Homelessness knows no city borders

Problems facing Downtown Eastside's unhoused are challenges for all levels of government
VANCOUVER SUN
OCTOBER 31, 2009

This is a condensed version of Chapter 17 of the new book A Thousand Dreams: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the Fight for Its Future.

When Gregor Robertson, a businessman and former NDP MLA, became the city's new mayor in November 2008, he announced tackling homelessness would be his first priority. But homelessness and the other problems facing the Downtown Eastside are challenges not just for that neighbourhood or for the city of Vancouver. They are problems that all levels of government -- municipal, regional, provincial, and federal -- must tackle, and all of them will have to come to the table if meaningful solutions are to be found.

Ending Homelessness

Homeless people continue to die on the streets of Vancouver. In December 2008, a 47-year-old woman known only as Tracey burned to death in a cardboard shelter she had erected over her shopping cart on an unusually chilly Vancouver night. She had lit some candles in a feeble effort to keep herself warm, and her body was found smouldering in the cart just before dawn. Even if Tracey had wanted to come inside, there is not always a place to stay, regardless of the weather: the Triage Shelter routinely turns away 400 to 600 people a month because it is full. Lookout and other shelters report a similar situation.

Most experts agree that Vancouver currently has at least 2,000 homeless people, the vast majority of them in the Downtown Eastside. The Metro Vancouver region needs a supportive housing plan for all of its 28 municipalities, Larry Campbell and Neil Boyd believe. Every city has challenges with drugs and homelessness, and the problems can't be defined by the borders of a municipality. A coordinated approach should be overseen by a regional council on homelessness and run by veteran bureaucrats from city halls; mayors and councillors often have polarized views, and they usually serve only one or two terms in power. Some of the new social housing needs to be in the Downtown Eastside, close to services for the marginalized; some needs to be outside that area, for the working poor and recovering addicts. A coordinated policy will also be needed to deal with NIMBYs, the not-in-my-back-yard people who don't want social housing on their residential streets, despite the reality that the folks affected could have grown up in their neighbourhoods.

What the Downtown Eastside needs is not more shelters, everyone agrees. The goal, Campbell and Boyd say, should be more supported units run by non-profit agencies who specialize in this work, stalwarts like RainCity and the Portland Hotel Society.

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