RAFE ARNOTT
BY ANDREA WOOSome people who have never been to Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside say that reports of the neighborhood must be grossly exaggerated. The district called "Canada's poorest postal code," a few blocks from the new Olympic Athletes’ Village, couldn't possibly be the destitute wasteland depicted in news features and documentaries. After all, Vancouver is routinely voted the world’s best city to live in; could it really include a neighborhood rampant with homelessness and visible drug abuse, where condoms and syringes litter the pavement, and addicts lurch through the streets like zombies?
Having lived in Vancouver nearly my entire life, I can say the answer is an unwavering yes, and it’s an issue that’s become increasingly uncomfortable for city officials since Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
Since winning the bid in 2003—and particularly in the last few years—the city has implemented a number of measures that seemed too closely timed to the Olympics to appear coincidental. According to the Vancouver Police Department's 2008 annual business plan report-back, for instance, officers issued 467 tickets for violations of the Safe Streets Act last year, up from 202 in 2007, and they ticketed 439 people for panhandling, loitering, and unlicensed street vending last year, up from 247 in 2007.
"The issue is definitely that, in order to host this sporting event, it somehow seems necessary to bankrupt a city, dispose of civil liberties, displace homeless populations, and hand over public space to giant corporations," said David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. "I don't get the connection between those things, and I don’t think it’s necessary."
I'm well versed in the sob stories of the Downtown Eastside. Friends visiting from out of town routinely comment that they've never been solicited by so many panhandlers and are alarmed to see such a dense population of homeless people just blocks away from a neighborhood that sells doggy couture and C$100 square watermelons imported from Japan (that would be Yaletown, if you're planning to visit). It's a disparity of lifestyles that Vancouverites have grown accustomed to.
But the Winter Games makes that disparity more apparent.
Just last month, B.C. lawmakers passed a controversial bill allowing police officers to force homeless people into shelters during extreme winter weather—i.e., weather that coincides with the Olympics—though they can't make them stay. (Leaked documents revealed earlier considerations to even jail the homeless if accommodations could not be found, though this idea was eventually scrapped.)
Hardly a phenomenon, this is probably the Olympics' most sordid tradition: History has shown host cities to sweep undesirables under the rug just before the torch passes through town. Police in Atlanta, for example, reportedly arrested 9,000 people for panhandling and loitering in the year before the 1996 Summer Games—four times more than in preceding years—and gave homeless people free one-way bus tickets out of the city.
But police here in Vancouver insist there is no street sweep timed before the Olympics. "What we're doing is…increasing our visibility in the Downtown Eastside," said VPD spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness. "Everything we're doing now, we'll be doing after the Olympics as well."
I love Vancouver, appreciate the nature of sport and competition on a global scale, and certainly acknowledge the sense of national pride that comes parading in with the five-ringed circus. But winning the Games looks like it will be a pyrrhic victory, its losses sure to outnumber its gains. The situation of the Downtown Eastside was critical years before winning the bid, and in attempts to prepare for the world stage, it has only worsened.
According to a 2007 report by the United Nations Population Fund, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside "is home to a hepatitis C (HCV) rate of just below 70 per cent and an HIV prevalence rate of an estimated 30 per cent—the same as Botswana's." A 2008 survey of the neighborhood, by the City of Vancouver, found that 52 percent of the residents said they used drugs, with 28 percent using frequently.
The Olympic bill has already topped C$6 billion. The cost for security alone—about C$1 billion—could build 5,000 homes, or replace every residential hotel room in the Downtown Eastside with self-contained homes, according to Wendy Pederson, researcher at the Carnegie Community Action Project. Our city is severely lacking in the resources needed to fix the problems associated with the Downtown Eastside; shouldn't the most vulnerable of the city’s residents take priority over a sporting event?
When the party's over and the guests have gone home, what will be Vancouver’s Olympic legacy?
Link
I'm well versed in the sob stories of the Downtown Eastside. Friends visiting from out of town routinely comment that they've never been solicited by so many panhandlers and are alarmed to see such a dense population of homeless people just blocks away from a neighborhood that sells doggy couture and C$100 square watermelons imported from Japan (that would be Yaletown, if you're planning to visit). It's a disparity of lifestyles that Vancouverites have grown accustomed to.
But the Winter Games makes that disparity more apparent.
Just last month, B.C. lawmakers passed a controversial bill allowing police officers to force homeless people into shelters during extreme winter weather—i.e., weather that coincides with the Olympics—though they can't make them stay. (Leaked documents revealed earlier considerations to even jail the homeless if accommodations could not be found, though this idea was eventually scrapped.)
Hardly a phenomenon, this is probably the Olympics' most sordid tradition: History has shown host cities to sweep undesirables under the rug just before the torch passes through town. Police in Atlanta, for example, reportedly arrested 9,000 people for panhandling and loitering in the year before the 1996 Summer Games—four times more than in preceding years—and gave homeless people free one-way bus tickets out of the city.
But police here in Vancouver insist there is no street sweep timed before the Olympics. "What we're doing is…increasing our visibility in the Downtown Eastside," said VPD spokeswoman Const. Jana McGuinness. "Everything we're doing now, we'll be doing after the Olympics as well."
I love Vancouver, appreciate the nature of sport and competition on a global scale, and certainly acknowledge the sense of national pride that comes parading in with the five-ringed circus. But winning the Games looks like it will be a pyrrhic victory, its losses sure to outnumber its gains. The situation of the Downtown Eastside was critical years before winning the bid, and in attempts to prepare for the world stage, it has only worsened.
According to a 2007 report by the United Nations Population Fund, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside "is home to a hepatitis C (HCV) rate of just below 70 per cent and an HIV prevalence rate of an estimated 30 per cent—the same as Botswana's." A 2008 survey of the neighborhood, by the City of Vancouver, found that 52 percent of the residents said they used drugs, with 28 percent using frequently.
The Olympic bill has already topped C$6 billion. The cost for security alone—about C$1 billion—could build 5,000 homes, or replace every residential hotel room in the Downtown Eastside with self-contained homes, according to Wendy Pederson, researcher at the Carnegie Community Action Project. Our city is severely lacking in the resources needed to fix the problems associated with the Downtown Eastside; shouldn't the most vulnerable of the city’s residents take priority over a sporting event?
When the party's over and the guests have gone home, what will be Vancouver’s Olympic legacy?
Link
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