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The Surrey Union of Drug Users (SUDU) says a B.C. provincial housing task force is allowing the "government to dodge accountability for systemic failures." 

At the end of June, the province announced it is responding to increasing complaints of violence and drug use in supportive housing by looking at removing Residential Tenancy Act protections for residents to make it easier to create stricter rules and kick problem tenants out.

The province formed a new "time-limited" group made up of police, providers, government officials and union representatives to help ensure it is protecting people's fundamental rights if the Residential Tenancy Act rules are removed.

The Surrey Union of Drug Users said in a press release Wednesday (Aug. 11) that if these proposed revisions go through, it will result in "a mass eviction of violently marginalized people." 

These potential changes could especially make things work for Indigenous and racialized people, women and gender-diverse people, SUDU noted. 

“It is abhorrent that the Minister of Housing has established a 'task force' to dismantle what scant rights still exist for 'supportive housing' residents," said Gina Egilson, a member of the SUDU board of directors. "If the upstream solutions to the intersectional crises of housing and the toxic drug supply were adequately addressed through meaningful consultation with residents, this incredibly harmful, punitive policy response would be unnecessary."

Dave Webb, another member of the SUDU board of directors, said it seems we are regressing as a society. "We’re losing prescribed safe supply, harm reduction, and now our housing rights. Shouldn't it be the other way around, shouldn't the government try to lift us up? What's next, our right to vote? We’re going to lose what little rights we do have," he said.

The province is also working with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and WorkSafeBC to figure out how to respond to the impacts on indoor air quality in supportive housing from people smoking and inhaling fentanyl, which has surpassed injection as the predominant fentanyl use method.

The province noted that tests conducted at 14 buildings in Victoria and Vancouver indicate that some supportive housing areas may have airborne fentanyl levels exceeding the limits set by WorkSafeBC.

SUDU, however, points the finger at the provincial government.

"The BC NDP has refused to take real steps to address second-hand exposure to fentanyl smoke, instead scapegoating supportive housing residents," a SUDU statement said, noting the province needs to do more to open safe inhalation sites. 

SUDU makes 8 recommendations for supportive housing safety

SUDU is making eight different recommendations to the province that it says would improve safety in supportive housing. It also encourages policymakers to reach out to drug user groups as they are "interested in working jointly towards this end." 

1. Consult people with lived and living experience of unregulated substance use and supportive housing residence to inform policy development in supportive housing

2. Create minimum service standards and training requirements for supportive housing providers which include transparent third-party inspection, building maintenance, de-escalation, OFA 2 first-aid, trauma-informed care, and advanced overdose response with naloxone.

3. Stop exploiting workers through casual, non-unionized, and underpaid positions. Instead, fairly compensate, provide ongoing training, and create unionized and non-casual positions in supportive housing to prevent burnout and maintain quality working conditions.

4. Require contracted housing providers to create authentic peer-led support, operational, emotional first-aid, and de-escalation roles for housing residents to more formally support site safety within their homes.

5. Require contracted supportive housing providers to solicit and follow up on resident feedback, suggestions, and complaints through regular community and by creating tenant advisory committee.

6. Expand the role of harm reduction-informed peer workers in all supportive housing environments.

7. Create peer-supported supervised inhalation spaces in low-barrier supportive housing, provide staff with effective PPE, organize floors by tenants’ drug of choice, ensure proper negative pressure ventilation, adequately maintain buildings, and seal windows to mitigate indoor smoking and related concerns.

8. Regulate the toxic drug supply, expand prescribed safer supply access, reverse harmful witnessed ingestion policy for new safer supply clients and FREE DULF. 

SUDU community organizer Aaron Bailey explained what they meant by FREE DULF. 

"Our members are including the demand that federal charges against the drug user liberation front, or DULF, for the operation of a compassion club that reduced overdoses in Vancouver be dropped. SUDU supports the expansion and prescribed and non-prescribed safer supply as a response to the drug toxicity crisis, and that DULFs accomplishments ought to be shared whenever possible," Bailey said. 

-With files from Mark Page