Vision Vancouver’s proposal for an online apartment database is intended to pressure negligent landlords to clean up their act. But Downtown Eastside housing activists are worried that forced renovations in single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels could result in higher rents, evictions and a loss of low-income housing units. The proposed database is based on a successful model from [...]
A centre that provides job advice and counselling for people in Canada’s poorest postal code is appealing for hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay open. Pathways Information Centre, which provides employment and information assistance to residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, has embarked on a campaign to raise the $400,000 it needs to keep its doors [...]
Residents in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are demanding emergency phones and better relations with city police. These issues were brought forward at a pair of public meetings with Vancouver Police Department officials. The meetings were held on October 8 and November 12 as part of a police initiative to connect with people in the Downtown Eastside. [...]
Where Alan Guy once saw beer bottles, crack pipes and litter, he now sees kale, tomatoes and spinach. The Astoria Hotel parking lot at the corner of East Hastings Street and Hawks Avenue once played host to drug dealing and binge drinking. But community gardeners transformed it in autumn 2009 to the thriving urban farm [...]
Related: Downtown Eastside residents demand phones for safety Downtown Eastside residents such as Tom Gerlitz doesn’t have a cellular or landline phone. “I’ve been meaning to get a cell phone, and now it looks like they’re coming into reason, a reasonable $20 or $30, a month,” he said. The cheapest cell phone plan in Canada [...]
Supporters of social housing have a month to find the money to include low-cost homes in a proposed new library in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Strathcona Library, on Hastings Street, is expected to only house books unless the city can find funding for a dedicated second storey for social housing, and a contractor to complete within [...]
Hastings Park may be one of the noisiest, most dilapidated pieces of parkland in Vancouver, and a city plan to develop and beautify the area isn’t passing the smell test from local residents either. It is “all about commercialization,” said local resident and Hastings Park Conservancy member, Pat Miller. The park boasts less than 20 [...]
BC’s Court of Appeal has given the go-ahead to a landmark legal challenge that may improve working conditions for sex workers, advocates say. Sheri Kiselbach and Sex Workers United Against Violence won the right to challenge prostitution laws in BC’s Supreme Court on Oct. 12. Darcie Bennett, campaigns director with Pivot Legal Society, said the [...]
Vancouver is going to get its first safe smoking site for crack cocaine users since 2003. A support group, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), is planning to convert its office in the Downtown Eastside into a place where crack cocaine users can smoke in a supervised space. The facility would be modeled [...]
Vancouver-based musician Matt Good thinks Olympic money would be much better spent on poverty relief in the Downtown Eastside. He’s certainly not alone. With a crumbling world economy, growing city debt and increasingly visible street poverty, it’s no surprise many Vancouver residents are reconsidering their support for the two-week, $6 billion event. But despite extensive [...]
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