Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim has announced a plan to freeze supportive housing development in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). The plan is part of a wider set of policy changes targeting the DTES and spearheaded by Sim’s ABC Vancouver party.
Downtown Eastside
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.
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.