Shelter Saga

Having the Olympics on the horizon commonly spurs a host city to attempt to remove certain people from its streets. Near the top of that list are people that visitors from around the world should not be allowed to see actually living on the street. Ironically, in Vancouver, the very impact of preparing for the Olympic Games exacerbates that particular “problem.” Frenetic real estate development, coupled with landlords out to profiteer, crowds even more desperate people out onto the street. The viciousness of this particular circle so befits the trademark five rings.

Last winter the City of Vancouver opened five emergency shelters that have housed about 450 people a night. In March the Province kicked in $1.5 million to fund those shelters through June.

During the last three weeks of June, public disorder associated with two shelters near the Granville bridge generated media controversy. Sandra Thomas in the Vancouver Courier may have provided the first coverage (June 10) on this mushrooming story (previously noted by Spectacle Vancouver in the Nasty Little Surprises sidebar). What a problem to have brewing in downtown Vancouver a few blocks away from the future Olympic live site in David Lam Park!

The Globe & Mail caught up with the story about two weeks later. At that point Wendy Stueck could add that the City had increased police patrols in the area, and that a street stabbing had taken place in the area a few days earlier. An online commenter remarked that the story failed to mention other armed individuals roaming the streets with a hatchet, the butt of a pool cue, and a medieval flail.

Allen Garr neatly laid out the hidden middle of the story in a news-filled Vancouver Courier editorial on June 24. While the City looked to the Province for $4.5 million to fund the shelters until after the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the Province felt anxious about obtaining a municipal permit to demolish social housing units at Little Mountain. [Rumor has it that the convenient vacant land is destined to become an Olympic parking lot. Ironies multiply almost as fast as Olympic debt.] The two levels of government were playing chicken, as Garr put it.

The next day Gary Mason joined the fray, describing a nightmare of a completely changed neighborhood. Mason went on to mention that a retired American couple living part-time in the area had asked the U.S. State Dept. to issue a travel advisory on Vancouver.

As a week filled with news of the situation came to an end, Richard Dalton reported that Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson was looking to the Province for $6 million to operate the shelters through April 2010, saying: “If people think that the homelessness problem is an embarrassment now, just wait until February 2010, when the world’s media are literally just blocks from the Downtown Eastside and the core of this challenge.”

After the weekend, Frances Bula from somewhere off in Europe exclusively reported a “partial agreement” in which the Province unilaterally made a decision on the two Granville shelters: to shut one down immediately, to give the City thirty days to deal with problems at the second. At the same time, the Province provided $8 million to run the other shelters “until next April, after the Olympics are over.” [This funding seems so Olympic – up from $4.5 to $8 million in one week of reporting.] Bula described the bargaining between the Province and the City as “clearly the most fractious and confrontational” since a new City Council took office at the end of 2008.

On the Tuesday June 30, the drop-dead day for shelter funding, the finale to the story bloomed across the newspapers after a press conference at City Hall. Michael Smyth luridly opined:

I’m sure there are some Vision Vancouver [new majority on City Council] types who thought it was deliciously subversive to stick a bunch of junkies and crackheads into a smug cocoon of latte-sipping condo-dwellers and watch the ensuing mayhem.

For our hubristic Olympic host city of Vancouver that so lives in and for the moment, the real story gets lost in all the political posturing: Nobody cares about planning for anything after April 2010. And nobody will have any money left after the taxpayer-funded blow-out party for the world’s elite.

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In chronological order:

Sandra Thomas, “Outrage mounts over no-barrier homeless shelters,” Vancouver Courier (10 June 2009) 4

Wendy Stueck, “Fearful residents urge city to close Vancouver homeless shelters,” Globe & Mail, (23 June 2009)

Allen Garr, “City, province play chicken for housing,” Vancouver Courier (24 June 2009) E08

Gary Mason, “Vancouver’s homeless solution becomes a problem,” Globe & Mail, (25 June 2009)

Richard J. Dalton Jr., “Shelters could close July 1: mayor,” Vancouver Sun, (26 June 2009)

Frances Bula “B.C. to cover cost of emergency shelters,” Globe & Mail, (29 June 2009)

Michael Smyth, “Who’ll trust mayor after shelter freak show?” Province (30 June 2009)