Vancouver's Olympic Challenge

David Eby, a lawyer who works for a nonprofit legal assistance group, Pivot, said the poor would be left "waiting at the altar" unless the governments acted quickly.

"It could still go two ways," Eby said, strolling in sandals through Downtown Eastside, passing panhandlers and social workers. "The legacy could be an appalled reaction from visitors from all over the world about how we treat the poor. Or it could be a model for other Olympic cities that will raise the bar."

City and provincial officials insist they are making good progress. The argument has become a murky dispute over numbers. In April, the British Columbia housing authority bought 10 sagging, century-old rooming house-hotels that are the mainstay for the poor in the area. It plans to fix them up for people who pay $375 a month from welfare or disability checks.

Eby and others applaud those purchases, but contend that they don't create new housing. Development of industrial land into an athletes' village will leave about 250 more units of low-income housing after the Games. Critics say that's good, but note that the original promise was higher.

Mayor Sullivan said he was frustrated that the governments' efforts are getting little credit. "I have got more units in 18 months than the previous government did in three years," he said. "We set our standards pretty high. I think we will achieve a lot. I'm not saying we will achieve all the goals."

Sullivan, a quadriplegic who broke his neck skiing when he was 19, calls the Olympics a good deal for Vancouver. The city's rail line will be extended to the airport. What he calls a "highway of death," the narrow mountain road to ski town Whistler, will be widened to take traffic to the downhill events there. A huge convention center will be built in Vancouver and a sprawling community center will be created from Olympic facilities.

John Furlong, chairman of Vanoc, the Olympic organizing committee, said the goal is to create an effort that involves the entire community. He hopes to finish construction two years ahead of schedule and on budget, and he is hiring contractors from the native Indian groups known in Canada as First Nations. The project would create jobs for Downtown Eastside residents making signs and structures for the events.

The organizing committee will provide 250 units of low-income housing in Vancouver and more at Whistler, and will spend $6 million for First Nations housing, he said.

Sullivan said he is trying to deal with what is in fact a national problem. Most of the people roaming the streets in Downtown Eastside drifted there from other towns because of the tolerance, the climate and the supply of drugs from Asia, he said.

"If you are the mayor of a prairie city, you can have a policy of zero tolerance," he said. "But where do they all go? Vancouver."

In 12 years on the City Council, Sullivan said, he watched at least three big police crackdowns that brought noisy protests when the drug dealers and homeless people in Downtown Eastside retreated to other neighborhoods. "I recognize the futility of enforcement alone," he said.

Now, social agencies run programs in Vancouver that would raise eyebrows elsewhere. The provincial health department has a storefront office where addicts come to safely inject themselves with drugs. Another program gives out methadone. Another provides free sterile needles. The mayor is pushing a plan to distribute prescription pills to substitute for illegal drugs.

But his Olympic assurances are greeted with hard-learned skepticism on the grimy streets of Downtown Eastside. Many of the men who peer out from blankets on the concrete and the women who push shopping carts full of food scraps expect the worst.

"They'll just sweep us street people out of the way for the Olympics," Abraham Posey, 50, said with a shrug. He has lived in the bug-infested hotels in the neighborhood for 30 years, he said. "When it's all over, we'll be back."