audio | most-listened-to #peoplefirstradio interview in Dec @FirstCallBC #BritishColumbia https://t.co/Gl3IGq95yq pic.twitter.com/35HvaxRG2F

— People First Radio (@peoplefirstrad) January 6, 2016

The revolving door of the DTES experience: Despite enormous investment of public monies, there was “no evidence of improvement”

It is not news that treatment of the addicted and mentally ill in the Downtown Eastside is expensive. In a series of stories in 2014, Sun reporter Lori Culbert and [Pete McMartin] calculated that the 260 social service agencies and social housing sites located within the borders of the DTES received and spent $360 million in 2013, or just under $1 million a day. Almost $265 million of that came from the three levels of government.

But for the first time — and this is new — a Simon Fraser University research team calculated, down to the tax dollar, the average costs incurred by individual offenders in the DTES. The figures are demoralizing.  Read the rest of this article at the Vancouver Sun…

RELATED | Despite services provided, many face personal decline here rather than recovery, SFU study finds |

“We had a federal election where housing was actually something talked about and we have a new government committing to take a new leadership role on housing” [image: shannon stapleton/reuters]

There are few struggles more Sisyphean than the push to end homelessness. But in 2015, the landscape shifted — and the uphill climb suddenly got a little flatter. “It’s potentially a turning point,” said Tim Richter, president and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. “It’s not like homelessness was solved in 2015. But this is the year we might look back and say it may have been a breakthrough.”  Read the rest of this article at The Toronto Star…