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Week 40 28 29 30
Friday, 05. September 2008
Further Readings PDF Print E-mail


1. Disappearing Homes

Nearly half of the privately owned residential hotel rooms in Downtown Eastside are closed, in grave danger of being closed, or unavailable to people on welfare because their rents are too high

2. Provincial Study Shows Housing Street Homeless Saves at Least $33 mil/year

Every homeless person costs system $55,000, an amount that could buy supported housing for each of them.

3. Everything You Need to Know about Stands for Housing

Read the website for Little Mountain Social Housing, the project being demolished by BC Housing to be replaced with 2000 condos to pay for the replacement units…meanwhile the community is displaced. Stands for Housing started at Little Mountain and continue weekly. In May 2008, 80 street corner stands happened around the Province calling for a new social housing program.

4. Dave Eby’s Blog on Housing and Homelessness

Very easy to read and always up to date, Dave Eby of PIVOT Legal Society has his ear to the ground. Read by reporters and activists regularly. Sign up for his bulletins and you will get his short articles hot off the press.

5. The Tyee’s Homelessness Series

Monte Paulsen is one of Vancouver’s best researchers and reporters on the homelessness crisis. This list of google articles are very well researched and recommended to read.

6. The Homeless Action Plan

The City of Vancouver passed this plan in 2005 that calls for 800 new homes to be built in Vancouver a year for 10 years to end the homelessness crisis. The City needs to do more than just write plans. They need to buy sites for social and supportive housing...

7. The Downtown Eastside Housing Plan

Another report in danger of going to “report heaven”. There are a number of policies in it not being acted upon. For example, it says at least 17 times that new development in the DTES should be affordable and affordable rental. Instead we see the march of condo towers. Learn more about the advocacy to implement this housing plan here.

8. Olympic Housing Promises

This is a report of the ICI Olympic Housing Table Recommendations to the 4 Olympic partners (3 governments and VANOC) as to how to minimize the impact of the games on inner city residents. Unanimously voted for by the Downtown Eastside Residents Association and the Urban Development Institute and everyone else in between, many of the Citywide Housing Coalition actions in 2007 were designed to push this report. Read here to learn more about the results of our actions.

9. Joint Partner Response to Olympic Housing Promises

The 4 Olympic partners responded to the ICI Olympic Housing Table Recommendations by saying yes, they agree, ending homelessness should be the legacy of the games, but funding is questionable.

10. The Poverty Olympics

Raise the Rates Coalition held the 1st Annual Poverty Olympics in Feb 2008. Read their websites for everything you need to know about how current welfare policies are one of the biggest causes, along with lack of social housing, of the housing and homelessness crisis. Click on the Poverty Olympics link above to see great pictures from their amazing creative event.


11. Homelessness a cause, not a result of drug abuse

This may offer some perspective to BC Premier and Housing Minister’s task force on addictions, mental health and homelessness. This report from an Australian University shatters two key myths: that substance abuse and mental illness are the major reasons why people become homeless. It says that substance use and mental illness are actually the effect of becoming homeless for the majority of their city's homeless.

12. United Nations on the Canadian Housing and Homelessness Crisis

This document includes some preliminary (and damning) observations of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing, Miloon Kothari, at the end of his visit to Canada and is not an official document. The final report on this visit will be presented to the Human Rights Council.

13. Multi-year Billion Dollar Government Surpluses

Very useful graph showing how easy it is to end homelessness. Scroll down to the end of the page to see comparison between federal and provincial budget surpluses, the cost of raising welfare and ending the barriers and claw-backs contribute to homelessness, to Vancouver 2010 Olympic spending.
 
By MIP