This piece takes a critical look at the nonprofit housing landscape in Vancouver, where a small number of nonprofit housing organizations – among them PHS and Atira – receive the lion’s share of public funding and other resources to provide housing for people living with low incomes.
Category Archive: Downtown Eastside
On July 19, the City of Vancouver issued an email letter to Vancouver Coastal Health declaring the lease for Thomus Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site (OPS) in Yaletown will not be renewed in 2024 – only three years after it opened. The decision was praised by ABC Councillor Peter Meiszner, who in the weeks prior had adopted the campaign to shut down the OPS as his personal cause célèbre.
As filmmaker Ryan Sudds states, the documentary “encourages people to take a critical approach to the City of Vancouver’s work, and not believe Mayor Ken Sim when he says that they’re taking a ‘compassionate’ approach to encampments and homelessness.”
The daily seizure and destruction of belongings is part of the systematic decimation of encampments. This violence has happened in cities far and near, including Vancouver and Prince George, but also Toronto, Victoria, Nanaimo, Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Los Angeles, Boston and many others. Cities aim to “invisiblize” unhoused people rather than create more livable housing.