End the evictions, empower the people.
Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish territories
The housing crisis has never been worse in Vancouver – the year 2014 marks the largest homeless population ever recorded in the our city’s history.
“The Bird Sanctuary” is the name tenants have for the third floor room of the Clifton Hotel where an unsealed window opens the way to roosting pigeons.
This is just one of the many maintenance issues left unchecked at the Granville Street building.
Now, all forty tenants of the Clifton hotel have received eviction notices from the landlord, requesting vacant possession of the units for renovations. The tenants are fighting the notice with a joint dispute resolution application to the Residential Tenancy Branch.
Colonization is not only a past historical process of domination violently imposed on Indigenous people; it’s a political and economic structure that continues to oppress and control their lives, despite official state apologies and strategies of cultural recognition. Decolonization signals a process of departure from colonial ways, but what does it mean and what might it entail for both Indigenous people and settlers? What obligations does it place upon all of us to change our ways of thinking and living together? This community forum will open up space for probing these crucial issues.
