City council didn't resolve the Haldi Road treatment centre controversy Monday night, but opponents of the facility lost the debate when their arguments started to sound like National Geographic's Wild World of NIMBY.
At issue was the third reading of a rezoning application that could lead to city approval in turning the former Haldi Road school into the Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women. The facility, which is designed to provide a safe environment for 30 women attempting to overcome drug and alcohol addiction, has been opposed with the sort of vehemence usually reserved for neighbours with the surname Hatfield or McCoy; advocates believe a treatment centre in such a rural area gives such troubled women - and this area - a critical hope for recovery while its opponents, who mostly live nearby, maintain it will attract crime and drugs to their pristine surroundings.
It was a debate typical to the opening of alcohol and drug treatment facilities - California provides the readiest examples - until Paul Hanky, a Jensen Road resident, got up to speak.
While it is poor form to criticize in this space a private citizen exercising his democratic rights, Hanky, a former addiction worker himself, should have known better before leading this particular not-in-my-back-yard safari.
"The women that were using our programs came from a variety of backgrounds, many horrific," said Hanky, who worked for the Nechako Treatment Centre, before it was closed. "They tend to attract mates of a similar background."
It's doubtful Hanky intended for his comments to sound quite so David Attenborough and depict the Haldi Road centre as a giant salt lick for wandering dirty animals to satisfy their appetites.
But when the discussion turns to the breeding habits of other human beings, crack smokers or not, someone's lost the moral high ground.
The comment - and others like it - put council in an uncomfortable position. They voted 6-3 to move the process forward, but the choice is now between earning the ire (right before the election) of the 533 residents who opposed the rezoning in a petition or agree to the position that that sort of person is not fit to live there.
Seriously.
Substitute any ethnic background, sexual orientation, NHL franchise affiliation for the "they" in "mates of a similar background." Pair it perhaps with "I think city council should think twice before ruining a perfectly nice family neighbourhood." The words leave a very unpleasant aftertaste, if they are said at all.
And that's why the Haldi opponents lost the debate Monday. People cannot be told they cannot live somewhere solely because of who they are. Especially if they are sick and the place could be a crucial part of them getting better.
The tragic part of the tale however is that Hanky is right, to a certain degree. According to The League of California Cities, a 1999 survey of 450 cities with residential care facilities similar to Haldi Road found 72 encountered one or more complaints of increased traffic, noise and other neighbourhood disturbances.
No number was given but a handful reported complaints of criminal activities such as "assaults and burglaries," alcohol/drug addiction facilities like Haldi Road were "indentified as the source of the majority of complaints."
It is not a simple issue - as evidenced by the conclusion of a study into the impacts of such centres, which was titled "No Easy Resolutions."
But, if it is appropriate that a centre be placed at the former Haldi Road school over the objections of its neighbours, then the onus must be on the backs of this facility to satisfy the Caesar's wife test when building and operating it.
They must not only be above reproach, they must be seen to be above reproach in everything they do. It is an unrealistic standard but one the proponents of the Northern Supportive Recovery Centre for Women must attain if they are to earn the tolerance of those around it.
In "Mending Wall" Robert Frost wrote "Good fences make good neighbours." But he prefaced it with:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
-- The Prince George Citizen
