2018 COPE Vancouver City Council must-elect candidate Jean Swanson (middle), at City Hall
At 58 West Hastings, across the street from the Army & Navy, there exists in relation to that property, a tale of treachery and political malfeasance, the likes of which our town has rarely witnessed in its 132-year history.
An unconscionable transgressive act of deceit, civic malpractice and faithlessness, as demonstrated by our current Vision Vancouver civic administration, upon vulnerable persons resident in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood, an unconscionable failure to act in good faith, continues to deny some of our city’s most vulnerable and needful residents of what they most desire, and which most every person reading VanRamblings today takes for granted, as a human right: a home.
Yesterday morning, activists, journalists and persons of conscience Nathan Crompton, Steffanie Ling and Caitlin Shane published an expansive chronicle on the sorry history of 58 West Hastings, in a story titled Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018.
Today, I have linked above to The Mainlander story, a chronicle that is a must-and-a-compelling read, constituting VanRamblings’ post for the day.
Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018 commences with the following paragraph (with excerpted paragraphs from further down in the article, immediately following) …
For years, an empty lot at 58 West Hastings has been at the centre of a fight for social housing in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). Since 2007, it has been the site of numerous actions including the 2010 Olympic Tent Village, when women- and Indigenous-led tent city forced Concord Pacific to abandon its condo plans for the site, followed by a four-month tent city in the summer of 2016.
By early 2017, the 250 units promised by the mayor were reduced to a meagre 77 units — 33% of the overall project. Amidst a sea of condos, less than one hundred welfare- and pension-rate rental units are now planned for 58 West Hastings according to the City’s latest documents. These units will not be built until 2021 at the earliest.
The City’s lies and inaction on 58 W. Hastings will claim the lives of hundreds unless Mayor Robertson’s promise is followed through. We, the poor and the homeless of the Downtown Eastside will not sit idly as our elected officials deprive us of the housing we need. We are not a statistic; numbers to be counted and shuffled around in the attempt to remake the city for the rich. We will fight for our lives and our right to live with dignity. There will be no business as usual at City Hall unless our demands are met.
We in Vancouver do not live in a consequence free universe, and neither do the political figures who have controlled civic government in Vancouver these past many years.
Arising from the despair many of those who call the DTES home have felt over many, many years of frustratingly heartless government at all three levels of civic, provincial and national governance, a palpable movement for change, and change now, has arisen, an activist movement the likes of which many of us who have called Vancouver home for the past sixty and more years have not seen since the pre-and-unrealized-revolutionary days of the New Left, and the work of activists in the 1960s and 1970s.
The central tenets of the 2018 Vancouver civic election is the realization extant of the movement of change, in a call for The City We Need.
Coalition of Progressive Electors 2018 Vancouver City Council candidates Jean Swanson, Anne Roberts and Derrick O’Keefe, the Green Party of Vancouver’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, and OneCity Vancouver City Council candidates Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle are committed to building The City We Need, an inclusive city, a fair and socially just city, a city for all of us and not the resort city our previous provincial government — and, perhaps even, a Vision Vancouver civic administration holding power at Vancouver City Hall this past 10 years — seemed intent on building, barring many of our citizens from realizing their most cherished hope of a living in a home in the city where they have resided all their lives.
Make no mistake: change is on the way this civic election season!
As I say above, Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation, 2016-2018 is a compelling, must-read for all Vancouver citizens.
