By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
Content warning: Mentions of racism, Indigenous displacement, and substance use.
On February 26, Vancouver City Council voted “yes” on mayor Ken Sim’s motion to freeze the construction of new supportive housing units in the city. As per the motion, supportive housing is designed for “individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness and with severe mental health challenges and/or substance use disorders, including 24/7 on-site support services.” The motion, according to Sim, could help “encourage a mix of housing, businesses, and services” to come to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES).
Specifically, the plan states that Vancouver will freeze any aid for new supportive housing, be it money or land, “until progress is made in increasing the supply of homelessness response supportive housing across the region.” This pause excludes fixing current single room occupancy and temporary modular housing housing. The Peak spoke with Fiona York, a longtime advocate for unhoused individuals, and Kaylee from Stop the Sweeps about this decision and its effects. Kaylee doesn’t share her last name for privacy reasons.
While the motion specifies that current single-room buildings in need of repair or replacement will be attended to, York said “there is no clarity” regarding where the residents can live during construction. “Some repairs can take many months or even years. And sometimes people [whose buildings are being repaired] are moved into other buildings or units, meaning those units are then unavailable for others who are in need of housing,” she continued. Such is the current nature of things for those unhoused — options are sparse. “For decades, corporate-driven bylaws, capitalism, and colonial courts have prevented unhoused people from legally sheltering in any public or privately-owned spaces,” reads a press release by former CRAB Park advocates.
Both York and Sim recognize Vancouver’s historical legacy of unhoused populations, particularly in the DTES. The Council members’ motion states that “despite representing only 25% of the regional population, Vancouver is home to over 77% of the region’s supportive housing and more than 67% of its shelter spaces.” For York, a significant percentage of unhoused people along with no new housing yields a simple answer: “dire vulnerability that leads to harm and even death.”
“A massive gap in knowledge and empathy between those in power and the general public, especially those with less power, and those who are struggling and vulnerable.” — Fiona York, advocate for unhoused individuals
Kaylee echoed a similar sentiment: “Not only is the motion itself a death sentence for unhoused residents, it is yet another signal from Ken Sim and the ABC party that they do not care about low-income and marginalized populations.” The ABC party is a municipal political party led by Sim.
For mayor Sim, the numbers referenced in the motion draw a different conclusion. That is, while the city intends to create a “comprehensive response plan for the DTES, including investments in mental health and addiction recovery services,” other communities outside Vancouver need to increase their own supportive housing efforts to fill that gap. The Council’s motion stated that this “would allow individuals experiencing homelessness to access stable housing in their own communities, closer to family, cultural connections, and local services, rather than being displaced in Vancouver.” Doing so would allow the city to “ensure that those suffering the most receive the safe, stable housing they desperately need,” according to the Council.
York doesn’t believe this motion will encourage other areas to start tackling the issue. “There is no co-relation between cutting back on housing and assuming other cities will increase housing,” she said. “So the net result could be that no housing is built, and people have nowhere to go.” Additionally, “unhoused people are not going to necessarily travel to another region with fewer services to try to access housing.” York explained that “many services are located in Vancouver, and many people who are unhoused have family, friends, and relatives in the area and stay near their community or family and services that they access.”
Kaylee also mentioned a leaked proposal that The Globe and Mail reported on, which aims to “send Indigenous residents of the DTES to their home communities in service of reconciliation,” she explained. Kaylee suggested this proposal aims to remove Indigenous individuals without properly addressing systemic issues like racism and poverty in Vancouver. She said the proposal is “the most barefaced, racist attempt to launder Indigenous displacement I have personally ever seen.”
Overall, for York, the decision “indicates a disdain for truth and reality,” as well as “a massive gap in knowledge and empathy between those in power and the general public, especially those with less power, and those who are struggling and vulnerable.”
