Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics - Homeless Watch

[beatonthestreet]

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Homeless Watch

In just under a years time the eyes of the World will be watching Vancouver..
As such I am starting a thread here to observe and monitor what this means for homeless people in Vancouver..
Unfortunately as things stand, it is not looking good on the streets of Vancouver. I hope people will add info as the year progresses..

- The Vancouver Police Dept. have promised a crackdown on the poor of the DTES unrivaled in history, focused on illegal street checks to simply harass the poor into submission.
More info here

With the Olympics just a little over a year away, the Vancouver Police Department unveils today (January 21) its draft business plan for 2009, which would see additional cops, more street spot checks, and more bylaw-violation tickets issued in the Downtown Eastside.

- The City of Vancouver has passed a motion calling for Vancouver Charter amendments that could be used to create bylaws that would prevent leafleting or protest signs during the Olympics, and City staff are telling them that the exact wording of the proposed Charter amendments can't be released to the public.
More info here

Although the proposed Charter amendments have been developed in response to issues related to the Games, the amendments will also be useful in developing by-laws for managing future special events. By-laws developed specifically for the Games will serve as templates for future special event by-laws

- Other cities are concerned about an influx of homelessness and other displaced people in light of what they're hearing about Vancouver's clean-up plans in advance of 2010
More info here

Insp. Steve McVarnock, the officer in charge of the Vernon RCMP detachment, worries about "quite an aggressive displacement" by Vancouver police as they 'clean' up the city in advance of the Games

- The RCMP ( Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have been quoted in the Globe and Mail making a demonstrably false suggestion that they are meeting with Olympic protest groups to discuss "protest zones" and "civil liberties"
more info here

"When the world arrives in Vancouver in 2010, what kind of city will they find?" asked Mayor Sam Sullivan in his inaugural address.
They will find a city in which there are more homeless Canadians shuffling in the shadow of BC Place than Olympic athletes parading inside the Vancouver stadium....

I wonder who or what is more important?

[beatonthestreet]

Vancouver-Mt. Pleasant NDP MLA Jenny Kwan has alleged that Vancouver city staff are rousting homeless people in her constituency. She has also claimed that constituents have complained of "selective ticketing" by Vancouver police. Here in a letter Kwan sent today to Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu and members of Vancouver city council:

It has come to my attention that ongoing street sweeps in the Downtown Eastside leading up to the 2010 Olympics are having an increasingly negative impact on low-income people in the Downtown Eastside. Furthermore, the ongoing practices of the City of Vancouver's Engineering Department in enforcing discriminatory bylaws is also causing incredible hardship for people.

The Engineering Department regularly places the belongings of homeless people in to a large steel shipping container usually placed on either Carrall or Columbia Street. They are then hauled away to the city's work yard on National Avenue.........I am asking that Vancouver City Council bring a stop to this alarming policy immediately.

In addition, homeless people have been woken up by Engineering Department staff in the early mornings on storefronts in different neighbourhoods around the city as a means to enforce city bylaws......

[beatonthestreet]

It appears officials are getting more concerned with 'spikes' of growth in other areas than the real matter in hand?

At least two city officials dispute the notion that members of the Vancouver Police Department are forcing the homeless out of that city prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics and into communities like Nanaimo.

On Wednesday, a senior B.C. RCMP officer told Vernon city council that he had concerns about "quite an aggressive displacement" by Vancouver police as they clean up the city in advance of the Games.

Insp. Steve McVarnock, the officer in the charge of the Vernon RCMP detachment, told members of Vernon council other detachments around B.C. are also concerned about homeless or transient criminals moving to their communities.

McVarnock mentioned that police in Nanaimo were already seeing the trend.

Const. Gary O'Brien, spokesman for the Nanaimo RCMP, said that just isn't the case.

John Horn, the city's social planner, said there is no evidence to back up McVarnock's conclusion.

"I haven't heard anything in regards to homeless people being forced from Vancouver and coming over here," said Horn.

While O'Brien said it is not unusual for transient people to move from one municipality to another, the number of homeless people in Nanaimo has remained relatively stable.

"After talking to bylaw officers and our officers on the bike patrol, we are quite confident that we haven't seen a spike in the number of homeless people in Nanaimo," he said.

The Nanaimo officer would not comment directly on McVarnock's statement.

O'Brien also said the Nanaimo RCMP detachment is not "anticipating a spike in the number of homeless people as we get closer to the Olympics."

According to a report on CTV.ca, McVarnock raised the issue before Vernon council because he hopes members of council will approve his request for funding to hire four more police officers.

It has also been claimed in the past that authorities in Vancouver, or social workers, were giving street people bus tickets to move to Nanaimo. No evidence that is true has ever emerged

source

[beatonthestreet]

Poverty Olympics organizer Wendy Pedersen believes the City of Vancouver and the International Olympic Committee will allow the street-theatre event to take place during the Olympic Games in February 2010.

One goal of the event, Pedersen told the Straight, is to internationally embarrass governments into addressing poverty.

“I can’t imagine them cracking down on the Poverty Olympics,” Pedersen said today (February 9) in a phone interview. “It would be like being sucker-punched. I can’t imagine they’d be so heartless, so inhumane. So I’m not going to worry about it, because I don’t believe people would be that mean.”

On February 8, about 500 people gathered at the Japanese Language School in the Downtown Eastside to watch the second annual Poverty Olympics.

A police escort accompanied the “torch relay”, which wound its way through the neighbourhood. It was also accompanied by a small army of media, including the Vancouver Sun, BCIT journalism students, CKNW, and Channel M. The Wall Street Journal will also be covering the event, according to Pedersen.

On January 22, Vancouver city council passed a motion that could restrict citizens’ ability to protest the Olympics on both private and public property. Council approved 16 Vancouver charter amendments, including one that would allow the city to “remove illegal signs from real property with limited notice”.

Pedersen said she doesn’t understand the implications of the motion.

Indeed, B.C. Civil Liberties Association acting executive director David Eby wrote to council before the decision, noting the impact on activism is not defined:

The Olympics have a long history of repressed political dissent, whether considering incidents as recent as Beijing’s notorious “protest zones”; aggressive enforcement of generic copyright phrases and words like “With glowing hearts”, “Winter” or “Gold”; or the dominance of security agendas over social agendas in budgetary and logistical terms.

This context is best illustrated in the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Charter at Rule 51, where the IOC demands limits from host cities on what it calls “advertising, demonstrations, propaganda.” In particular, Rule 51(3) reads unambiguously: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

The Poverty Olympics sells T-shirts with an image of a torch, and the logo of the event is five handcuff rings arranged to look like the Olympic rings.

In other Olympic protests, similar expressions have led to Olympic trademark crackdowns.

“They better let us have the parade,” Pedersen said. “If they do something about us, maybe that will bring more attention. It would be a low blow to low-income people. I think they’re going to have to be open to some attention no matter what they do.”

Funding for the Poverty Olympics comes from Raise the Rates; the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives hosts its Web site; and the Carnegie Community Action Project, which organizes the event, is funded through VanCity and donations from unions and individuals.

Pedersen said the Carnegie Community Action Project is looking for more funding.

[beatonthestreet]

Vancouver police and the city are defending their policy of throwing out homeless people's belongings, after a B.C. Civil Liberties Association member shot footage of city crews dumping a man's possessions into a garbage truck as an onlooker pleaded for them to wait.

The video, shot Feb. 18, shows officials dumping several cardboard boxes while the bystander — the owner's friend — scrambled to save blankets and other items by putting them in his own cart.

The man whose items were tossed would only identify himself as Dennis. He said his things have been thrown out before and that it leaves him feeling bitter.

"Sometimes, if you're not quick enough, it's gone, or if you're not here, if you head out to go to the bathroom or get a coffee, too bad," said Dennis.

video

[Dominic]

VANCOUVER - As predicted, efforts to deal with Vancouver's homeless problem have stepped up ahead of the Winter Games. But contrary to the gravest fears of advocates, new shelters have been opened and concerns that officials would provide one-way tickets out of town or force homeless people off the streets of the Olympic city appear to be urban myth.

"It seems to be a common theme, all of the misfortunes are due to the Olympics,'' said Terry Butcher, director of operations at the New Life Mission in Kamloops. "I haven't heard of a single case where they said that welfare or social services said here's a bus ticket ... but I hear that talk a lot.'' That said, homeless advocates aren't about to let their guard down, especially after Expo 86 in Vancouver when tenants were evicted from low-rent hotels to make room for tourists paying much higher rates.

"The suspicion is that somehow people are going to be displaced,'' said Derek Weiss, a spokesman for the Union Gospel Mission, a shelter located in the heart of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. "We have not seen that happen, and we are hoping that it doesn't happen.'' Yet advocates say provincial legislation giving police the power to take people to shelters against their will could yet pose a threat to those who have nowhere else to go.

Weiss is concerned about the legislation that gives police power to forcibly move homeless people to shelters during extreme weather. The government said the law - known as the Assistance to Shelter Act but nicknamed the "Olympic Kidnapping Act'' by opponents - will not force people to stay in the shelters once they're there. They also deny it has anything to do with the Olympics, saying the law is in response to the case of a homeless woman who died in a fire she lit to keep warm in Vancouver last winter. She had refused to be taken to a shelter.

Laura Track of the non-profit advocacy group Pivot Legal Society believes the legislation is linked to the Olympics and isn't surprised by the timing, just months before the Games begin. "What we have been worried would happen for years has happened,'' Track said. "It's such a common thing that host cities do.'' Maj. Brian Venables, a spokesman for The Salvation Army in B.C., which has about a dozen shelters in the Vancouver area, said he isn't aware of an effort to move the homeless away from Olympic venues.

"Our mandate is not changing during the Olympics,'' Venables said. In fact, he doesn't believe the government would try to shuffle people out of Vancouver during the Games given the millions it has invested in beefing up shelters around the city and province in recent years. For instance, Venables said many Salvation Army shelters have been converted into 24-hour facilities in the past couple of years as a result of government funding.

The government has also provided funding towards new shelters, two of which are opening in the coming days in the Downtown Eastside and the Vancouver suburb of Langley. "That indicates to me that the government is preparing to help as many people as they can, whether the Olympics is happening or not,'' said Venables, who supports the Games, in part because it has brought attention to issues such as homelessness. As for the legislation giving police power to force the homeless into shelters, Venables said it's only during extreme weather conditions.

"It's also for their protection and safety,'' Venables said. "It's not designed to be a clean up so the Olympic officials don't see it. They've already been here, they've already seen it.'' Robert Thomas, president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said while more money for homeless shelters is a good thing, the funding should have come years ago. "Now they are doing some things, but are they the right things? Are they sufficient? ... And are they aimed at trying to get homeless people out of the eyesight of the Olympic guests?'' Thomas said. source

[beatonthestreet]

VANCOUVER - Canadian athletes have benefited since Vancouver won its bid to host the Winter Games, but the homeless have not, says a study measuring the pre-Games impact of the 2010 Olympics.

The study released Friday is the second of four designed by the International Olympic Committee to assess the overall social, economic and environmental impact of the 2010 Winter Games.

The report says that since 2003, when Vancouver won its bid to host the Games, programs such as Own the Podium 2010 to support athletes have improved Canada's medal count in elite amateur athletic competitions.
As well, the number of medals won at Olympic Winter Games by Canadian athletes increased by 41 per cent, to 24 medals in 2006 in Torino from 17 medals in 2002 at Salt Lake City.

While there has been a notable social benefit for Canada's athletes, the report suggests the social plight of Vancouver's homeless remains unchanged.
The construction of new affordable-housing and social-housing units has not kept pace with the number of homeless people, the report says, noting a number of social-housing units are being built while others are simultaneously being lost.

According to the 2008 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, there were at least 2,660 homeless people in the Vancouver area, a 373 per cent increase since 2002.

However, overall, there has been a slight positive impact from the Games so far, said University of B.C. human kinetics professor Rob VanWynsberghe, who led the Olympic Games Impact Pre-Games Report.

“Our approach to (the Olympic Games Impact) is designed to explore whether or not the Games have had an impact on the host, if that impact is positive or negative, and where possible, to determine the size of the impact," said VanWynsberghe.

more @source

so the Rich get richer and..............

[beatonthestreet]

Just four days before the Olympic torch enters British Columbia, Canada, on the homestretch to the opening of the Winter Games on February 12, homeless activists in the host city Vancouver are vowing to tell the world of their poverty-stricken plight.

With the Olympic torch relay currently traveling across Alberta and scheduled to cross into British Columbia on Thursday, homeless advocacy groups on Sunday launched the 2010 Poverty Olympics Torch Relay in downtown Vancouver to raise awareness about the "devastating reality" of poverty and homelessness.

While the three-week relay is symbolic and there is no physical torch or run, the exercise will take in a minimum of 18 cities and towns around British Columbia and return to Vancouver on February 7.

It is estimated there are up to 15,000 homeless in British Columbia, a figure Jean Swanson calls "shameful" for one the country's richest provinces.

Standing in front of the Olympic countdown clock that displays 26 days to go before the opening ceremony, Swanson, coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project, a social advocacy group on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighborhood in the country, said while British Columbia bills itself in advertisements and its license plates as "the best place on Earth", the western province clearly has problems.

She said with British Columbia having the highest poverty rate in Canada for six consecutive years and no poverty reduction strategy, the number of homeless would keep rising if drastic measures were not taken.

"We're hoping the world can shame Canada because it is such a wealthy country. At the same time it has so much poverty and homelessness," she said.

"We're trying to pressure our government and we're hoping other countries will too when they see the situation here."

more @ source