Calls for needle cleanup plummeted after the Yaletown OPS opened
Calls for needle cleanup plummeted after the Yaletown OPS opened
Needle calls were already declining prior to the opening, but that decline hastened afterwards.
One of the complaints that led to the City of Vancouver cancelling the lease of a life-saving overdose prevention site in Yaletown doesn’t appear to be backed up by data.
When the city opted late last month to end its lease for the downtown area’s only OPS, it bowed to public pressure by some local residents complaining about, among other things, finding needles on the ground.
"There's been some concern from residents about things like discarded needles on the sidewalk, some of the structures that have been set up and also just some of the interactions with people who have been congregating, they've felt threatened,” city councillor Peter Meiszner said in an April 27 CTV article on the topic.
At the time, Meiszner had only been talking about moving the life-saving service to another site, claiming the existing place was inappropriate. He noted the lack of interior space for people to wait, or to stay afterwards.
But then on July 24, the city announced it would not be renewing the lease for the existing site despite not having any new location to move it to.
Articles on the topic have often mentioned needles in the area, but have there been more needles found in the area?
Before I answer this question, I want to disclaim that needles being found on the ground are a legitimate reason for closing a life-saving service without having a new one ready to take its place. There are other ways to deal with the issue, such as more frequent proactive needle pickup, without something so sweeping and consequential — something that will, without a replacement (and potentially even with a replacement, if it’s inadequate or if people don’t know about it, if the new location is too far out of the way, etc.), lead to more people dying.
But I wanted to look into these claims because a) it’s a pretty easy one to test with a simple freedom-of-information request, and b) it flies in the face of the evidence.
You’ve likely already taken from the lede of this article and whatever headline I’ve chosen to write that the claims don’t appear to be true, based on the data.
I filed an FOI request for calls to the city to clean up needles in the downtown area by year, and here are the results:
2017: 1,073 needle cleanup cases
2018: 1,950 (+82%)
2019: 3,515 (+80%)
2020: 2,750 (-22%)
2021*: 2,017 (-27%)
2022: 1,256 (-38%)
2023**: 429 (-32%)
*The OPS opened in March 2021
**Data for 2023 goes up to June 30, or half of the year. % change is calculated assuming cases double by end of year.
It’s worth noting that by the time the OPS opened, needle cleanup cases were already on the decline downtown. But the year after it opened, the number of cases dropped by 38%. And this year is on track to see that figure drop by another 32% to a point below where it was even in 2017.
Of 12 Vancouver OPSes, two are outside the DTES, including this one — and there is a very good reason for putting one downtown. The local health area containing downtown, Vancouver - City Centre, has the second-highest per-capita rate of unregulated drug deaths in the entire Lower Mainland. It’s second only to Vancouver - Centre North, which notably includes the Downtown Eastside.
And despite claims that overdose prevention sites attract drug users to neighbourhoods, people don’t tend to travel very far for them. Again, like littered needles, life-saving facilities attracting drug users to a neighbourhood isn’t a reason to not have those life-saving facilities. This is just to point out that there is a need to bring overdose prevention services to people — including in Yaletown.
While Yaletown is reasonably close to the DTES, where there are more OPSes, Guy Felicella pointed out to CTV News in April why they might not go there: "There's a lot of people who don't like to go into the Downtown Eastside to use these facilities.”
So if an OPS might actually decrease the number of needles found downtown, why shut this site down?
“To be clear, the city is not shutting down this OPS. We are supportive of these services and hope that VCH is able to find another service location for the OPS in the downtown area,” the city said in an emailed statement.
This is a tough claim to take. It may not be actively shutting it down, but it has effectively pulled the flooring out from under it without a plan for a new location. And while Meiszner seems to have led the charge in closing this site down, he seems less interested in helping to find a new location, telling the Vancouver Sun: “It’s VCH’s decision. … I’m not involved in that process at all. VCH needs to find a location before the lease expires.”
The city said it has “been challenged to manage the extensive congregation outside of this location.”
“Many of the people who gather at this site are not clients of or associated with the OPS, however the outdoor socialization draws many others to the area, the cumulative effect resulting in significant operating challenges for current and neighbouring operations and services,” the city said.
“The City of Vancouver remains very concerned about the high level of overdose deaths in Vancouver and is very supportive of harm reduction services such as overdose prevention sites.”
But it’s once again hard to take this latter point seriously when the city failed to wait for Vancouver Coastal Health to find a new location for an overdose prevention site before deciding to end the existing lease.
If the city is, indeed, serious about addressing unregulated drug deaths and is, in fact, supportive of harm reduction services, one might expect a more active role in finding a new location for the OPS. Or, more to the point, continue with the existing site, while working in other ways to improve conditions around the site for everybody.