His name is John, and he has what he calls an "addictions problem." It cost him his carpet-laying job at a swank new hotel and condominium development downtown. "I showed up wasted," he says. "I didn't get paid and I lost my apartment, and now I'm here."
By Brian Hutchinson, National Post
VANCOUVER -- His name is John, and he has what he calls an "addictions problem." It cost him his carpet-laying job at a swank new hotel and condominium development downtown. "I showed up wasted," he says. "I didn't get paid and I lost my apartment, and now I'm here."
Here being the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver's slum. Where, on Monday night, John wound up. He spent what little cash he had and got wasted again. He's not feeling sorry for himself or making excuses. "I wrote my own story," he says. "It's my fault."
A sad tale, but his refusal to cast blame is at least refreshing. Self-pity is not a prerequisite for drug abuse and homelessness. Truth is, members of Vancouver's so-called poverty industry --the people with steady government-padded incomes who work in the Downtown Eastside but seldom live here -- do most of the finger pointing and kvetching.
On Tuesday, John woke up inside a tent, pitched in a small but thriving impromptu village on Hastings Street, in the heart of the Downtown Eastside. Olympic Tent City, people are calling it. The squat sprang up on an empty, privately owned lot last week, as a protest to the homeless situation in Vancouver and the huge amounts of money and other resources allocated to this city's Olympic Winter Games. It has since become quite more than that.
Don't call it a shanty; the 100 or so residents -- by the looks of them, the truly down and out -- are already fiercely proud of their new home, awful as it is, and protective of it. There are rules, posted at the entrance, and they are allegedly enforced. No drinking, no drugging, no fighting.
But there are squabbles. Angry eruptions, all the time. "Take it outside and down the street," warned one of the tent city gatekeepers Tuesday, when a woman and a man got into a profanity-laced shouting match over some perceived slights.
John stumbled into the tent city after his bender. "I didn't have no place else to go," he says. "Four people helped me get set up and found me a tent."
A break for him. But this is no success story. Olympic Tent City is an illegal, unsanitary squat. The fact it even exists is a shame; however, to those inside it's a necessary thing, a place to live without the hassles encountered in the city's temporary shelters, which some say are filled with drugs and thieves and feel unsafe.
Their new home is a visible reminder of Vancouver's poverty and housing troubles, and the shortage of well-aimed resources for the addicted and the mentally ill. Millions of public dollars have been spent on new social housing and programs in the Downtown Eastside, but much of the money has been squandered; just down the street, for example, sits the recently refurbished Pennsylvania Hotel, a monument to social-agency inefficiency that cost more than $14-million -- or $326,000 per tiny, single room -- just to renovate.
Olympic Tent City runs on private donations and a shoestring. There is a kitchen, under a tarp, with a volunteer staff cooking and serving breakfast and supper. There is a medic's corner, and an elder's circle, where, Tuesday, aboriginal residents sat around a fire and drummed.
Aside from these trappings, there's little else but tents, some makeshift, some procured expressly for this purpose. With only one rented port-a-potty on the site, serviced daily, hygiene is an issue. For now, tent city folk are advised to use the public toilets in nearby parks. The squatters have benefited from a stretch of warm and sunny weather. Rain is expected the rest of this week and that will turn the site to mud.
Still, Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson has said no steps are being contemplated to bring down the tents. Property developer Concord Pacific, the owner of the property, has not commented on the squat but its principals must know that asking authorities to enforce the law and tear down the village would bring nothing but bad press. Especially now, with so much media attention on Vancouver.
"We're staying," says Dave Diewert, a former biblical languages professor who helped set up the tents. "We didn't intend to go into this long term. It was more of a local community action timed to the Olympics. The initial infrastructure was for five days but we're now past that. We don't want to be here, but on the other hand, some people are saying this is the best place they've lived in a long time." That's got to be the saddest -- and most important -- thing about this place.
Photo: Tent Village at 58 West Hastings Street in Vancouver, BC, Tuesday afternoon. Photo by Laura Leyshon for National Post.
