LU'S: A PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS?

This 'Social Enterprise' Will Offer A Special Service - And Without
Government Money

A pharmacy focused solely on women's needs is scheduled to open in
the Downtown Eastside next month.

Lu's: A Pharmacy for Women will serve female clients uncomfortable at
the existing 19 licensed pharmacies in the Downtown Eastside. Those
small pharmacies provide daily methadone to 1,400 heroin addicts, of
whom about 500 are female.

"This will likely be the first women's-only pharmacy in North
America," said Caryn Duncan, executive director of the Vancouver
Women's Health Collective, which will run the pharmacy.

Duncan said the non-profit collective hasn't received government
money for the pharmacy project, which includes renovating the ground
floor of a three-level hotel at 29 West Hastings St.

Instead, it's backed by community groups such as the Vancouver
Foundation, the VanCity Community Foundation and the B.C. Social
Enterprise Fund, as well as construction donors and the University of
B.C. Architecture Department.

"We're finding a way to avoid reliance on government funding by
setting up a profit-making project that funds the non-profit," Duncan
said. "This is being built on a shoestring budget." The pharmacy will
be a "social enterprise," a funding concept used in the Downtown
Eastside for the past decade. The idea is that the venture makes
profit, which then goes into the umbrella non-profit group.

In the Vancouver women's collective's case, any profits will go to
the non-profit's core business of operating a health information
centre for women. The collective currently has revenues of about
$100,000 a year. Those are expected to rise to $1 million a year when
the pharmacy is operating.

Duncan cites as her motivators successful Downtown Eastside social
enterprises such as the Potluck Cafe and Atira Women's Resource
Society's property-management business.

The Pivot Legal Society has also created a social enterprise called
Pivot LLP, a law firm operating out of the same building on the
600-block East Hastings.

United We Can, a bottle depot, is also very successful and uses no
government funding.

Duncan is mindful of the perception the Downtown Eastside is
over-serviced by non-profit groups, given that Lu's Pharmacy is the
latest service to be added.

She recounts a conversation with a senior Ministry of Health staffer
when she was trying to get government money for the pharmacy. Duncan
said the staffer told her the ministry didn't want to "pour more
money" into the Downtown Eastside.

"But what we're offering is unique. There's no duplication," she said.

There are several women-based Downtown Eastside non-profits offering
a range of services, including shelter beds and outreach and
sex-worker support - but no pharmacy.

The largest of the women's groups is the Downtown Eastside Women's
Centre, while the United Church operates a women-only drop-in
facility and Bridge Housing Society runs a women's-only shelter that
is much prized by marginalized women in the community. There are also
three agencies offering help specifically for sex workers.

Duncan supports diversity of services in the Downtown Eastside
because of the nature of the community. She said some marginalized
women who are not sex workers will not use services that may imply
they are in the sex industry.

Pivot Legal Society's John Richardson argues that non-profits provide
services more cheaply than a government enterprise would.

"Things are pretty efficient in terms of how hard people work and
what value gets delivered. If you had government come in and pay
government salaries for all the things the non-profits are currently
doing, it would be a lot more expensive."

Richardson said the most successful charity in the neighbourhood is
PHS Community Services Society, formerly the Portland Hotel Society,
led by power couple Mark Townsend and Liz Evans, and Dan Small, the
husband of NDP MLA Jenny Kwan.

PHS runs social housing, respite and hospice beds, detox services, a
life-skills centre, art gallery, VanCity bank branch and a dental
clinic. The charity is also a spearhead for harm reduction through
its supervised-injection site and needle exchange.

"The Portland is interesting," said Richardson. "I still don't
understand how the Portland works. They get stuff done. Mark manages
to attract and keep around him very, very capable young people. He
attracts and motivates them.

"The Portland is an example of how the free market of non-profits can
really accomplish things when it's doing well." Richardson is hopeful
his own society will follow suit, and lists a string of impressive
legal achievements.

"Our salaries are low. Our lawyers make half to a third of what they
would make in the private market, because they love doing the work," he said.

The success of social enterprises in the Downtown Eastside is not
tracked and no one keeps a record of how many there are, but
Richardson counters criticism that the area is awash with duplicated services.

"You might have two things that look like a drop-in centre and think
they are the same thing, so you might as well merge them. But they
might have very different perspectives on service delivery. One might
have a very Christian orientation and the other harm reduction, so
they don't overlap at all for the people that use them." Duncan is
confident the pharmacy will meet its first-year budget of $1 million
a year, which is expected to return a profit in 2010 of $83,000.

If the pharmacy does initially lose money, Duncan said, the society
has secured a $50,000 line of credit through VanCity as well as
$60,000 in grants to back the project.

"We are planning for the worst-case scenario, which is revenue
shortfall," she said.