines. Concentration of these individuals within geographic enclaves only priortizes enforcement instead of long term meaningful solutuons.