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…

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