Downtown Eastside - DTES Issues

[Vin]

Originally Posted by giallo

You're advocating a death sentence for many by enforcing a cold turkey program, Vin. The US spend over a trillion dollars on that war, and it didn't amount to anything at all. The private prison industry boomed. That's about it.

If someone wants to do drugs until they die, well, I guess that's their decision - it is a free country after all, but in order for the impact of that decision to lessen for the rest of us, the government has to get involved. Why we still allow the black market to regulate the drug supply in 2021 is beyond me. An unregulated, potentially dangerous product and high prices all have a direct effect on society, whether they do a drug or not.

Regulate it, price it accordingly, and use the tax dollars to start to fund really solutions to the issues that create an addictive individual. Is it going to be weird to be able to by opioids from an online store.....yeah, it will be for a bit, but if it keeps people from ODing from an unreliable product, it's affordable enough so you don't have to worry about random addicts stealing your copper wire for a fix, and we start to see properly-funded hospitals and housing to help those that truly need it, then it's a pretty good trade off.

Oh really? Death sentence? On the contrary, by not doing that we are meting out death sentences to them already, not to mention the drain in public dollars.

500 deaths so far in 2021:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7819752/b...rs-march-2021/

So 500 people died this year because they went cold turkey? Nope, not at all. They could still be alive if they actually did. Agreeing to the status quo is like letting users die on the streets.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by mcminsen

Just another day on Robson Street.

I just got in now after watching some deranged guy on a vandalizing spree. He was kicking over the newspaper boxes and then going over to the barriers at the road construction and breaking off all the yellow flashing lights, throwing the traffic cones into the holes in the street and just messing up or breaking anything he could get his hands on.

Lots of people were on the street and a lot of them turned to look but of course nobody got involved. I considered taking some pics but decided not to.

When I got to Homer Street the guy was carrying on towards the stadium like a one man wrecking crew.

Of course VPD did nothing. He's probably high: should be locked up till he's not using anymore.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

Oh really? Death sentence? On the contrary, by not doing that we are meting out death sentences to them already, not to mention the drain in public dollars.

500 deaths so far in 2021:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7819752/b...rs-march-2021/

So 500 people died this year because they went cold turkey? Nope, not at all. They could still be alive if they actually did. Agreeing to the status quo is like letting users die on the streets.

Sigh. It must be Friday - time for another Vin Igno-rant.

Families of drug users have greater understanding than you do. Your comments are the perfect illustration of the stigma that is part of the reason that people are dying. Families across BC are calling for a safe supply. One reason is that increasingly it's not fantanyl that's being added to drugs, it's benzodiazepine, which isn't reversed by Naloxone.

And many - the majority - of the people dying are not street-using addicts. They're not in the DTES (despite the title of this thread, which seems to be redundant). They were casual users, or people dealing with anxiety, or depression, or an opiate addiction related to prescribed painkillers, with homes they lived in. For example, of the six people who died of drug overdoses in Surrey in the past week, five of them died at home.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

On Robson just east of Granville there was a woman walking down the street which had a steady stream of people, many looking they were leaving work etc, anyway she had her top lifted up with her breasts fully exposed at times playing with them like bongos or just slapping them around, she wasn't making any weird noises or anything just walking down the street letting everything out there. People looked a little shocked passing by.

Fun fact. Being topless in BC is not illegal.

Or at least, it was still legal five years ago. I vaguely recall in school we thought that was an urban legend.

[SpongeG]

oh i know, it was a woman in Maple Ridge who was fighting to make it legal. I used to see her all the time around MR with no top on back in the day. Not many women choose to exercise that right though.

[Metro-One]

Lynda Myers was her name, and a sighting of her was a common conversation piece growing up in Maple Ridge, but let’s just say not in a flattering way.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Sigh. It must be Friday - time for another Vin Igno-rant.

Families of drug users have greater understanding than you do. Your comments are the perfect illustration of the stigma that is part of the reason that people are dying. Families across BC are calling for a safe supply. One reason is that increasingly it's not fantanyl that's being added to drugs, it's benzodiazepine, which isn't reversed by Naloxone.

And many - the majority - of the people dying are not street-using addicts. They're not in the DTES (despite the title of this thread, which seems to be redundant). They were casual users, or people dealing with anxiety, or depression, or an opiate addiction related to prescribed painkillers, with homes they lived in. For example, of the six people who died of drug overdoses in Surrey in the past week, five of them died at home.

Majority are hardworking folks fighting depression? Show your stats please.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

Majority are hardworking folks fighting depression? Show your stats please.

That's not what I wrote. I said the majority dying are not street-using addicts. The people you identify as needing to be removed from the streets and forced to detox 'cold turkey'.

Here the coroner's report for 2020. "More than 80 per cent of drug overdose deaths occurred indoors: 56 per cent inside private residences and 28 per cent in other residences like supportive housing, single-residence occupancies, shelters and hotels."

And in January this year "More than half of deadly overdoses in January happened inside a home. Men accounted for 83 per cent of the deaths."

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

That's not what I wrote. I said the majority dying are not street-using addicts. The people you identify as needing to be removed from the streets and forced to detox 'cold turkey'.

Here the coroner's report for 2020. "More than 80 per cent of drug overdose deaths occurred indoors: 56 per cent inside private residences and 28 per cent in other residences like supportive housing, single-residence occupancies, shelters and hotels."

And in January this year "More than half of deadly overdoses in January happened inside a home. Men accounted for 83 per cent of the deaths."

The DTES does not only have street folks, there are tons of drug addicts in supportive housing. Shelters are also indoor places, public toilets are as well. So what's your point here?

Putting hardcore addicts in facilities to help them overcome the problem is the only way to save them, period. Insane methods like giving them free drugs are simply irresponsible and downright atrocious, and can only be dreamed up by societies going on a downward spin.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Vin

The DTES does not only have street folks, there are tons of drug addicts in supportive housing. Shelters are also indoor places, public toilets are as well. So what's your point here?

Putting hardcore addicts in facilities to help them overcome the problem is the only way to save them, period. Insane methods like giving them free drugs are simply irresponsible and downright atrocious, and can only be dreamed up by societies going on a downward spin.

My point is that the majority of people in the past several years who have died in BC using drugs have died at home. And the majority are not in Vancouver, and therefore not in the DTES.

There aren't enough treatment options, and many times they don't stick - even with supports in place many addicts return to using when there's a crisis in their lives. Providing a safe drug supply in the meantime until there are sufficient treatment and support options (if we're willing to fund them) would stop people dying from lethal chemicals that aren't the drugs they thought they'd bought. It should also reduce the crime that occurs to fund the drug purchases.

But even if there were these 'facilities' to 'put' people in to 'help them overcome their problems', that wouldn't prevent the majority of deaths being caused by a tainted and lethal drug supply. How do you propose to save all those lives? 'Just Say No' doesn't seem to be working.

[SeymourDrake]

So has strathcona park been closed for cleanup or are there still homeless campers there? I'm just wondering how the transition went?

I'm also wondering if any of the homeless just relocated to another park.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by SeymourDrake

So has strathcona park been closed for cleanup or are there still homeless campers there? I'm just wondering how the transition went?

I'm also wondering if any of the homeless just relocated to another park.

I've been seeing some campers still kicking around at night, but oddly enough they're on the street rather than in the park.

[jollyburger]

Also at "Plaza of Nations, and another shelter is expected to open in the coming weeks in a renovated city-owned building at 875 Terminal Ave".

Dan Fumano: New chapter for old Army & Navy building
Analysis: The shelter "sleeping pod" is one of many examples, big and small, of COVID-19 spurring innovations that could outlast the pandemic.

While Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is still feeling the loss of the Army & Navy, the discount department store’s former home will soon open its doors to a new incarnation that will once again serve the community, but in a new way.

The exterior of the old Army & Navy building at 15-27 West Hastings St. was all boarded up and closed last week, looking more or less as it has since the retailer became a COVID-19 casualty last year after 101 years in business. But inside, construction workers were busy on the final stages of converting the space into a new kind of pandemic-era homeless shelter.

Army and Navy building's new chapter: homeless shelter | Vancouver Sun

Close sticky video
During a tour of the facility last week, while crews with power tools buzzed around the building’s interior, Tanya Fader showed what they call the “sleeping pods” that will soon provide beds for up to 60 people.

“We’ve come a long way since throwing a mat on a gym floor, or people sleeping in a church pew,” said Fader, director of housing for the PHS Community Services Society, the non-profit running the shelter.

The “pods” are like little cubicles separated by half-walls, with each self-contained unit containing a bed, locker and bedside table. During last week’s visit, each bed was topped with a folded clean towel, toiletries and a Halloween-sized chocolate bar on each pillow. Bedside tables had a small succulent plant on top, and a safe syringe-disposal unit inside.

B.C. Housing started using the sleeping pod concept in shelters last year, including a temporary emergency shelter, also operated by PHS, set up in Victoria’s Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, the 7,000-seat arena that, in normal times, played host to major concerts and Western Hockey League games.

The pods’ physical separation was meant to reduce COVID-19 transmission, Fader said, and their experience in Victoria showed “it served that purpose, but then it also served some extra ones as well.” The pods provided more privacy and a better experience for residents seeking stability during difficult times, Fader said, and PHS saw success in Victoria with transitioning residents from the shelter to longer-term housing.

The shelter pod is one example of the myriad ways, big and small, in which COVID-19 has spurred innovations that could outlast the pandemic, from local governments rethinking public spaces such as plazas, patios and promenades, to life-and-death matters like the B.C. government asking Ottawa earlier this year to decriminalize drug possession.

“I think that COVID, as with many things, has allowed us to change our response in ways that actually end up having other benefits,” Fader said. The pods, she said, “work incredibly well: letting people establish their own space, they have their locker to put their own stuff … You’re not switching which mat you’re sleeping on every night, you have your own space.”

PHS senior housing manager Duncan Higgon, standing at one of the soon-to-be-used pods last week, said: “This wall is tremendously important.”

In February, nine months after the retailer’s closure, it was announced that B.C. Housing and the city would co-lease the old department store building from the Army & Navy’s owners, to convert the space into housing for the homeless.

Reached this week, Army & Navy Properties president & CEO Jacqui Cohen said she was proud that the Hastings building will once again provide something of value to the DTES.

“Army & Navy was a community constant for 101 years. When I made the difficult decision last year to close our operations due to the insurmountable challenges of COVID, I knew I wanted the future of the buildings — like their past — to be of benefit to the communities,” Cohen said in an emailed statement. “My Grandpa Sam would be very proud, as am I, to have our family’s Army & Navy building used to temporarily support 60 of our city’s most vulnerable individuals.”

Cohen’s “Grandpa Sam” first opened a store at 44 West Hastings St. in March 1919. He promoted Army & Navy as the place “where the masses shop,” and for a century, it was. The store was an important place for the Downtown Eastside’s residents to buy everything from low-cost work boots to food, Fader and Higgon said, and its loss is deeply felt in the neighbourhood.

B.C. Housing is operating another pod-style centre at the Plaza of Nations, and another shelter is expected to open in the coming weeks in a renovated city-owned building at 875 Terminal Ave., which was most recently leased to the Vancouver Trolley Company. Those new facilities, like other existing homeless shelters, are meant as temporary, emergency measures to bring people indoors, allow them to stabilize, and connect them with proper housing.

That last step — finding longer-term homes — often proved especially difficult in the past. But the provincial, federal and city governments, working together, have recently acquired several hotels for conversion into social housing, and are building several, new, deeply affordable projects. B.C. Housing said this week almost all the campers from Strathcona Park’s tent city have moved indoors now, and more than 1,700 spaces for homeless residents are opening in Vancouver over the next two years.

COVID-19 has exacerbated Vancouver’s (and B.C.’s) homeless problem in many ways. But Fader said she’s encouraged by all the new housing coming online soon, and she’s hopeful that, within a couple of years, we could be in better shape than before the pandemic.

“To survive in this work, you have to be realistically pessimistic,” Fader said, “but ultimately you have to be full of hope and optimism.”

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...-navy-building

[Vin]

Originally Posted by Changing City

My point is that the majority of people in the past several years who have died in BC using drugs have died at home. And the majority are not in Vancouver, and therefore not in the DTES.

There aren't enough treatment options, and many times they don't stick - even with supports in place many addicts return to using when there's a crisis in their lives. Providing a safe drug supply in the meantime until there are sufficient treatment and support options (if we're willing to fund them) would stop people dying from lethal chemicals that aren't the drugs they thought they'd bought. It should also reduce the crime that occurs to fund the drug purchases.

But even if there were these 'facilities' to 'put' people in to 'help them overcome their problems', that wouldn't prevent the majority of deaths being caused by a tainted and lethal drug supply. How do you propose to save all those lives? 'Just Say No' doesn't seem to be working.

That I don't disagree with you, except that DTES presents as the neighbourhood where everyone in the world can see what is happening in this region. It is tangible, high in the concentration the addicted as well as its related community problems, and also, last but not least, it's "in your face". If we can't solve what is happening in the DTES, we might as well just give up.

In regards to the prevention of deaths, I did mention it many times before: much better enforcement complete with beat cops, harsher jail sentences (everyone agrees on how light the sentences are for these drug pushers and smugglers who attempt murder every single day), as well as stricter treatment regimes for hardcore addicts: going cold turkey being one of them. Coupled with stricter City bylaws on the streets, we can solve the problem, but only with resolve and guts. We have too many jelly-fish clowns running the show now.

I am sure we would all like to see a chain of drug gangsters being paraded through the DTES streets after their incarceration: make them clean up the streets every single day would be a good start.

[s211]

I'm hearing chatter about the city pushing for a much higher proportion of social-housing as part of a Kingsgate redevelopment. If that's more than a rumour, I feel for people who live elsewhere in the area. The combination of the Biltmore and the Best Western conversions isn't going down well. Add Kingsgate to the mix? Yeah, I'd be looking for the exit door too, which is what my friend living in the area is doing: getting out while he can.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by s211

I'm hearing chatter about the city pushing for a much higher proportion of social-housing as part of a Kingsgate redevelopment. If that's more than a rumour, I feel for people who live elsewhere in the area. The combination of the Biltmore and the Best Western conversions isn't going down well. Add Kingsgate to the mix? Yeah, I'd be looking for the exit door too, which is what my friend living in the area is doing: getting out while he can.

Seem more likely they'll try to tie it to VSB discounted staff housing.

[s211]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

Seem more likely they'll try to tie it to VSB discounted staff housing.

Sure, because somehow DB-pensioned and unfireable unionized workers are somehow front of the line for housing. What a scam.

[whatnext]

Wow, I'm actually surprised the city is moving forward and doing anything about this:

Vancouver RV campers told to vacate city streets or face tickets and towing
-Two dozen RVs and campers are parked near Slocan and 12th Avenue in Vancouver, more in other nieghbourhoods
Jon Hernandez · CBC News · Posted: May 18, 2021

Residents of more than two-dozen RVs and campers parked illegally near a Vancouver intersection have been told to leave or face fines and have their vehicles towed.

The makeshift camp near Slocan Street and East 12th Avenue currently houses at least 25 vehicles with people living inside. It's been there for about two years.

City officials say staff, including bylaw enforcement officers, have visited the site at least four times since the start of the year and warned them of an impending eviction. In the most recent notice, residents were told they must leave by May 26....

...Parking on city streets for more than three hours at a time contravenes local bylaws, and no large vehicles like RVs are allowed to park overnight.

City cites safety concerns
Taryn Scollard, Vancouver's director of streets, said the city has been grappling with RVs cropping up in different neighbourhoods for years.

She said the encampment near Slocan and 12th has become particularly problematic because of its size, hygiene and proximity to a public school, noting that many of the campers are uninsured and not in drivable condition.

"We're seeing a lot of increased concerns in the area as the number of RVs increase," said Scollard. "Some of them are leaving debris on the streets. We've encountered human excrement."...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...eets-1.6031878

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Wow, I'm actually surprised the city is moving forward and doing anything about this:

Vancouver RV campers told to vacate city streets or face tickets and towing
-Two dozen RVs and campers are parked near Slocan and 12th Avenue in Vancouver, more in other nieghbourhoods
Jon Hernandez · CBC News · Posted: May 18, 2021

Residents of more than two-dozen RVs and campers parked illegally near a Vancouver intersection have been told to leave or face fines and have their vehicles towed.

The makeshift camp near Slocan Street and East 12th Avenue currently houses at least 25 vehicles with people living inside. It's been there for about two years.

City officials say staff, including bylaw enforcement officers, have visited the site at least four times since the start of the year and warned them of an impending eviction. In the most recent notice, residents were told they must leave by May 26....

...Parking on city streets for more than three hours at a time contravenes local bylaws, and no large vehicles like RVs are allowed to park overnight.

City cites safety concerns
Taryn Scollard, Vancouver's director of streets, said the city has been grappling with RVs cropping up in different neighbourhoods for years.

She said the encampment near Slocan and 12th has become particularly problematic because of its size, hygiene and proximity to a public school, noting that many of the campers are uninsured and not in drivable condition.

"We're seeing a lot of increased concerns in the area as the number of RVs increase," said Scollard. "Some of them are leaving debris on the streets. We've encountered human excrement."...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...eets-1.6031878

I mean if they want to go live off the grid there's lots of roads up north they can go park.

[Conrad Yablonski]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I mean if they want to go live off the grid there's lots of roads up north they can go park.

Well actually No There Aren't-I see you've travelled very little in BC.

Every stretch of road has some formal jurisdiction attached to it-people live there they pay taxes and demand services- form & quantity can change depending but there's no free lunch anywhere.