On Dec. 18, Vancouver City Council approved the demolition of the Dunsmuir Hotel, a single-room occupancy building with 167 units at the corner of Dunsmuir and Richards Street. The decision marks yet another feather in the cap of property developer Holborn Properties, with plans for a large-scale residential redevelopment of the site.
Homelessness
We call on the Mayor, Council, and city staff to stop the decampment of Hastings and to instead redirect public resources to creating, maintaining, and preserving the affordability of dignified, non-carceral forms of permanent housing for encampment residents.
This is about context. And in the current context where there is no housing for unhoused people, calls to clean up the streets mean violence – displacement, dispossession, banishment, death.
On January 13th, 2022, the tent city at C.R.A.B. Park beat the Vancouver Parks Board in the B.C. provincial court. Their historic win is precedent-setting. Two General Orders that the Parks Board passed banning overnight sheltering in the park were also nullified. How did we get here? What is the violent history of state repression and the counter-resistance that has led to this monumental victory? And where do we go from here?