By Jason Ramsey,  April 16, 2023

There are few things politicians and business leaders love more than the idea of ‘change,’ ‘innovation,’ or ‘Progress.’ Vancouver’s new mayor Ken Sim is no exception. Not only is he the first person of color to hold the office, but he and his ABC Party campaigned on shaking things up at City Hall. I suppose it paid off. Sim was carried to victory by the business community, real estate developers, and middle-class property owners increasingly concerned that “Vancouver is Dying”[1] from the effects of addiction and lawlessness. Even Vancouver’s Police Union decided to endorse Sim, “breaking a tradition of staying out of municipal politics.”[2] “Big changes are coming to Vancouver City Hall,” wrote Kenneth Chan in an October 2022 Op-Ed to mark ABC’s decisive takeover.[3] Among the most notable changes, Sim promised a new, definitive solution to the crises of homelessness and overdoses. For those who bought into the rhetoric, it surely felt like Vancouver was about to turn a corner.

But to anyone acquainted with local history, what soon followed was more of the same. On Wednesday April 5, 2023 the City undertook another brutal ‘decampment’ of unhoused residents in the Downtown Eastside. Like countless times before, resources were put towards policing, criminalization, and destruction instead of what would actually effect change, like safe supply and secure housing. Backed by officers on the ground and snipers on rooftops, City workers trashed tent after tent on Hastings St. between Main and Carrall, forcing people to pack their things into plastic bins and leave the block. By nightfall, Sim put out a press release stating that a grand total of 8 people had “requested shelter” – an odd way of saying “relented in the face of state violence.”[4]

Even so, most refused. Within hours, tents started popping back up across the neighborhood.[5] Deliveries of food and clothing streamed in. Vancouverites, unhoused and housed, were fighting back. After news of the decampment leaked days prior, mutual aid networks sprung into high gear. And while Mayor Sim hoped his shock-and-awe campaign would be over in a day, it has now been going on for a week and a half. According to details of their plan that leaked on April 11, it seemed the City realized this could become drawn out. In it, they admitted it “May take several weeks or longer to re-set behavior (i.e. no structures on sidewalks).”[6]

Re-set behavior. How does the City view its unhoused citizens? More importantly, if it is a question of breaking habits, why don’t we begin with the powerholders of so-called Vancouver? Because for all their talk of change, they have achieved little more than to continue an old and shameful pastime. If we restrict ourselves to the last 10 years alone, we’ll see that the same deadly cocktail [7] of police violence and bureaucratic indifference has resulted in 10 forced decampments, even as the housing crisis worsened and the numbers of unhoused residents grew:

 

September 2014          Oppenheimer Park

November 2016          54 W. Hastings St.

November 2016          Thornton Park

June 2017                    950 Main St.

November 2017          1131 Franklin St.

May 2020                    Oppenheimer Park

June 2020                    CRAB Park

April 2021                   Strathcona Park

August 2022                Hastings St. between Main and Carrall

April 2023                   Hastings St. between Main and Carrall

 

About a week into the offensive, a reporter asked Sim how he saw the situation. He had this to say: “Well, there's so many different ways of looking at it. Have we made progress? Absolutely.”[8] Yet when asked to comment on the City manager’s admission that there weren’t enough shelter spaces for all, Sim responded: “I don't want to speak for the city manager, but the way I interpreted it was that if everyone requested it, it could be challenging.”[9] 

Understand what this means. The mayor is openly admitting that, for the 10th time in 10 years, Vancouver is banishing people from their tents without anywhere to put them all. So: Have we made progress? Absolutely not.

As much as they like to tout themselves as powerful changemakers, politicians remain captive to the interests of capital and its endless cycles of accumulation and disposal. And it is time that more people focused on their behavior in this light.

So how’s this for a start?: It is certainly true that, rather than recognize capitalism and settler colonialism as the root causes of suffering on the Downtown Eastside, some commentators like to deflect focus onto those who suffer. For instance, they often blame the crisis on “mental health.” But what do you call it when a person – or a City government – does the same thing over and over while expecting a different result? Or they blame it on drug addiction. But could we not say that the mindless dependence on police & prisons to manage social suffering is one of the most damaging addictions there are?

If it is actual change we want, then it is the behavior of the powerful that require ‘re-setting.’ And that wont happen until the very system that imprisons them – and us – is undone. In the meantime, we will keep supporting one another in the struggle.

 

[1] Gunn, Aaron. “Vancouver is Dying” Oct 5, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT8OU8Yhs_s Accessed Apr 13, 2023

[2] Kulkarni, Akshay. “Vancouver Police Union breaks with tradition and endorses ABC Vancouver for municipal election.” Oct 5, 2022 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-police-union-endorsement-1.6607093 Accessed Apr 13, 2023

[3] Chan, Kenneth. “Opinion: Big changes are coming to Vancouver City Hall” Oct 20, 2022 https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/abc-vancouver-city-hall-changes-council-park-board-ken-sim Accessed Apr 13, 2023

[4]City of Vancouver. Apr 5, 2023.  https://twitter.com/KenSimCity/status/1643794981000454146?s=20

[5] Howell, Mike. “What the East Hastings encampment looks like — one week later.” Apr 12, 2023. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/what-the-east-hastings-encampment-looks-like-one-week-later-6845246

[6] https://twitter.com/AndreaWoo/status/1645855081827540992?s=20

[7] Pieters, Kelsea. “Study Shows Involuntary Displacement of People Experiencing Homelessness May Cause Significant Spikes in Mortality, Overdoses and Hospitalizations.” Apr 10, 2023. https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/study-shows-involuntary-displacement-of-people-experiencing-homelessness-may-cause-significant-spikes-in-mortality-overdoses-and-hospitalizations

[8] Howell, Mike. “What the East Hastings encampment looks like — one week later.” Apr 12, 2023. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/what-the-east-hastings-encampment-looks-like-one-week-later-6845246

[9] Ibid.