While Canada Celebrates, Activists Keep Attention On Vancouver's Homeless

As another gold medal rose off the stick of Sidney Crosby in Team Canada's 3-2 overtime win over Team USA in Men's Hockey, the nation of Canada celebrated a gold medal that they had been favored to win since the Winter Games began. Many in Vancouver, however, were not watching the game, but trying to keep attention on Canada's unseen residents: the homeless.

The New York Daily News profiles Harsha Walia, a community organizer who spent much of the last two weeks handing out food to Vancouver's homeless residents.

From the NY Daily News:

"Does it look like people care here?" Walia said. "People here have way bigger issues than hockey games."

The scene was much the same in the "Olympic Tent City," an organized effort to keep attention on Vancouver's underprivileged, while the rest of the city was intent on celebration.

Because of its diversity, there was considerably more awareness and antipathy demonstrated toward the Olympic spectacle from the beginning, particularly on the impoverished East Side. Tent City became the symbolic center of protests, and a very visible indication along the main bus routes that not all was right in the city. Banners and lean-tos consumed this vacant lot. Native Canadians, some of the poorest residents here, gathered daily for food and found impromptu shelter. Most walked. A few arrived on bicycles.

Another organizer, Frank Harris, seemed disappointed that Canada won so many gold medals. He argues that the Olympics are a big distraction to keep people from thinking about the poverty problems that persist in British Columbia. Every time the nation won another gold medal, he says, their cause was hampered.

Despite the games, hundreds of homeless people slept in the Vancouver tent city during the games and many spectators couldn't help but watch.

Harris pointed out the Daily News the most staggering of statistics. It cost the city of Vancouver $8 billion dollars to house the Olympics. It would only take $1 billion to permanently house Vancouver's homeless.

Comments

[DannyGee]

08:13 PM on 03/03/2010

vancouver spends 1 billion on homes for the homeless and the next week they have about 10K more homeless.

[RedWhiteandBlueDude]

07:48 PM on 03/03/2010

What a ridiculous way to frame the issue of homelessness. "while Canada celebrates" As if Canada doesn't get blown away by other countries that have held Olympics in terms of homelessness and poverty. Now poverty is a Canadian problem? This dichotomy has existed in every Olympics since the beginning of the Olympics it didnt start with Vancouver. Certainly homelessness is a problem, certainly it needs solving, but unless the people pointing fingers are 100% pure and never spend a luxury dime, I don't want to hear about the expense of the Olympics. Every time you take that 10 bucks to the movie theater just remember your screeching about priorities and realize that 10 bucks could just as easily be given to the red cross. One thing does not preclude the other. Homelessness is a systemic problem that doesn't get solved by not holding festivals and social gatherings.

[LatteLiberals]

07:48 PM on 03/03/2010

Canadians are too caught up in the Maple Leaf fervor to give a hockey puck about the homeless. The Olympics were about gold medals and investments for Vancouver, not about improving the lives of citizens.

I

[nexxtep54]

07:52 PM on 03/03/2010

The US is too wrapped up in world domination to give their homeless veterans a place to live. You are a stoopid person. . . . and we won the golds. Suck it up, princess.

[LatteLiberals]

08:18 PM on 03/03/2010

A Canadian right winger. When all else fails name call. No self reflection necessary.

Ignoring the homeless in Vancouver has nothing to do with you're feelings about the US. The Olympics are not about helping citizens, but "aboot" corporate sponsorship and investments.

If you could put down the Moosehead long enough, you would see that Canada has just sold its sold for 14 cheap pieces of gold, and a dead athlete along the way.

The truth hurts princess.

[Greg Kennedy]

07:47 PM on 03/03/2010

I live in Vancouver and decided to do a pre-Olymoic cleanup of my apartment. So I bagged all my bottles up and decided to take them and give them to the first panhandler I found (didn't take long)...I was astounded when this guy looked up at me and said flat out " I don't do bottles man"...while many of Vancouver's homeless have been victims of hardship, many are lazy, or drug addicted, or lazy, or mentally ill, or LAZY!

[Mark Rushton]

07:43 PM on 03/03/2010

Homelessness is a serious sad problem but I'm sorry AMERICANS lecturing us on the homeless whilst celebrating??? I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over my health benefits!

[nexxtep54]

08:11 PM on 03/03/2010

Agreed, not to mention the millions of homeless orphans their quest for global domination has rendered.

[gfs5541]

07:17 PM on 03/03/2010

So? There's homeless folks here in the states. And it's getting worse everyday.

[KriTiKiT]

06:11 PM on 03/03/2010

salt lake city just gave them bus tickets to vagas, Vagas got mad

[terry63]

05:50 PM on 03/03/2010

GET A JOB !!!

[AnnoyedCanuck]

03:21 PM on 03/03/2010

The problems of the Downtown East Side will be solved by gentrification - if "solved" is the right word. Whether good or bad, this is reality. The oldest part of downtown Vancouver, which has become a warehouse for addicts, crazies and the downtrodden, is rapidly being bought up and developed. The rest of the downtown peninsula is almost completely built up. The only pockets of land available for new development is to the east, along Burrard Inlet and south to Great Northern Way. The marginal people who live there now will eventually be pushed out.

The activists and advocates who want to preserve cheap housing on the DTES are fighting a losing battle with a chronic land shortage, economic growth and their own delusions. It's tough as hell to be poor and either poorly housed or homeless. But the Downtown East Side, marginal as it may be, isn't reserved for anyone to live in. It's part of a dynamic, rapidly changing city, not a protected reserve for the poor.

[monty]

06:03 PM on 03/03/2010

Well said! I totally agree. The "Povertarians" in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver protesting against "gentrification" and calling for more low-income housing and safe injection sites are the same people getting huge amounts of funding from the City of Vancouver. So, it's in their best interest to maintain the status-quo.

The Woodwards development in the DTES is hated by these Povertarians, even though it contains lots of subsidized and low-income housing, because it helps to balance and normalize some of the abject poverty in the ghetto these people want to maintain.

[lawgrlnyc]

03:03 PM on 03/03/2010

I used to volunteer in the Main/Hastings (Pain/Wastings) area of Vancouver and contrary to the protestor's implication that putting homeless residents into homes will make everyone's problems magically disappear is a fantasy. Most of my work was in helping people get benefits, like welfare, that they are entitled to but have a hard time collecting because (a) they don't have an address and (b) they don't have their s**t together enough to apply. Those who will 'get on their feet' or 'turn their lives around' simply by being put into a home is depressingly few. If you've ever seen an episode of 'Intervention' you might understand. The downward spiral of drug use is the biggest problem in the area - but many don't want treatment, and the same people that protest the Olympics also protest the citation, arrest, incarceration and forced treatment of drug users (not that any of those options is likely to have a positive long-term effect). If the Olympics (or any event) were not held until poverty (or pick your problem) is solved then we would never celebrate anything.

There is a tendancy in Vancouver, especially among the comfortably middle class 'activists' to impart upon the residents of the downtown east side a kind of heroism - the humanity! the survival!
I think getting up every morning, going to work and paying your taxes is pretty darned heroic.

[pitako8]

02:39 PM on 03/03/2010

Homelessness, drugs, etc. are universal social problems. The glory of the Olympics can easily contrast the ills of any nation.

Beijing and Salt Lake Olympics had similar problems.
"There was a dust-up between the mayors of Salt Lake City and Las Vegas over the homeless. A few months ago, Oscar B. Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, accused Salt Lake City and Olympic officials of shipping the homeless from Utah to Nevada to clean the streets for the tourists and the news media attending the Games. Atlanta suffered a black eye during the 1996 Summer Games when it rounded up thousands of homeless people and bused them out of town in an operation called Homeward Bound. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/14/sports/olympics-the-streets-loitering-behind-the-clean-streets.html?pagewanted=1

[zona9]

03:38 PM on 03/03/2010

Absurd. Salt Lake doesn't have homeless problem. The 'homeless' in the article are people that went to Salt Lake BECAUSE of the Olympics, looking for work-people who never lived there. Quite different that what wer're tallking about here and not at all what you describe.

[pitako8]

04:36 PM on 03/03/2010

Believe what you want. Homeless people do get nomadic. After all, they don't have a home to tie them down. They will go where think they can either work or squat to get aid.

[Gumby69]

02:39 PM on 03/03/2010

Homelessness is in every city it's a fact of life. That dude was a goof for saying he hated it when a Canadian won a gold.

[gerontion72]

02:25 PM on 03/03/2010

$8 billion for nothing but a 3-week party. What a waste. Could have solved enormous social problems with that money.

Funny how the elites say there is no money in the vault when people ask for better education, health care, or low income housing; but when the Olympics are offered, suddenly billions in public dollars magically appear.

[Monty40]

02:56 PM on 03/03/2010

No. Even $8 billion dollars wouldn't have SOLVED social problems. Issues like homelessness are complex and often intersect with addiction and mental illness . . . this idea that the money spent on the Games (much of it provided by sponsors) could instead have somehow turned the city into a social utopia is ridiculous. And while all residents of the city want to see poverty reduced -- and don't complain about our tax dollars spent endlessly on problems THAT NEVER SEEM TO GET BETTER -- sometimes we too would like to get something for our money. And this 3-week party really fit the bill, lifted spirits, united us, gave us lasting infrastructure and stimulated the economy.

[Klitorisaurus]

01:58 PM on 03/03/2010

At least they have healthcare.

[CrazedSurfer]

02:09 PM on 03/03/2010

Must not included Dental. Dude in the picture needs some work done on his front teeth.

[Welib]

02:44 PM on 03/03/2010

That's called meth mouth.

[klandish]

02:52 PM on 03/03/2010

Actually you need to prove residence i.d. in Canada to receive the health benefits in Canada. Homeless people don't have addresses.

[viewfromuphere]

01:47 PM on 03/03/2010

I've just one... Count'em one senator holding up the extension of unemployment benefits and this paper has the gall to yack about Canadian social issues

Take off...eh!!

[Welib]

02:45 PM on 03/03/2010

Ridiculous! You'd think with all the strife in the country they could write something with more substance.