From Vancouver Indymedia:
Sunday October 22, 2006 — At 4:30 (PST) one hundred and fifty housing activists turned out to open a squatted building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside at 5 West Hastings Street. The North Star Hotel had been sitting empty since 1999 since it was ordered shut down by Vancouver City Council.
The Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) squat could provide homes for 30 local residents in a city where hundreds sleep outside each night. APC supporters chanted “Homes Not Games” and are asking the City of Vancouver to purchase the building for housing, rather than spending money on hosting the 2010 Olympics. Large 30 foot banners were unfurled from the top floor protesting the Olympics Games and the lack of affordable housing.
I heard the APC’s David Cunningham on the radio this morning, and I was quite impressed with his version of the APC’s position. According to David, the specific purpose of this squat is to pressure NPA politicians into fulfilling their election promise of purchasing at least one old downtown eastside hotel per year to convert for affordable housing. The year is almost up, he said, and since the NPA has done nothing in the way of fulfilling this promise, the APC is occupying this hotel (on the final day of Homelessness Awareness Week) to ‘get the ball rolling’.
The police are apparently meeting with the City today to decide their official position on the squat. David says the APC has a host of other tactics ready should the police break this squat before there is action from the NPA.
It’s just over 4 years since the Woodwards building was squatted, which was a complicated kind of victory for the homeless (or at least for homeless activists). Woodwards precipitated the opening of the Stanley Newfountain Hotel for social housing, while also pressuring the city into providing at least 100 affordable social housing units in the upcoming Woodward’s development.
I’ll be very interested to see how this squat unfolds, and whether the APC can impact the current NPA-dominated council to the same degree that activists and community members were able to impact the COPE council four years ago.
