Tomb

In the past month, several social agencies located in Calgary neighbourhoods have been victims of residents crying “NIMBY,” something caused by fear, greed and ignorance, say experts and those who run social agencies.

Bill Leslie has run into his fair share of NIMBY-ism (not in my backyard) in Calgary. Forest Lawn residents told him earlier this year they would “fight tooth and nail” to bar his methadone clinic, Second Chance Recovery, from their community, and last month a mob of angry Braeside residents demanded the clinic be evicted, days after it moved in. This was after the clinic was forced out of its 41 Ave. N.E. location because of zoning issues, after nearby residents vehemently complained.

“It’s a fear factor. People don’t know the facts,” says Leslie, director of the clinic. “They think, ‘Methadone clinics equal drug addicts; needles in my backyard. If you don’t understand something, you become afraid of it. If you are afraid of something, you attack it.”

As well, an agency that finds housing for chronically homeless people was last month kicked out of its home (the same 41 Ave. location as Second Chance) and is leaving in October. Sheryl Barlage of Pathways to Housing says people like the idea of helping the less fortunate, but they don’t know how to deal with it in their own community.

“I think it is because they don’t understand why these people are in the unfortunate position they are in — they don’t know if they are a threat or not,” Barlage says. “When you have young children and you’re trying to protect them, that just adds another dimension of worry and not understanding.”

The head of the University of Calgary’s culture division says NIMBY is derived from fear and greed, mostly because people are afraid their property values will decrease. “In the end,” says Chloe Atkins, “they are afraid of people who are different and debased. The problem is that this is the nasty side of democracy in which mob-rule can take over.”

Officials at Pathways and Second Chance have taken it upon themselves to try to educate others. But with more than one million Calgary residents, Leslie says it’s difficult to get his message out. And with only two days between getting evicted and securing a lease on the Braeside location, he says there just wasn’t time for a community information meeting.

Atkins believes it’s up to the city and province to find “the political will” to create safe locations for public social agencies. “In a sense, a private clinic can’t go on its own on this because it needs the backbone of the governments. They do this with roads all the time — appropriating land, then saying, ‘Sorry, we need it.’”

Ald. Brian Pincott, whose constituency covers Braeside, thinks everyone has a role to play in fighting NIMBY. “The facilities themselves have a role to play. A lot of time fearing public backlash, they go about things quietly, though I don’t blame them,” he says. “Communities have to be willing to get informed so that they can base their reaction and concerns on fact and we as a city have to do a better job of facilitating that discussion.” Pincott also wants Alberta Health Services to play a bigger role in public education.

Some people aren’t as optimistic. Dermott Baldwin Dermot Baldwin, executive director of the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre, says he has been fighting NIMBY for years and it is getting worse, not better.

“These gated communities, do they want to be part of the rest of the community?” Baldwin asks. “No, they want to put a big fence around it and isolate themselves from the rest of society. And we’re getting more and more of that. You have condos that have security guards on the main floor, we have people putting in high fences and cameras. This is not an integrated community.”

He puts the blame squarely on politicians and police for enforcing negative stereotypes about the homeless. “There are a lot of myths that portray homeless people as bums, as creeps, as ne’er do wells, unemployed lazy curs,” Baldwin says. “But there is no segment that is worse treated and more victimized. And yet, we’re saying that they’re the cause and they’re the criminals. Its such a load of… garbage.”

Because of allegations of decreased property values and increased crime, Baldwin says the homeless have been pushed into industrial areas with no services, where they are “out of sight, out of mind,” adding, “That’s a good way to exclude and show where you stand in terms of supporting those people.”

Another segment of society that has been disenfranchised is the physically and mentally disabled, Atkins points out. She says it’s infuriating to read on a Calgary HandiBus: “This bus is donated by someone like you.”

“I sit there and fume because I think, ‘Why do disabled members of our community have to rely on our good will and generosity when the rest of us get public funds for a transit system? Why is our government paying for ours and not theirs?’”