"This is a real democracy"
In the midst of the Olympics, Vancouver's homeless build a tent city to make some change
2/24/10
Granville street is alive with light during the Olympics. Teeming with tourists in Team Canada sweatshirts, it is a stark contrast to the Downtown Eastside. Residents push around shopping carts in front of boarded up storefronts. One woman walks by an art exhibition welcoming tourists and swears. In apartment lobbies that appear yellowed like old newspapers, volunteers throw together sandwiches from food restaurants and grocery stores were going to throw out.
This area is central for the Vancouver housing movement that has become suddenly very visible during the Winter Games. Last Monday, a rally starting at Pigeon Park led a group of the homeless and their supporters to an empty lot on East Hastings. Originally rented by developer Concord Pacific to VANOC to use as a parking lot for some of the vehicles in its fleet, the lot was turned into a tent village where residents have come together to form a community.
The tent city: Vancouver's "Downtown Eastside House"
“I’ve been here since ’92, and I’ve been on the streets for about six years now,” said Ashley, an aboriginal man who sat watching the entrance to the tent city, keeping items like cameras out. “This is about my third tent city that I’ve been fighting for.”
According to Eric Castavet, a tent city organizer from Quebec who was a victim of domestic abuse, they hope the tent village will attract the government’s attention. “We camp here to show the government that before a condo, we need houses.” he told The Ubyssey, “Look at that condo. You can rent that for [over a thousand] bucks a month, but welfare gives us $375 dollars.”
In Vancouver, attempts have been made to increase shelter space, although those are likely to close in April. According to Castavet, shelters are not homes, and won’t solve the problem. “You share a toilet with 60-70 people, you share the same shower. Can you imagine [being] the last one to take a shower?” he said. “We’re not looking for shelter. We’re looking for one-bedroom, two-bedroom apartments.”
Many members of the tent village point out that housing is necessary to become self-sustainable. “Three quarters of the homeless people here, they could go for work, but they have no place to get ready for work,” Castavet said. “We have [busy] traffic until 4:30 in the morning, so you have one hour of sleep. You have no clothes to change. We cannot have a shower. So how are we supposed to find a job?”
Castavet told the Ubyssey that they have seen about an equal amount of support and criticism from the community. “Some of them... [honk their] horn at us. ‘Hey, good for you guys! I’m super you!’ Others look at us like we are cockroaches on the street,” he said. “Most of them they stop by, they walk in, they look at it, and they walk out."
The tent village has made it possible to get the message out in a positive way, according to Garvin Snyder, who moved to Vancouver from Ottawa eight years ago and now lives in Single Resident Occupancy housing on East Hastings. “VANOC was going to get us a protest playpen,” he told the Ubyssey, referring to the short lived “protest zone” concept. “This might as well be it. We’re near so many services.”
Snyder, who claims to be the first person to spray the Olympic Countdown Clock outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery, says this protest is only possible in Canada. “If I was in any other country in the world, I never would have been able to tag the clock and walk free,” he told the Ubyssey. He emphasized, however, that it’s important to exercise those rights. “This is a true democracy,” he said. “It costs nothing to get your message out,” he said, gesturing at his red tent, one of hundreds that are being handed by Pivot Legal Society, and a larger tent set up as a private space he dubbed “Downtown Eastside House.”
Many feel that residents have been empowered. “The people are getting nurtured, we don’t have to go to bed with an empty stomach, and they’re happy,” said Stella August, a native resident working with Power to Women. “To me, that’s freedom for these people.”
Castavet says that it has helped bring people together. “The community is so strong that nobody can go through us. We are bricks together - cement.”
Vision Vancouver councillor Kerry Jang has said that his party won't support the tent city, the Tyee reported last week, due to concerns over health and safety. However, members of the tent village have said that they have been careful not to allow drugs or alcohol, and although police have been monitoring the camp they have not had altercations with them so far.
Seeing red
Across town, a coalition of groups led by Pivot Legal Society deployed red tents at a different demonstration entirely Friday night. The group, who aren’t homeless but describe themselves as supporters and concerned citizens, were holding a sleep-over in solidarity at the park outside of Sochi House, known any other time of year as Science World, or the Telus World of Science.
“I was looking for something to do during the Olympics that would be positive towards getting a national housing campaign,” said Megan McKinney, a political consultant. “This is a solidarity movement with the tent city.”
McKinney was brought into the event through her friends, who were organizers. “I worked in the downtown Eastside, and things just keep getting worse every year," she said. "[Vancouver] is an incredibly unaffordable city, and that just gets worse and worse.”
The red tent campaign has had a few detractors. According to CBC news, Kerry Jang has suggested that some activist groups have said to him the red tent campaign is a PR stunt and that the Pivot groups are "exploiting homeless people for their own gain." http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/01/25/bc-red-tents-homeless.html
Am Johal is Chair of the Impact on Communities Coalition (ICC), an Olympics watchdog group and partner organization in the red tent campaign. He explained in an interview with The Ubyssey that the red tents were selected not just to provide shelter but to make homelessness more visible, an idea they took from a homelessness campaign in Paris that resulted in changes in public policy. He says he hopes that the attention that they get by holding these events during the Olympics will help strengthen the national housing movement.
"I think it's important that movements be in favour of something, and to utilize the opportunity to grow a movement that goes beyond the games," said Johal, "...and obviously housing has been a major issue."
"It's not just Vancouver and other urban areas, it's rural areas. But Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal particularly," he told the Ubyssey. According to Johal, that was confirmed when the UN Special Rapporteur on housing visited those areas in 2007. "The ideas is that by launching [the red tent campaign] in this context, we'll engage with housing advocates across the country, and it's really aimed at getting the federal government to reestablish a national housing program."
An island of activists in a sea of tourists
Saturday, members of the tent city, red tent campaign supporters and activists met in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Flanked on all sides by crowds of tourists, the assortment of participants and media made stood out clearly if only for their lack of Games-related merchandise. The rally mixed politicians with the homeless to interesting results, as a few tent city residents stepped up uninvited to the mike, told their stories, and sang songs.
Speakers at the event included Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project, David Dennis of the Frank Paul Society, Stella August of the Downtown Eastside Women's Center and MP Libby Davies (NDP Vancouver East). The speakers focused on the Federal government's lack of involvement in housing.
"You look at all the projects, the billion dollar projects that the Federal government poured into this city," said Dennis, "and they're the only government that is not participating or putting any money towards homelessness, and that's a crying shame."
"The Olympics, according to a well known real estate developer in our city, Bob Renny, are a 6 billion dollar marketing campaign for Vancouver," said Pedersen. "We do not agree with turning Vancouver into a rich resort city. We need affordable housing, and the only way we're going to be able to do it is to get big dollars from the Federal government."
David Cadman, Vancouver city councillor, noted that the original Olympics plan included provisions for social inclusivity. "We knew it would be an embarassment if the world came here and saw the Downtown Eastside with so many homeless people," he said.
The Olympic Village project, which was supposed to provide 30% social housing, 30% affordable housing, and 30% market housing was also affected by the recession. "They were on the verge of going bankrupt, and we had to step in and finance that program," he said. He claimed that a previous council reduced the level of social housing to 250 units, and those are dependant on their ability to sell the other units to the market. "We've got to hope that they do, or else the 250 social units may be put in jeopardy as well."
Cadman was noncommittal about whether the city might answer calls to purchase the tent city land and turn it into social housing. "We're unlikely to be stampeded into purchasing certain pieces of property that might cause an inflation of price," he said. "We're very strategic, we go in quietly usually and acquire."
Spare some change?
Many of the activists hope that a national housing policy is developed which follows a solution proposed by Dr. David Hulchanski of UoT. This would call for all levels of government to devote one per cent of their budgets to housing. Due to their clear goals, in addition to their nonviolent methods, Johal said that he feels the public's response to housing program movement and the red tent campaign has been positive.
“We're getting a lot of support,” said Johal. “I think that a lot of times with activism people lose sight of what they are supporting, and what is great about this campaign is that we're really specific about what we're pushing for.”
MP Libby Davies (NDP Vancouver East) has already authored a bill for a national housing strategy (bill C-304) which has passed several readings. Once adopted, the bill would require the federal government to adopt a strategy which would adjust the affordability of housing in Canada so that it does not “compromise an individual’s ability to meet other basic needs, including food, clothing and access to education.”
It would also require financial assistance be provided in cases where individuals are unable to afford housing otherwise, and ensure that social housing provides adequate and specific facilities which reflect the needs of those using it, and includes a provision for shelters to be made available to be used in the event of disasters and crises.
It has gotten support from both the NDP and members of the Liberal, Bloc Quebecois parties, but has been opposed by the Conservatives and currently waits in limbo as parliament has been prorogued.
In the meantime, the population of the tent city expands every day. VANOC's lease on the area will expire in five weeks, at which point the land would revert to developers Concord Pacific. Garvin is planning to stay at least those five weeks, or until they are asked to leave. "Somebody would know," he said. "We'd know anyways. 'Put your socks and underwear on, we've got to move,'" he said. Yet he pointed out that the Portland Hotel Society has hosted a series of rotating three month tent cities.
Beatrice Star, also from the Power to Women movement, echoes the organizers of the Red Tent campaign when she said that the movement must go on after the Games. "If we leave early and just let this go, then we didn’t accomplish anything." According to Castavet, it is important to stand ground. "We try to fight for our rights, and we lose all the time,” he said. “So this is why today, we wake up, and stand up for everybody.”
-With files from Trevor Record and Michael Thibault
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