The Dominion - homelessness

Homelessness and Police Brutality

mccabe.melissa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:20:41 +0000

A dispatch from the In our Own Voices writing project

VANCOUVER—In the winter of 2000, I was co-managing a four bedroom house in Walley, BC. My co-manager and I became friends, but eventually he wanted to have a relationship. When I refused, he started to become verbally abusive and controlling with me. I took the abuse for a while, until I started to get incredibly stressed. I decided to leave in the spring of 2001. In a state of extreme depression, I left with a couple of bags and took the bus into Vancouver, where I ended up homeless.

During the day I panhandled for food and smokes, and at night I stayed wherever I could find a quiet and safe spot on the streets such as in a park or in a doorway. I felt alone, scared, and lost in the cracks and in the crowd. I could not sleep at night because there was no privacy, only constant harassment—whether it was the police, private security, drunk people leaving the bars, violent men, or somebody trying to rob me. A few guys tried to get me to do sex-work on the street for them, but I refused.

While I was panhandling, people would always hassle me and yell at me to move away from their store. I would often get sworn at or told to get a job. I felt judged by the people walking by and I was so ashamed of myself. I wish I could have made them understand how hard it really was. It was overwhelmingly difficult just to survive and I would never want to be homeless again. There are approximately 11,000 homeless across BC, with 3,000 people homeless across the Lower Mainland.

I had been on the street for a few months when someone told me to go to the Downtown Eastside to access support and services. I found a welfare worker who helped me get into the Bridge Shelter, where I stayed for one month, after which I got into Bridge Housing in June 2001.

I had to start all over again to establish my life. I found the Downtown Eastside Womens’ Centre. When I first walked in the doors, I did not want people to know me or know where I came from. But I met some friends who told me about the different activities available and I joined various programs and groups. Being a part of the DTES Power of Women Group showed me how to stand up for myself and others, which helped me regain my confidence and I began to feel good about myself again.

One of the issues I have continued to raise my voice against is that of police brutality in the Downtown Eastside. This is just one of the many stories that inspired me to take action.

I had been living in a supportive housing building for women for about nine years. As opposed to private single-resident-occupancy (SRO) housing, one of the benefits of supportive housing run by non-profits is that it maintains the confidentiality of the tenants who live there. Unless it is an emergency or a tenant has called 911, the police can only enter with a warrant.

One day the police arrived at my building looking for a tenant. They did not have a warrant and no one had called 911. The building staff refused the police access into the tenant’s room. I was sitting in the lobby of our building and witnessed the whole incident. At first the female officer got agitated and was demanding that they be allowed into the tenant’s room. The staff did not give in, which just made the police officers angrier, stating that they had a right to go inside. I saw one officer go towards the staff member to grab her arm. I ran out to try to inform people about what was taking place and to get some help.

When I returned, the staff was in handcuffs and had been taken outside. I heard them saying that they had arrested her and would charge her with obstruction of justice. By that time a crowd had gathered and staff from next door at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre had also arrived. Eventually, the arrested staff member was let go.

This whole incident made me very angry. There are so many stories of police arrogance and violence, and most are worse than what happened to this staff member. In this situation they were not even following their own protocol. I was scared that if this could happen to a staff member what could happen to someone like me who has less authority in this neighbourhood? It made me feel very powerless and vulnerable, especially as the incident occurred in my own building.

I have lost faith in the police. I fear that if I ever needed them to help me, they would turn on me instead. They do little to protect against actual violence, like all the murdered and missing women. Instead, they are violent towards us, frequently arresting people for minor things like jaywalking, or harassing people who are just standing on the street. It deeply frustrates and angers me that we let the police use their power and badges in such negative ways, and that society allows them to power-trip and do what they want. I imagine a Downtown Eastside where we are free from the arbitrary beatings and the brutality of the Vancouver Police Department, and so I and others fight to make this possible.

Karen Lahey is proud to be a survivor. She has been living in the Downtown Eastside for the past 11 years. Because of the DTES Power of Women Group, she can now publicly speak in front of a crowd and in front of cameras. She likes to help other women find their voice.

This story was originally published on the Vancouver Media Co-op as part of the Downtown Eastside Power of Women “In Our Own Voices” writing project. For more information and to read more stories, please visit http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/author/dtes-power-women-group

Karen Lahey

Social Profiling Under Scrutiny

Natascia L — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:54:11 +0000

A new report indicates little progress has been made in eliminating social profiling

MONTREAL—“We need to do a clean-up,” says Bernard St-Jacques of the homelessness problem in Montreal, which affects to 25,000 to 30,000 people according to the Réseau d’Aide aux Personnes Seules et Itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM).

St-Jacques is the community organizer for public space and jurisdiction at RAPSIM and the author of a report on social profiling released last Wednesday. Profilage social et jurisdiction: portrait de la situation dans l’espace public montréalais contains the results of a questionnaire asking 40 Montreal organizations about their experiences—and those of the homeless people who use their services—with social profiling.

The report was inspired by a similar one done by the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission in 2009. Its most significant finding: homeless people receive a disproportionate number of fines from the police. The majority of fines were for minor infractions regarding “incivilities.” According to the report, Montreal’s homeless represent one per cent of the population but they were the subject of 31.6 per cent of the police reports in 2004, 20.3 per cent in 2005. The report concluded social profiling contributed significantly to these statistics, and made a series of recommendations to the Montreal Police Service (SPVM).

Two years later, RAPSIM’s report commends the police on a few improvements in this area. SPVM documented a 30 per cent decrease in the number of fines given to homeless people between 2008 and 2009. It also partnered with the Équipe Mobile de Référence et d’Interventions en Itinérance whose members go on patrol with police, providing advice on approaching the homeless and suggesting alternatives to fines or arrest. "They (SPVM) have changed their directives: on the level of interventions, police officers are less encouraged to target homeless people," says St-Jacques.

Still, 85 per cent of the respondents to RAPSIM’s questionnaire described the relations between homeless people and police as negative: 56 per cent reported being the victims of physical abuse and 46 percent reported verbal abuse or discrimination. Sixty-one per cent indicated they still frequently receive fines.

The report denounces police for rarely following procedure when it comes to situations involving homeless people. St-Jacques says nothing has been done since the release of the Commission’s recommendations to correct or reprimand this misconduct. Clinique Droits Devant, RAPSIM’s legal aid service, dealt with 16 cases last year concerning police misconduct, and sixty-three per cent of respondents described their legal situation as poor.

"The attitude of police toward homeless people hasn't really changed for the best; the mentality hasn't really changed," says Johanne Galipeau of Action Autonomie, a mental health advocacy and legal aid organization that participated in RAPSIM’s questionnaire. "Maybe there are less fines, but there is a lack of respect. Abuse, brutality; these situations have not changed—have little changed."

She criticizes police for being quick to use a heavy hand on a person acting outside "societal norms." As a result, the homeless have made a connection between the police and being escorted to the hospital or prison, she says. Losing confidence in the system means the homeless have ceased asking for help.

Galipeau says police tend to receive the brunt of social profiling accusations because they are the first responders.

RAPSIM’s report indicates 60 per cent of respondents felt the treatment of homeless people in public spaces in general has improved little or not at all in the past five years—whether that treatment be from residents, business owners, other citizens or the police.

“Police members are not apart from society,” says Marie-Eve Sylvestre. “They’re part of it and their construction or their perception of homelessness and of some people who may have characteristics of homeless people are also constructed by society.”

Sylvestre is a civil law professor at the University of Ottawa and was one of two researchers involved in developing RAPSIM’s report. She says social profiling by police stems largely from society’s narratives of homeless people. For instance, the misconception that all homeless are dangerous is often used as a justification for their arrest. “We believe the police have constructed a perception of the harm caused by homeless people based on the needs and complaints of very few individuals who have some power in the neighborhoods [where the arrests and fines are occurring,]” says Sylvestre.

Making these complaints is possible, she adds, because some municipal bylaws and provincial laws concerning the use of public space discriminate against homeless people. Prohibitions against public drinking, public noise, public gathering and public drunkenness target the homeless in particular. These laws apply to all citizens, but people living on the street are more likely to violate them because they have no private address. "The fact of not having private spaces, that your private space eventually becomes the public space, well, that impedes a protection of your rights," says St-Jacques.

Between 2000 and 2003, more and more public places were being redefined as 'parks' or 'squares' meaning the city had more control over them, explains the RAPSIM report. It became illegal to use public installations, like park benches or low walls, in a manner for which they were not intended (i.e. sleeping.) It also became illegal to remain in public areas after their “closing times.” Céline Bellot, a researcher in the Centre International de Criminologie Comparée at the Université de Montréal who worked on RAPSIM’s report, documented a four-fold increase in the fines given out to homeless between 1994 and 2003.

St-Jacques also points to the development during this period of downtown Montreal’s infrastructure, housing, commercial areas, tourist attractions and festival spaces as a contributor to the police’s targeting of the homeless population. Downtown organizations recorded worse relations with the police during the summer and festival seasons. "It's obvious," St-Jacques says. "The marginalized population found themselves in the way of these projects."

The inclusion of homeless people in these projects—and their reinsertion into society as a whole—could greatly deter social profiling, believes Richard Chrétien, director of Sac à Dos. His organization has strived to maintain positive relationships with the police officers, residents and business owners surrounding Sac à Dos’ Ste-Catherine/René-Lévesque location. Its members have worked in the community in urban development and cleanup projects, as well as with local stores and events like the Festival de Jazz and Francopholies. "It helps in talking about people living on the street a little bit differently; not just seeing homeless people as a problem, but to see homeless peoples' ability to integrate," Chrétien says. "Plus, it attacks the problem itself."

The problem of homelessness, he means. Central to both RAPSIM’s and the Commission’s reports was the idea that homelessness is a societal failure leading to the denial of basics right to a part of its population. Both groups recommended a steep increase in services for the homeless and improved preventions to homelessness on the municipal and provincial levels.

In 2010, Mayor Gérald Tremblay announced an interdepartmental action plan for homelessness. Despite the plan’s acknowledgement of a social profiling problem, St-Jacques finds it insufficient for its lack of proposed changes to discriminatory municipal laws and police training in regards to the treatment of homeless people. He is most critical of the minimal funding provided to programs and community groups working to improve the basic living conditions of the homeless. "We are far from having our demands met, especially on the jurisdiction and social profiling levels," he says.

RAPSIM plans to continue its research in the area of social profiling. It will be teaming up with other organizations and the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission to create a farther-reaching monitoring system that will include a demographic breakdown of social profiling trends, and statistics specific to Montreal’s various neighborhoods. St-Jacques wants to develop a better method of documenting cases of police abuse and misconduct. He hopes the Commission will align this work with its portfolio on racial profiling to form a stronger attack on this issue.

Natascia Lypny is a Montreal native and bilingual freelance journalist currently pursuing a journalism and
sociology degree at the University of King's College and Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Homeless fines

Grounds for Disruption

Moira Peters — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:58:17 +0000

Tent cities evolve to bring politics out of—and permanence into—the housing debate

VANCOUVER—On the anniversary of the 2010 Olympics, a second tent city will disrupt Vancouver. Like the Olympic Tent Village that occupied 58 West Hastings in the Downtown East Side one year ago, this incarnation may only last a few weeks. However, discussions have been initiated within Vancouver Action (VANACT), the primary group organizing the tent city, about evolving this tent city into a more permanent project, mirroring such tent cities as those in and around Seattle, Washington State.

"[Last year] we thought it would last a week, but by the end of the week there was a community meeting where individuals decided to stay until people got housing,” said Tristan Markle of VANACT. Markle was involved in last year’s tent village, and hopes to carry those lessons into this year’s project.

“Learning from that experience, we have to be prepared and anticipate that the people who need a liberated space might want to stay as long as necessary,” he said. Those who stayed and squatted 58 West Hastings eventually helped secure low-income housing for 35 residents of Olympic Tent Village.

When it was occupied one year ago, 58 West Hastings was an empty lot that the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) had leased from condo developer Concord Pacific with the intention of using the space for Olympics-related parking. This year’s tent village is expected to occupy a space in the now desolate and bankrupt Olympic Village, which has come to symbolize both the misplaced financial extravagance of the Games, and the city’s failure to follow through with its Olympic promise of more low-income homes.

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Across the border in Seattle, one finds a history of tent cities that have survived in various forms for over a decade. In the late 1990s, Tent City 1, and then Tent City 2, were created illegally to address the growing numbers of homeless people in the King County region of Washington State. Both were opposed by local government and eventually shut down, but the dire need for such an establishment had been made visible.

Tent City 3 was created in 2000, but it was not until March of 2002 that its legality was made clear following a court ordered “Consent Degree” between the organizers and the city attorney. This “Consent Degree” established basic rules and a system of temporary locations on offered private land. Tent City 3 continues to provide shelter for approximately 100 people.

Partly in response to some of the limitations of this legal yet controlled encampment, Tent City 4 was created in May of 2004, with the intent of defying the “Consent Decree” by occupying public spaces and using public resources. It eventually transitioned from using public spaces into a system of staying on properties owned by faith-based organizations, such as parking lots. This project also continues to operate, with a population fluctuating between 50 to 100 people.

More recently, a separate project to provide shelter for the growing numbers of homeless people was created in the University District of Seattle. It was coined “Nickelsville” in response to then-Mayor Greg Nickel’s use of police to clear out homeless encampments, and specifically an edict issued by the mayor on April 4, 2008, that outlawed setting up shelter on city property such as overpasses, greenways and parks. The original location of Nickelsville was at 7115 West Marginal Way SW in Seattle, and was built in the early morning of September 22, 2008. This encampment only lasted four days, until police entered, arresting 23 people and removing the installed shelters.

Nickelsville stumbled through a few more locations before it found a more stable home in the private parking lot of the University Christian Church in the University District, a space made more secure due in part to great support by the local faith-based communities. This began a string of temporary locations for Nickelsville, sometimes moving to areas of King County outside Seattle.

Nickelsville built a list of rules that are largely self-enforced. No drugs, alcohol or criminal activity is tolerated within the tent city; any offenders risk immediate eviction. The entry point to the tent city is carefully monitored with an official check-in table. Many tenants take on roles such as security and “moving boss” to help ensure respect for the rules and oversee getting everyone packed between locations.

By August 2010, Nickelsville was back in the space it had occupied nearly two years prior, at the University Congregational United Church of Christ. While some locals were happy to have the tent city back, others recalled increased break-ins and other associated criminal activity. Church groups intended to mitigate the motivations for increased local crime by helping provide Nickelsville tenants with access to bathrooms, showers and other facilities. Nevertheless, wherever the tent city went, there was often local resistance to Nickelsville sharing the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood agitation, combined with a growing need for shelter, contributed to the push by organizers to re-envision Nickelsville as a more stable project with a permanent location.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn formed a citizen review panel in October 2010 to explore solutions to the growing problem of homelessness. It recommended the creation of a permanent tent city location. Such an initiative has been strongly supported by the organizers and tenants of Nickelsville, and is listed as a demand in a recent declaration endorsed by several of the organizations deeply involved with the tent city. Nickelsville presently occupies an old Lake City Fire Station, north of the University District—a location that provides warmth during the winter months. While this site continues to provide shelter for approximately 100 people, the community hopes a permanent location could accommodate up to 1,000 tenants.

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The size of Nickelsville, and its long history, can be attributed to both Seattle’s large homeless population and also a well-organized network of citizen support.

A homelessness count performed in Seattle in the early hours of January 28, 2011, found 1,753 people in Seattle and 2,442 people in the greater King County area on the streets between 2:00 am and 5:00 am, while more than 6,000 others took advantage of available emergency shelters and other accommodation. Currently, Seattle has nearly 2,000 shelter beds and more than 3,000 in the King County region in total.

In contrast, Vancouver’s 2010 count found 811 people on the street and an additional 765 in shelters. Both Seattle and Vancouver are faced with dramatically increasing rates of homelessness.

“One study shows Vancouver to be the most unaffordable city in the world,” said Markle. “And one year after the Olympics, homelessness has tripled.”

Similar stories are told in Seattle. On January 10, 2011, at a community meeting on homelessness, Ruth Blaw, director of the Orion youth shelter, which is run under the umbrella organization Youthcare, explained that the organization had seen the use of its services double in the past 18 months, and they are no longer able to provide beds to meet demand.

The meeting was part of the University District Conversation on Homelessness, which convenes monthly at a local church or faith-based community center. Updates are provided on the most recent political news affecting homeless individuals, and representatives from local churches, synagogues, mosques and other groups meet to help form a unified face in tackling ongoing issues around homelessness.

The tent cities in King County have been able to depend on the support of such groups for logistics. The groups also play a crucial role in pushing back against government reluctance to make serious commitments. In 2007, under the pressure of these groups, the state government introduced Bill HB 2244, which prevented city governments from stopping churches from hosting tent cities, or setting a time limit of less than 90 days on the stay of individuals within the encampments.

A younger initiative, Vancouver’s tent city movement has involvement from its own faith-based community. One of the major support pillars of the Olympic Tent Village was Streams of Justice, a Christian social justice movement.

Dave Diewert of Streams of Justice offered a lucid description of the social mechanics behind the Olympic Tent Village in the second edition of Village Voice, the newsletter of the tent city. He explained that the political component of the Olympic tent village was a kind of “eruption,” a disruption of the status quo. This eruption “crosses lines of legality and illegality of who owns this space and who occupies this space...eruptions of those structures become opportunities to say something strong. The point is for this action to bring into light in a powerful way...the reality of homelessness, gentrification, and the criminalization of poverty.”

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Markle sees the upcoming tent city as a similar eruption, explaining that one of its most direct intentions is “to bring the issues out into the open, rather than having them brushed under the carpet or hidden out of sight, so that people are forced to confront the issues.”

A similar phenomena was taking place in the early tent cities of Seattle, with illegal occupations in response to an acute housing crisis. However, Seattle’s tent cit[ies] gradually evolved, accruing stability. Nickelsville’s goal of providing shelter for 1,000 people demonstrates how the focus has shifted to providing a steady base for a many homeless people as possible.

The example of Nickelsville reveals an inverse relationship between permanence and visibility with respect to the issue of homelessness: as permanent shelter needs are met, political visibility goes down.

On the one end, tent cities that mark a large public event—such as the Olympic Tent Village and the tent city created in Allen Gardens during the G20 summit in Toronto, which lasted for just one night—act, according to Markle, as “political manifestation[s] that bring the politics [of homelessness] into the open.”

In the middle, more permanent establishments such as Tent City 1 and Tent City 2 in Seattle, while being illegal “eruptions,” also provide longer-term shelter. The state sanctions, or at least tolerates, tent cities that shift from one site to another approximately every three months, but their continual change of location, and all of the associated hurdles, help maintain public awareness of the ongoing need for housing solutions.

At the other end of the spectrum, tent cities with a permanent location and properly established facilities begin to blur the line between quasi-legal occupations and traditional homeless shelters. As Markle explained, forcing people into small shelters or scattered spaces throughout a city means that the problem of homelessness “doesn’t appear to be a political issue.” Similarly, once a tent city is located in a more permanent location, often in a low-income area far from an urban centre, it is effectively “out of sight and out of mind” for many city dwellers. However, Markle is clear to point out that “shelters are [important] emergency stop gap measures until real housing [can be acquired].”

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The eruptive tent city is also “an affirmation of community” which may carry though to later incarnations, according to Diewert. The establishment of a tent city represents a refusal of citizens to “sit around and wait for the state, nor to give it opportunities to act and set the framework within which...action can take place, but rather for the community to say ‘we can do this’ and to take initiative.”

This perspective is echoed in the opinions of others. “The main point of a tent city is an exercise in self sustainability, self-organization, and community-building,” said Yifan Li of VANACT, who also helped build last year’s Olympic Tent Village. In a similar vein, Markle said the “hope is that the tent city is a solidarity action between folks who live in the inner city and allies city-wide.”

The strength of this solidarity will perhaps dictate the resilience and longevity of Vancouver’s newest tent city.

“Once a space is liberated...people will take advantage of that liberated space and create a community there, but one has to be prepared to support it as long as possible,” said Markle.

Whether Vancouver's upcoming tent city is the starting point of such a venture will depend on what unfolds in the ensuing weeks.

Zander Winther is a recent graduate of the Philosophy MA program at the University of Waterloo, and currently feels at home in both Vancouver and Seattle.

Tent City Crowd

Tent City Tents

Update From Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:14:56 +0000

Organizers and residents of the Olympic Tent Village in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside give a press conference on the day after the tent city is set up.

Rally and March to Begin the Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:43:52 +0000

Residents of a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is often referred as the countrys poorest postal code set up a tent encampment in a vacant Downtown Eastside lot to advocate for housing and to shelter the neighbourhoods homeless population.

2010 Rings Hollow

Van Ferrier — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:11:53 +0000

This documentary feature examines the history of housing in Vancouver and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games on the city's homelessness and poverty. The film features interviews with legal experts, activists, and people affected by the housing crisis, with particular focus on hotel closures, evictions and the criminalization of dissent.

Why oppose the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:40:43 +0000

The Olympic Resistance Network has called for a convergence to protest the Vancouver Winter Olympics. This video explains some the reasons why these activists have organized the first ever anti-Olymopic summit.

2010 Rings Hollow

Van Ferrier — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:10:14 +0000

Video on the housing legacy of the Vancouver Olympics

This documentary feature examines the history of housing in Vancouver and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games on the city's homelessness and poverty.

The film features interviews with legal experts, activists, and people affected by the housing crisis, with particular focus on hotel closures, evictions and the criminalization of dissent.

2010 Rings Hollow provides important insight on discussions surrounding Canada's social and economic priorities.

2010 Rings Hollow from Dave Ron on Vimeo.

Dave Ron is a filmmaker, media developer and graphic artist living in Montreal.

Visit www.dominionpaper.ca/video to watch more Dominion video news and videos from around the web related to coverage in the Dominion. For more information on the 2010 Olympics and their effects in Vancouver, visit the Vancouver Media Co-op

2010 Rings Hollow

Homelessness Hits Home

Moira Peters — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:00:37 +0000

Volunteers provide shelter where government drops ball

HALIFAX—The opening of Out-of-the-Cold Shelter in Halifax this winter was described as both a celebration and a sad reality by shelter organizers.

"We are pleased to be providing this service but it's not really a happy occasion," said Carol Charlebois, Executive Director of Metro Non-Profit Housing Association. "We would much prefer it if we were opening longterm, supportive, affordable housing," rather than a "last resort" winter shelter.

The shelter, a community-based response to homelessness in Halifax, has provoked mixed feelings for another reason: Out-of-the-Cold is run entirely by volunteers.

"The response from the wider community has been amazing," says Fiona Traynor, a member of the organizing committee for the shelter and community legal worker at Dalhousie Legal Aid. "But the elephant in the room is that there has been no government funding of this project."

The 15-bed shelter was open for two months last winter and is open for its first full season this year. Staffed entirely by volunteers, it is open every night until April from 9pm until 8am. The shelter space has been donated by St Matthew's United Church. Everything from clean blankets to hot meals are provided by volunteers—some in their teens, some in their 70s.

"I've learned things I didn't know I didn't know," says volunteer Shannon Aulenback. Aulenback says he's had his eyes opened to the realities that people face without a home. "Whenever I work, I do the overnight shift," he says. "Some of the people like to stay up late and chat. They've always got interesting stories, although not always happy stories."

On the day of the interview he was working a full day, volunteering all night at the shelter and returning to work the next morning at 8:30am.

But according to Aulenback, the lack of sleep is not the hardest part of volunteering. The hardest part is waking people up in the morning and telling them they have to return to the streets. "We can't provide the service the whole day," he says. "You don't want to send people out in the cold at 8am. You don't want to wake someone from a warm bed. That's the tough part."

It's a cycle that frustrates Megan Leslie, New Democrat Critic for Housing and Homelessness and Halifax Member of Parliament. "It's hard to find work when you don't have a home or a phone. Never mind not being rested and having a place to relax and just be a person," she says. "The solution to homelessness is housing."

"I am a huge supporter of the shelter. I think it's wonderful and addresses a huge need in Halifax," says Leslie. "It's incredible what [volunteers] are doing. It's also completely tragic. This is not housing. This is not acceptable."

Leslie is a strong advocate of a National Housing Strategy, as put forward by bill C-304. Bill C-304 calls on Canada to work with all levels of government, Aboriginal communities, civil society and private sector stakeholders to establish a national strategy to ensure access to adequate, affordable housing.

The NDP bill is supported by the Bloc and Liberals and cleared the committee stage in December. At the time of the interview, Leslie was hoping the bill would be voted on in February. However, since the federal Conservatives have suspended parliament until March the vote will have to wait.

In the meantime, Halifax is not the only place community members are mobilizing to respond to what the Federation of Canadian Municipalities calls a national disaster.

Seven churches in the Annapolis Valley have formed teams of volunteers to staff a winter shelter one night per week. Anyone needing a place to sleep for the night must register with the RCMP who will then take them to the church that is open on that night.

John Andrew, co-director of Open Arms, which coordinates the emergency shelter says the situation is not ideal but the group had difficulty finding a permanent space for the shelter. He explains that there's lots of fear about homelessness, which is also part of the rationale behind the RCMP escort. The fear is unfortunate and unfounded, says Andrew who has been working with the homeless population in his community of Kentville for over six years. He is seeing the need for housing increasing.

This winter, Lunenburg County has launched a similar program with several churches working together to provide winter shelter for those who need it, once again staffed entirely by volunteers.

The trend is an alarming one for for some. Huge amounts of community resources are going into what many consider a band-aid solution.

With more government funding for affordable housing, argues Leslie, the payoff would be huge. "If you look at building housing, there's three possible wins," she says. "First, combating poverty. Affordable, secure shelter helps combat poverty. [Second,] if you build it sustainably, you could also lower the carbon footprint. Thirdly, it employs people to build it. This is the perfect time to build housing. You can hire the architects and builders. It creates job opportunities."

Environmental and economic arguments aside, Leslie believes that being homeless is an affront to a person's dignity. "I believe housing is a rights issue," she says.

Traynor echoed Leslie's sentiment at the opening of Out-of-the-Cold. "Housing is a human rights issue. It's not a tragedy. It's a human rights issue," she says.

"We don't have a national housing strategy. We have a shelter run by volunteers. It's good, but it's not a solution."

Hillary Lindsay is an editor at the Dominion. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Homelessness Cots

Homelessness Meeting

Apples, not applause, for AFN chief

Van Ferrier — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:37:44 +0000

Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine's news conference in Vancouver on Feb. 18 was disrupted by an anti-Olympics native protester who dumped red apples on the podium. The red on the outside, white on the inside B.C.-grown fruit symbolizes aboriginals who adopt white peoples' values and culture.

Homes not podiums, say Poverty Olympics organizers

Van Ferrier — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:50:22 +0000

The first Poverty Olympics were a light-hearted affair with an important message at Carnegie Centre in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside ghetto on Feb. 3. Activists used the satirical event to warn organizers of Vancouver's 2010 Winter Olympics that time is running out to fulfill the five-year-old housing and environmental promises.

Jailed For Jaywalking?

dawn — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:40:22 +0000

Measures aim to clear out Vancouver's Downtown Eastside before the Olympics

TORONTO–With the Olympics less a year away, many pundits and officials have been musing about how the city is going to make good on its plan to “clean-up” Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) by 2010. One answer is both crude and sad: jaywalking tickets.

Housing advocates of the DTES say ticketing for minor bylaw infractions are up. According to Nicole Latham, a staff member at the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), suspicions arose at the VANDU July 2008 AGM. “Someone asked how many people had been given a jaywalking ticket and half the room put up their hands.”

According to Laura Track, a lawyer at Pivot Legal Society, jaywalking tickets are only the tip of the iceberg. “Around 30 people were ticketed in two days for camping in parks in mid-July 2008,” she says.

Track and Ann Livingston, Executive Director of VANDU, claim that the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is on a ticketing binge. Ticketing for jaywalking, selling merchandise and bicycle infractions in the DTES are all on the rise.

Under provincial laws such as the Safe Streets Act and the Trespass Act, 297 tickets were issued to Vancouver residents in 2007. In 2008, that number jumped to 600, well above targets. Both Acts have been labeled by advocates as laws that legislate against poverty and target the homeless.

Vancouver’s Megaphone Magazine tracked, in December 2008, a major "ticketing blitz" in the DTES. A VPD report the following month stated 439 tickets were issued in 2008 for vending, panhandling and loitering in the DTES. “In 2007, bylaw tickets issued in the area totaled only 247,” read the report.

According to information obtained by The Dominion through a Freedom of Information request, tickets issued for illegal vending in all of Vancouver amounted to 263 in 2007. In 2008, 537 tickets were issued city-wide.

In other words, of all the vending tickets issued in Vancouver over the last 2 years, more than 80 per cent have been given out in the DTES.

Statistics from the Freedom of Information request show that other tickets, which seem to discriminate against the homeless, are similarly on the rise. Jaywalking tickets have increased drastically: from 757 in 2007 to 1,086 in 2008. Riding a bike without a helmet resulted in 32 tickets in 2006 and in 2008 that figure rose to 92.

Doug King, Pivot’s Police Campaigner, holds that the targeting of residents in the DTES is intentional; the VPD has admitted as such.

According to King, "The DTES is where the street vending occurs and most of the increase [in tickets] is attributable to about four blocks. The police are being very open about this; they believe in the broken-windows approach to policing." When contacted, VPD spokesperson Jana McGuinness confirmed that new initiatives that target the DTES are being used primarily to address the “open-air drug market."

The idea to increase the amount of bylaw ticketing originally surfaced in 2006 during former Mayor Sam Sullivan’s much maligned "Project Civil City." Civil City was originally promoted as a means of reducing homelessness, street disorder and drug use. According to statistics published in The Tyee in 2008, all three have risen dramatically since the launch of Civil City. Despite this rise, the central strategy of Civil City has been fully embraced by the VPD.

The 2009 VPD Annual Business Plan places significant emphasis on bylaw tickets for crimes prevalent in the DTES. Graffiti, panhandling, street vending, camping and “the scavenger economy” are key issues the VPD says it wants to target. The report also stated that "chronic bylaw offenders” are being targeted with more tickets and more serving of summons.

“There’s speculation in the DTES neighbourhood that this is being done to try to clean up the neighbourhood before the Olympics get into town,” says King. "The VPD [however] is very adamant that [this] is not what they are doing."

While groups like VANDU and Pivot have been key in pointing out the increase in ticketing in the Downtown Eastside, other groups have been fighting it. The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC) held a press conference in February calling attention to the aggressive ticketing by the VPD. According to Priscillia Mays, a member of the Power of Women Group at the DEWC, the ticketing “is happening to ensure that residents live in a state of fear and intimidation so that the DTES is ‘cleansed’ of poor and homeless people in time for the tourists.”

She also says, “It is not a coincidence that all this is happening in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. It is likely that poor people who are unable to pay these hefty tickets will be jailed leading up to 2010 because the VPD Draft Business Plan indicates increased involvement in ensuring that court summons are served to those ‘chronic offenders’ of such ridiculous bylaws.”

Asked why the VPD was targeting the DTES at this time and if the sudden rise in bylaw tickets had anything to do with the Olympics, spokesperson McGuinness refused to comment.

Multiple Canadian government officials could be learning from Atlanta, which used the same strategy for sweeping the streets of homeless people during their Olympic Games in 1996. The Weicker Report, issued in 2002 to a special Vancouver-based committee with members from the federal, provincial and municipal governments, looked at the impact of the Games on “Vancouver’s Inner City Neighbourhood.” It noted the use of jaywalking tickets in Atlanta to lock up the homeless populations.

By 2006, a flurry of local laws were being implemented under Project Civil City to make it easier to ticket people, summon them to court and subject them to a term of incarceration.

One of the changes was the introduction of a pilot project called the Municipal Ticket Information system (MTI). Under old methods of ticketing, a bylaw offender would be issued a notice asking them to pay a fine. If they did not pay, then a summons to court would be issued and served personally to the offender, who could then be acquitted, fined or restricted from areas of the city.

Under the new MTI process, a person given a ticket has 14 days to file a dispute. If they do not, a conviction and imposition of a fine is automatic. City documents point out that the MTI project has added to the number of convictions and fines.

The fear of homeless advocates is that warrants for unpaid tickets and similar offenses will suddenly appear en masse.

“That’s what people are the most afraid of in the neighbourhood; that they will keep issuing tickets at everyone. Then, at any time, people can get warranted," says King. "They are obviously targeting specific people."

In a February 2008 submission to city council, Geoff Plant, Civil City Project Commissioner, put forth a series of "immediate requests" for changes to provincial legislation. He requested that the B.C. government make it easier to get bylaw offenders in court and to incarcerate people who are unable to pay fines.

Plant has been pushing for these legislative changes since last year but the cancellation of the B.C. Fall legislature session in 2008 meant that these changes have not yet been put into effect.

Gwalgen Geordie Dent is a contributing member of Medicoop.ca-Toronto. He is a former health worker in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

DTES women demand an end to street sweeps

Whether the Poor Burn or Freeze, There is No Excuse for Soft-Ball Questions

Stuart Neatby — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 22:34:51 +0000

It is telling that the violent death of Tracey, a homeless woman in Vancouver, who burned to death after attempting to keep warm after constructing a small fire in a downtown street corner, has resulted in national headlines while the freezing death of another unidentified homeless man in Montreal the very next night has resulted in only a passing mention in Montreal newspapers. It is beyond cynical to point out that when a homeless person burns to death, it is a national tragedy, whereas when a homeless person freezes to death, it is scarcely even news. But this case demonstrates that when Canadian media isolate one homeless death as opposed to reporting upon the increasing pattern of homeless deaths over the last two decades, it paradoxically allows politicians more of a free hand to sweep the poor out of the public's view.