Latest news with #DowntownEastside
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Cooling bus run by former CRAB Park residents providing heat relief in Downtown Eastside
A cooling bus run by former residents of the CRAB Park encampment is taking to the streets of Vancouver this summer, stopping in parks and streets around the Downtown Eastside to provide people with relief from the heat. The community initiative offers cold water, snacks, hot weather gear and harm reduction supplies on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Organizers say they're aiming to fill a service gap amid funding cuts to some other support services in the area and a daytime camping ban that means unhoused people aren't allowed to set up shelters during the hottest hours of the summer. The initiative is staffed by a team of about 35 people, many of them former residents of the CRAB Park encampment, which the city closed down last November. One of those former residents, Larry Cocksedge, said running the cooling bus feels like a way to give back to a community that has helped him out many times. "Not everybody gets to eat every day, and if we can provide them a snack and a water or a freezie, or something to help them cool down, it's just amazing," he told CBC's On The Coast host Gloria Macarenko. Fiona York, a housing advocate who spearheaded the bus idea, said staff are trained in overdose prevention and can offer expertise that people who aren't a part of the community can't. For instance, she said, they know what areas of the neighbourhood to go to to reach people who are the most in need, or who can't get to physical cooling centres or support services themselves. York said they have cold water, ice packs, cool towels and electrolytes. She said with rising temperatures this week, there is an especially high need for help. WATCH | Community-run cooling bus helping DTES residents to beat the heat: The City of Vancouver said it's provided more than 6,200 cooling kits to local organizations over the last three years. In an email to CBC News, a city spokesperson said some cooling centres extend their hours during extreme weather conditions, and that the centres are free for everyone. An online city map shows the locations of spray parks, misting stations and cooling centres. For those running the cooling bus, it's about helping out their neighbours. "The system has failed a lot of people," peer mentor Natasha Shingoose said. "But instead of turning away, we're coming together as a community to show up for one another." York said they are fundraising and hoping to run a warming bus come winter.
CBC
6 days ago
- Climate
- CBC
Cooling bus run by former CRAB Park residents providing heat relief in Downtown Eastside
Social Sharing A cooling bus run by former residents of the CRAB Park encampment is taking to the streets of Vancouver this summer, stopping in parks and streets around the Downtown Eastside to provide people with relief from the heat. The community initiative offers cold water, snacks, hot weather gear and harm reduction supplies on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Organizers say they're aiming to fill a service gap amid funding cuts to some other support services in the area and a daytime camping ban that means unhoused people aren't allowed to set up shelters during the hottest hours of the summer. The initiative is staffed by a team of about 35 people, many of them former residents of the CRAB Park encampment, which the city closed down last November. One of those former residents, Larry Cocksedge, said running the cooling bus feels like a way to give back to a community that has helped him out many times. "Not everybody gets to eat every day, and if we can provide them a snack and a water or a freezie, or something to help them cool down, it's just amazing," he told CBC's On The Coast host Gloria Macarenko. Fiona York, a housing advocate who spearheaded the bus idea, said staff are trained in overdose prevention and can offer expertise that people who aren't a part of the community can't. For instance, she said, they know what areas of the neighbourhood to go to to reach people who are the most in need, or who can't get to physical cooling centres or support services themselves. York said they have cold water, ice packs, cool towels and electrolytes. She said with rising temperatures this week, there is an especially high need for help. WATCH | Community-run cooling bus helping DTES residents to beat the heat: Cooling bus offers water, resources for Downtown Eastside residents 11 hours ago Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside have a new resource to help them beat the heat this summer. It's described as a cooling bus, part of a grassroots initiative offering people bottled water and other supplies as temperatures soar. Amelia John went along for a ride. The City of Vancouver said it's provided more than 6,200 cooling kits to local organizations over the last three years. In an email to CBC News, a city spokesperson said some cooling centres extend their hours during extreme weather conditions, and that the centres are free for everyone. An online city map shows the locations of spray parks, misting stations and cooling centres. For those running the cooling bus, it's about helping out their neighbours. "The system has failed a lot of people," peer mentor Natasha Shingoose said. "But instead of turning away, we're coming together as a community to show up for one another."
CBC
6 days ago
- Climate
- CBC
Cooling bus offers water, resources for Downtown Eastside residents
Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside have a new resource to help them beat the heat this summer. It's described as a cooling bus, part of a grassroots initiative offering people bottled water and other supplies as temperatures soar. Amelia John went along for a ride.
CTV News
6 days ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Former CRAB Park encampment residents launch ‘cooling bus' to support Downtown Eastside
A woman accepts a bottle of water being handed out by people operating a "cooling bus" on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. As hot weather descends on the city, former residents of a Vancouver encampment are operating what they call a cooling bus to provide water and other supplies to people on the Downtown Eastside, as they label a Vancouver policy banning daytime camping as cruel. Kiana McDermott is one of the people who used to call CRAB Park home, and is one of the people now helping to operate the bus. They're handing out cold drinks, snacks and harm reduction supplies to people, many of whom live in poverty or are homeless. 'It gives me purpose and stuff,' McDermott said of what she gets out of helping others after improving her own personal situation. 'I've needed help before, and there've been people out there that have had the compassion that have helped me, and I feel that's like helped me progress in my life. I'm no longer in the position I once was.' People CTV News spoke with on the Downtown Eastside shared their appreciation for those operating the bus. 'It's a good thing, right? Because people need more access to stuff like this, especially during the heat,' one man told CTV News while waiting in line for a bottle of water and some granola bars. The bus operators describe Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim's policies as cruel – specifically decisions to shut down various encampments and to crack down on enforcing a ban on daytime sheltering in parks. But Sim and his office maintain the tent cities were dangerous – sharing pictures of seized propane tanks. 'That situation was incredibly unsafe,' Sim told reporters on Wednesday when asked about tent cities. 'We had butane tanks exploding, there were weapon caches there, guns, knives, crossbows, it was an untenable situation… our team spent eight months literally going one by one to every individual out there to make sure that they had the supports in place, finding them suitable shelter space what have you,' he said. This all comes amid a legal challenge by the BC Civil Liberties Association that argues banning people from setting up tents in public spaces areas during the day violates their Charter rights.
Vancouver Sun
6 days ago
- Politics
- Vancouver Sun
Sam Sullivan: Ending Vancouver's Downtown Eastside experiment
For 52 years, the City of Vancouver has facilitated a social experiment called the Downtown Eastside. The city shut down the most important kind of affordable housing, rental bedrooms in single-family neighbourhoods, leaving the main affordable option decrepit rooms in old, mostly empty buildings in the oldest part of the city. Moving people from dispersed housing in healthy neighbourhoods and concentrating them into inner-city substandard rooms was risky. Vancouver's first chief planner, Gerald Sutton Brown, had opposed efforts to concentrate people. Under his watch, 'rooming house' accommodations were available in every neighbourhood. The results are in, and they are disastrous. It's time to end the experiment. A daily roundup of Opinion pieces from the Sun and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Informed Opinion will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. In 1973, the Vancouver city legal department incorporated an organization called the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA). The public had never heard this name; it was a creation of city hall. DERA was created to manage a federal grant of 10 advocates for the newly named neighbourhood so these staff members could be moved off the city payroll. At the same time, city hall began shutting down hundreds of 'rooming houses' throughout the city, including in Shaughnessy, which had many of the affordable rooms. The people involved with the grant were motivated by counterculture ideologies opposed to free market principles. They wanted to prevent the natural processes of 'gentrification' from revitalizing the area. They wanted a community that could showcase alternative ideals. In March of that same year, city council committed to restricting population growth in Vancouver and redirecting it to the suburbs. Central planning, not market forces, would decide on growth even though it was widely understood that this would cause house prices to rise. Today, our single-family neighbourhoods have fewer people than in 1973. Thousands of small bungalows were demolished and replaced with large houses with more bedrooms and fewer people. A tragic misallocation of resources. For the first time, homeless people appeared on our streets. The first informal homeless counts in the 1990s revealed that most were on the street because their rooming-house accommodations in residential neighbourhoods had been shut down. In the new DTES, the natural processes that stabilize communities broke down as the concentration of vulnerable people increased. The worse things got, the more governments poured housing and services into the area. And the worse things got. A downward spiral. Research shows that most residents of the DTES came from communities throughout B.C. and Canada where they first experienced personal challenges. They were drawn or pushed toward Vancouver's new city-created neighbourhood. But despite the significant free housing and services, conditions of many worsened after they arrived: more emergency-room visits, more illness, more addiction, more arrests, more survival prostitution and more deaths. Studies reveal that most residents don't want to live in the DTES. The majority say they want to live in dispersed independent housing — like the kind they had been pushed out of — not special congregate housing. For those that succeed in moving away into healthy supportive relationships, the results are dramatic. Interactions with the justice system and the health system drop significantly. Switzerland once had the largest open drug scenes in Europe. They shut them down and ended their overdose crisis. When I asked one Swiss expert the optimal number of addicted people to live in one building, he answered: 'Absolutely no more than one per building. Any more than that and you are asking for trouble.' The DTES is a harm production policy, harming not only low-income people, but B.C. as a whole. Despite government rhetoric about reducing stigmatization, government policies are stigmatizing vulnerable people by incentivizing them to live in one area. The City of Vancouver has an opportunity to repeal its stigma zoning through its current DTES plan update process. The Global Civic think-tank has a five-point plan to end the DTES and return it the healthy neighbourhood it once was. First, governments must commit to never again concentrating low-income people. Next, help the residents who don't want to live there to move individually to where they want to live, with supportive relationships. Most importantly, we need to change government policies to enable employment, make tenants safer and housing more affordable for those with addictions. Every day, I watch fresh-faced, nicely dressed young people arrive in the DTES to begin their slow descent into tragedy. How has this become acceptable in Vancouver? Vancouver must end this cruel experiment called the Downtown Eastside and become once again like most normal cities in the world. Join our campaign. Sam Sullivan, a former Vancouver mayor and B.C. MLA, is founder of the Global Civic Policy Society.
