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Welcome to Nickelsville - Seattle Homeless Take on Mayor's Image

Though it took root this summer, the seed for Nickelsville was planted years ago with the creation of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. The idea, as the name suggests, is to end homelessness by building more permanent low-income housing, and to lead people toward self-sufficiency by weaning them (and cities) off stopgap measures like shelters. It's an idea that Nickels has bought into-and one that is arguably not working.

A buyer's market in Vancouver still no bargain

According to The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, Canada's most expensive market is in "a buyer's phase," but the cost of an average detached home is still $305,878 higher than the national average. The Canadian Real Estate Association lists the average price in May 2008 for a property in Canada as $318, 761, where houses in Vancouver are listed at an average of $624,639. According to the numbers from June 2008 released by REBGV, a typical detached residential property in Greater Vancouver sells for $765,654. That's a change of seven per cent over one year and 89.5 per cent over five years. A typical apartment will cost $388,722, a change of 7.8 per cent over one year and 105.2% over five years.

What the Housing Crisis Can Tell Us about Racism, Sexism and Homelessness

If we choose to view each of these problems and its race dynamics as separate issues, then we are guilty of ignoring the points of origin which connect them all together. According to Max Rameau, an organizer with the Center for Pan-African Development in Miami, Florida, the root problems of gentrification in the 2000s are the same as the root problems of segregation in the 1960s: people of colors' lack of power and control over land, and white supremacy.

Danny Westneat | Homeless: new growth industry

Something is ragged in the Emerald City. We've had our frenzies, like the dot-coms and real estate. Now it feels like there's an anti-boom, an echo of the others. A week ago Friday wasn't especially cold or windy or any of the other things that drive street people inside. But at Operation Nightwatch, a ministry for the homeless, it was a night for the record books anyway. Near midnight, after finding spots to sleep for 175 people, workers gave bus tickets and blankets to 42 more. Then sent them wandering off down the street.

Doctors to visit poorest Vancouver residents to free up hospital beds

In a bid to reduce the number of hospital beds being taken up by the homeless and drug addicts in Vancouver, doctors will soon be making house-calls to those who live in single room occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Downtown Eastside. Many residents of the Downtown Eastside are seriously ill, often the result of drug use and hard living on the streets, said Lorna House, the director of mental health for the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. By the time they get to a hospital, she said, they often need long-term care.

Operators go to court to protect injection site

With just two months to go before its doors may be closed by the Conservative government, operators of North America's only supervised injection site for users of illegal drugs have gone to court to stay open. The facility saves lives, reduces harm to drug addicts and increases their motivation to seek treatment, lawyers argued in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday. As a result, they said, federal drug laws against possession of heroin and cocaine should not apply there. "The criminal approach leads to death. Harm reduction leads to life," said John Conroy, representing the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.

Safe-injection site mounts constitutional challenge

The operators of Canada's only supervised safe-injection site are launching a constitutional challenge they hope will bolster their ability to continue operating the controversial facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the Portland Hotel Society, which operate the site, are scheduled to appear in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Monday morning.

Local Retired carpenter offers hot soup, warm smile to homeless on Seattle's Capitol Hill

Bill Pond parks his pickup twice a week on Broadway Avenue East near a boarded-up Jack in the Box. There, he offers chicken soup, egg-salad sandwiches and juice to the homeless. The retired carpenter pays for it out of his own pocket, collecting and recycling aluminum cans to help offset some of the cost.

'This Is Me, Take It or Leave It'

In photos and words, citizens of a gritty community create a vibrant self-portrait.

Paul Levesque has spent 40 years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and he sees the neighbourhood as a sole reminder of the way this city used to be. "It's the last of an era, of Vancouver built in the 1950s, '60s, '70s," he says, standing in the pouring rain at Hastings and Dunlevy. "It's unique. It's not fictional; it's reality. The east end community is not like any other community, because it's not plastic. It's not like keeping up with the Joneses, because we can't afford to keep up with the Joneses. It's a poverty-stricken area. It's painful. But it's also reality."

Domestic abuse increases chance of trouble finding homes, study says - Examiner.com

Disclosing victim status could mean being denied that housing is even available. Women strong enough to flee their homes and their abusive situations were more likely to be denied housing outright, something that did not happen to people not disclosing. In the study, 65 percent of domestic violence victims were subjected to at least one form of discriminatory treatment.

A neighbourhood speaks - and hears its own voice

'I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them," photographer Diane Arbus once wrote. It's a comment that came repeatedly to mind reading Hope in Shadows, a collection of photographs taken and stories told by residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The book, which comes out next month, grew from a popular program run over the past five years by the Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit legal advocacy organization based in the neighbourhood. Since 2003, Pivot has been handing out cameras to residents and assembling pictures in a calendar. If you live or work in the downtown area, Gastown or Yaletown in particular, you've likely bought one of these from a street vendor at some point.

Giving Them Shelter: Portraits of Young Lives in Limbo

A new book of documentary photographs, "Shelter," examines a group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people living, off and on, at a homeless shelter in Hell's Kitchen - a group for whom growing up could hardly be more difficult. That the book is the product of a 27-year-old photographer who is gay, grew up in poverty and once lived in a homeless shelter himself explains its empathetic tone and morally urgent message.

Expert Advisory Committee report: Insite works

Late Friday afternoon (PST) Health Canada tried to quietly release the Final report of the Expert Advisory Committee on Supervised Injection Site Research. (Since government reports public domain I've created a downloadable, easier to read PDF version that can be found here). Why quietly release such an upbeat report? Because the Health Minister is ideologically committed to closing INSITE. Unfortunately for him, the report confirms what researchers and scientists have been telling us all along: that INSITE works.

Vancouver groups take housing complaint to UN

Three groups in Vancouver are launching a human rights complaint with the United Nations over the impact of the 2010 Winter Olympics on affordable housing in the Downtown Eastside. Representatives from the Impact on Communities Coalition, the Carnegie Community Action Project and the Pivot Legal Society, speak at a press conference Sunday. Representatives from the Impact on Communities Coalition, the Carnegie Community Action Project and the Pivot Legal Society, speak at a press conference Sunday. (CBC) The complaint is designed to embarrass the Canadian government and draw attention to a lack of social housing in the city's poorest neighbourhood, the groups said Sunday.

Homelessness on the rise in Metro Vancouver, says report

On March 11, volunteers swept through the streets and shelters of Greater Vancouver, and identified and interviewed nearly 2,600 people considered homeless. In raw numbers, that represents a 19 per cent increase in the number counted in 2005, and more than double the number counted in 2002.