Since we got first involved in the Downtown Eastside Local Area Planning Process (LAPP) in the spring of 2011, low-income community members and groups have been hanging our hopes for broad-sweeping housing policy change on the outcome of the 2013 BC provincial election. The most important part of our participation in that planning work has been our push to prevent a mass displacement and homelessness crisis in the DTES. Throughout the planning process it has been our view that the main tool for preventing this displacement is zoning regulations that stop condo development in at least one sub-area of the Downtown Eastside while slowing it down significantly in other areas of the DTES, in particular the Hastings Corridor and Thornton Park. With zoning protections in place we dream of next-step plans that involve all levels of government:

• The city would buy 50 sites dedicated for social housing at welfare/pension rates needed to replace the 5,000 SRO rooms;

• The province (once the Liberals are gone) would build thousands of social housing governed by the Residential Tenancy Act on those city-owned lots;

• The province (also post-Liberal rule) would change the Residential Tenancy Act to freeze rents and stop renovictions, and;

• The federal government (once the Conservatives are gone) would build thousands of more units of social housing.

 Eldorado Gold holds its annual shareholders’ meeting in Vancouver today, Canadians may ask themselves why the company’s plans to mine gold in northern Greece are meeting such strong resistance from residents and even some local authorities. There are really only two problems: what the company is planning to do, and how it is going about doing it.

Eldorado is planning to build a combination of open-pit and underground gold mines, linked to its existing Stratoni lead-zinc mine. While the company plans to use closed-circuit processing, not open-air heap leaching (as it does in Turkey, where it has caused serious problems), the potential impact on ground water and surface water flows is huge; the mines will also require the destruction of significant areas of forest.