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.
housing
What lies ahead for 58 and the people of the Downtown Eastside? If history has been any lesson, the vision of 58 West Hastings was born and fought for in the streets. Its future cannot be won otherwise.
Now that tenants’ demands have reached Vancouver City Hall with Councillor Swanson’s motion, Protecting Tenants from Renovictions and Aggressive Buy-Outs, corporate real estate interests will do their best to sway city politicians against strengthening rent control.
It’s the end of “Gregor’s decade.” Are we standing at the possible threshold of a new era in Vancouver municipal politics? Mainlander Editor Andrei Mihailiuk sits down with COPE Council candidate Anne Roberts to talk ward systems, movement journalism and how the Coalition of Progressive Electors has evolved.