THIS WEEKEND: STANDs Go Province-Wide

Eighty “STANDs for Housing” slated for Saturday; Homelessness demos will span Province

Vancouver, BC. -- Eighty street-corner “STANDs for Housing” will be held in about thirty towns and cities across British Columbia this Saturday, May 3rd from 1-2pm.

The colourful blue-themed demonstrations have grown since February this year from a single Stand in Vancouver’s residential Little Mountain neighbourhood. By March there were fifteen Stands across the city, each coordinated by neighbourhood advocates.

Now, after only ten weeks, the blue banners and scarves of “STAND for Housing” will appear in most parts of BC – from Prince Rupert in the north to Sooke on the Island, to Kimberley in the southeast.

The approximate regional breakdown as of April 27th is:
Vancouver Island, 18
Lower Mainland, 40
Interior & North, 24

The spread of “STANDs for Housing” around the province reflects similar growth in the twin crises of homelessness and an affordable-housing shortage. The two issues are directly related and no longer limited to big cities, or to neighbourhoods of the poor and addicted.

Vancouver housing advocates point out that only one Vancouver Stand occurs in the Downtown Eastside. They say half the STANDs are in upscale residential neighbourhoods on the west side of the city, where the rattle of shopping carts is now heard with increasing frequency.

Background
The first Stand began last year in response to the BC government’s decision to sell Vancouver’s 15-acre Little Mountain social housing site to a private developer. Two hundred twenty-four social housing apartments are to be demolished and replaced with up to 2,000 luxury condos. The BC government says the developer will be required to promise replacement of all 224 social housing apartments. Completion of the sale has been delayed, though negotiations continue.

Advocates want city and senior governments to work together to resume construction of non-profit and co-op housing for low and moderate income singles and families. For decades, all governments cooperated to build tens of thousands of such homes every year.

The BC and federal governments cancelled those programs, 1993 to 2001. The resulting cascade of low-income people seeking down-market housing results in poorer people becoming homeless.

Permanent social housing is also what’s needed by graduates of ‘transitional’ and ‘supportive’ housing programs, who presently leave those programs only to face near-zero vacancy rates for affordable rental housing. Permanent non-profit and co-op housing would dramatically slow the increase in homelessness by freeing up low-income rentals.

Apart from pressuring politicians, Provincial STANDers will also be paying respects to hundreds of dead and dying homeless women, men, and children— victims of legislated poverty and punitive welfare rules. They wander our streets and lanes, huddle in parks and encampments, burn to death in service alcoves, are crushed in laneway garbage bins.
Homelessness cannot be solved without using the surplus billions in federal and provincial economies to build non-profit and co-op housing for a range of incomes.

For Stand materials: CALMhousing@hotmail.com
List of Stands: http://www.my-calm.info/

See also Housing vigils grow across the province, From the Vancouver Sun