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Vancouver
World’s best city?
So long as you have a home, a job, and aren’t Native, sure, it’s a great place
By Reed Eurchuk
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Ethnic cleansing in Vancouver?
According to a report put out by the Greater Vancouver Regional District entitled “A Profile of Aboriginal People, First Nations and Indian Reserves in Greater Vancouver,” Vancouver lost 4.7% of its Native population, or 520 people out of a total Aboriginal population of 10,965, between 1996 and 2001. 2001 was when the housing prices, which had been rising consistently but slowly, exploded, going through the roof. At that same time the social safety net, feeble at best, came under concerted attack by the provincial government. While it is too early to say for sure that figures from 2001 signal a longer term trend, one thing is certain: the statistic was no accident. The Greater Vancouver region showed an absolute growth in the Native population of 18.4% (5,714 people). All the major suburban areas registered big gains in Native population at the same time as Vancouver’s decreased. Surrey’s First Nations population grew by over 1,800 people, or 36.1% as Vancouver’s decreased. Langley Township, Pitt Meadows and Delta all saw their Native populations grow by more than 60%. And remember all this occurred prior to the outrageous rises in housing costs over the last six years. Watch for the 2008 release by StatsCan of statistics for the 2006 mini-census, which will hopefully shine a light on whether this was an anomaly or a trend.
I’d guess it is part of an ongoing trend. Already the outlying areas are receiving a greater portion of the refugees. The homogenization of Vancouver continues apace, even as the town’s endless boosters sing praises of Vancouver’s diversity. Diversity? Yes, we have yuppies flocking here from Toronto, Calgary, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Iran. Yes, there is ethnic diversity in the new resort city of Vancouver, but these people share more in common demographically in terms of income, family make-up, age range, and educational background. It’s the fake diversity of the United Colors of Benetton‚ multi-ethnic sweater ads.
Uncivil City: Do homeless people have the right to the city?
The Republic is fortunate to have Tavis Dodds reporting on homelessness. He covers the experience and politics of homelessness with insight. His article in the last issue, “Fighting for the Right to Sleep,” focuses on the spot where homelessness, citizenship and the city intersect.
Homelessness offends so many of the ideas that underpin our society. The homeless are people who live their whole life publicly in a society that constantly emphasizes the distinction between private and public, often stigmatizing the latter. The homeless live their lives in public spaces, within a society that tirelessly protects the rights of private property. The homeless give lie to our self-conception as a compassionate relatively egalitarian society. As cities have forfeited more and more of their own public spaces to private security management, usually under the auspices of local Business Improvement Associations, the homeless remind us of this loss by residing and going about their daily business in the quasi-privatized urban landscape of consumption‚ stage-managed by private security guards.
Victoria joins the dozens of municipalities across North America who, over the last 20 years, have attempted to place legal constrictions barring homeless people from fulfilling necessities required to sustain their lives, such as sleeping, panhandling, attending to necessary hygiene, and accessing food and water. Cities across North America have enacted laws against camping or sleeping in public, against begging, loitering, urinating, defecating, being disorderly‚ begging near automatic teller machines, and sitting on the sidewalk. Aggressive panhandling laws, such as Washington DC’s that prohibits “approaching, speaking to or following in a way that would cause an ordinary person to fear bodily harm” are common in many cities, including Vancouver. But as Don Mitchell writes in The Right To The City, “Assault, of course, is already against the law, as is threatening harm. This law criminalizes not assault or threat-making but rather making someone feel uncomfortable.”
Mitchell argues that, “No matter how appalling it might be to argue and struggle in favour of the right to sleep on the streets or urinate in an alley, it is even more appalling, given the current ruthless rate at which homelessness is produced, to argue that homeless people should not have that right. That is, to the degree that we deny homeless people the right to sleep on sidewalks, we reinforce the right of the housed never to have to see the results of the society they are (at least partially) culpable in making. By denying the right to sleep, defecate, eat or relax somewhere contemporary anti-homeless laws predicated as they are on the rights of property simply deny homeless people the right to be at all.”
To paraphrase legal scholar Jeremy Waldron, we live in a society that is willing to tolerate large numbers of homeless. Accepting this fact, writes Waldron, “the question that remains is whether we are willing to allow those who are in this predicament to act as free agents, looking after their own needs, in public places—the only space available to them.” And as Waldron writes, the “frightening fact” is that while as a society we accept a large population of homeless, we will not allow them the freedom to provide for themselves and take care of the necessities of life. According to Mitchell municipal governments across North America have used the homelessness crisis to construct “a truly brutal public sphere.” “Anti-homeless laws reflect a changing conception of citizenship which now seeks to reestablish exclusionary citizenship as just and good.” As Waldron writes, “though we say there is nothing dignified about sleeping or urinating, there is certainly something inherently undignified by being prevented from doing so. Every torturer knows this: to break the human spirit, focus the mind of the victim through petty restrictions pitilessly imposed on the banal necessities of life.”
There was a court decision in Victoria recently related to the legal case Dodds wrote about in the last issue. BC Supreme Court Justice Robert Johnston refused to grant the city of Victoria a permanent injunction allowing it to stop camping in public parks. The judge stated that “It is not just, not convenient and not appropriate that a permanent injunction be granted at this time,” possibly an allusion to an upcoming trial set to begin September 4 in which a number of homeless people have brought a lawsuit against Victoria’s bylaws prohibiting sleeping in city parks. That is a crucial court case, watch for it.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
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problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
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