Olympic Impact on
Homelessness in Vancouver Downtown Eastside
New
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Anti-Poverty and Homelessness Groups Organize Protest Against the Olympics
2010 clean-up will soil other B.C. towns: Mountie
A homeless man sleeps on the street in
Vancouver's notorious downtown eastside on
December 12, 2008. (CTV)
2010 clean-up will soil other B.C. towns:
Mountie
Updated: Thu Jan. 22
2009 12:45:21
ctvbc.ca
A senior RCMP officer in B.C. predicts
criminals and the homeless will be forced out of
Vancouver to settle in other provincial cities
as the 2010 Olympics draw closer.
Insp. Steve McVarnock, officer in the charge
of the Vernon RCMP detachment, worries about
"quite an aggressive displacement" by Vancouver
police as they clean up the city in advance of
the Games.
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10 steps
to cleaning up a drug-infested hood
ROBERT MATAS
Globe and Mail Update
August 15, 2008 at 9:38 PM EST
Ten steps to clean up a
drug-infested neighbourhood with hundreds of homeless and mentally ill on the
streets:
(1) Hold the Olympics in your
neighbourhood and have the organizing committee kick in money for beds for
street youth. The Vancouver Organizing Committee of the 2010 Olympics gave
$250,000 to Covenant House, a youth shelter. The money was put together with
$4.75-million from the B.C. government to pay for 32 beds for youth 16 to 22
years old. The funds will enable Covenant House to have 400 more young people in
their shelter during the year, doubling their capacity over the next three
years. VANOC still has $250,000 to be distributed.
(2) Increase government funds for
an outreach program to connect the homeless with shelters, food and clothing.
The government expanded the program to 47 communities from Cranbrook to
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Outreach workers put 2,500 street people into
housing in the past year and about 80 per cent remained housed.
(3) Put more money into temporary
shelters to enable them to remain open 24/7. Longer hours allow street workers
to bring more people to the shelter and for the shelter to offer better service
to the homeless. The B.C. government promised $27-million over three years,
starting April 1, 2007.
(4) Spend more on providing beds in
shelters. Some examples: $5-million toward a $7.7 million centre in Duncan, B.C.
for 15 emergency shelter beds and 24 transition housing units for adults with
mental health issues and those at risk of homelessness; $3-million toward a
facility in New Westminster with 20 beds for homeless men and 15 beds for
prisoners on conditional release to the community; about $7-million toward costs
of a facility in Langley with 30 emergency shelter beds, 25 transitional beds
and with a drop-in meal service and support services in the same building.
(5) Buy skid-row residential hotels
and convert them to transitional housing. The government has bought 17 hotels in
Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster. The hotels, now under renovation, will
re-open with someone at the front desk 24 hours a day and staff to connect
tenants with health and social services.
(6) Build social housing on
municipally owned land and put support services in the same facility. Vancouver
is working on 12 projects with 1,200 units; 416 additional units in supportive
housing are planned for Victoria, Kelowna and Surrey. “If a city has a piece of
land, the province will pay all predevelopment costs right through to working
drawings for construction to get it through the zoning and accelerate it,”
Housing Minister Rich Coleman says. “We identify a non profit organization to
manage the facility so they can be in at the ground floor in design and
development. We capitalize the project when it is done so it is there for the
non profit to run. We give it operating money.”
(7) Open a community court with
alternatives to sentencing chronic offenders to jail, such as sending those with
mental health issues to a mental health facility and those with addictions to a
treatment program.
(8) Open new facility to
accommodate mental health referrals from court. The 100-bed Burnaby Centre for
Mental Health and Addictions opened its initial 30 beds last month. The
government last month also announced a $10-million government grant to the B.C.
Mental Health Foundation for community programs.
(9) Step up financing for addiction
treatment centres far away from the Downtown Eastside. Some examples: a $650,000
grant to the Salvation Army's Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Rehabilitation Centre
in Mission, B.C., the most comprehensive addiction recovery program in Greater
Vancouver: a new facility in Surrey with 20 “sobering” beds, 24 to 30
“stabilization” units, and 35 to 40 housing units with outreach program,
addiction services and a mental health clinic; $5.4-million also in Surrey for a
12-person recovery house for aboriginal men who completed addiction treatment
program and conversion of a Howard Johnson motel to provide 39 transitional
housing units and 15 supportive housing units.
(10) Apply for grants to celebrate
province's 150th anniversary. Vancouver received $10-million to fix up facades
of some derelict historic buildings in the downtown eastside neighbourhood and
nearby communities and to update street furniture.
The first steps taken to hide and sweep the problems of homelessness and drug
addiction under the rug in preparation for the 2010 Olympics.
HUMAN RIGHTS: Safe-street program under attack - Security initiative
marginalizes poor and homeless, complaint to rights tribunal states
Anna Mehler Paperny, Globe and Mail (18 July 2008)
...The complaint
filed against the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and Civil
City commissioner Geoff Plant claims the program, established in May, 2000, to
patrol the downtown area and address "street disorder," further marginalizes a
population that already struggles with poverty, addiction and disabilities.
The complaint asserts that by telling people sleeping or loitering on the street
to "move along," and by identifying and monitoring "undesirable" people, the
security guards acting as downtown ambassadors impair the dignity of aboriginal
people and people with disabilities who comprise a disproportionate number of
the city's homeless and addicts, and deny them equal access to public space.
The complainants - Pivot Legal Society, the United Native Nations and the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users - are calling on the B.C. Human Rights
Tribunal to force the city and the business association to cease the program,
ensure their staff receive "appropriate anti-discrimination training" and pay up
to 1,000 homeless people $20 each as a token financial compensation...
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