Category Archives: Olympics

BC moves to evict 13 more low-income people in Vancouver

Posted on by

Box Houses, from Hope in Shadows 2006 calendar by Pivot Legal Society; the photo was taken by an 11-year-old 

From Pivot Legal Society:

Province moves to evict 13 more low-income peopleVancouver –Vancouver Coastal Health has issued an order to tenants of the Powell Rooms lodging house at 556 Powell Street stating that the building would be closed today, Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 5:00 p.m due to health reasons. Coastal Health has made no provision for relocating the 13 people that live at the Powell Rooms, including one terminally ill individual.The order, issued a week ago by Dr. F.J. Blatherwick of Vancouver Coastal Health, lists four reasons for the hotel closure: (1) lack of hot water, (2) pest infestations, (3) non-functioning washrooms and (4) garbage accumulating in a City of Vancouver lane.David Eby, a lawyer with Pivot Legal Society, learned of the order on Monday and visited the lodging house on Tuesday with a team of volunteer trades-people and community members.  The repairs to the hot water tank were completed within minutes, and all the toilets were found to be in working order.  A removal service has been contracted to remove garbage from the back lane.  No evidence was found of mice, cockroaches or bedbugs, although a pest control service has also been engaged to conduct a full inspection. 

“Its fairly shocking that the Coastal Health Authority, responsible for ensuring the health and well-being of the community, would rather force people onto the street than ensure some very basic repairs are done,” said Eby.  “It would have been a simple matter for Dr. Blatherwick to order the steps we’ve taken today to be done, and any health hazards be cleaned up.”

The City of Vancouver also has the power under City bylaws to order repairs and maintenance to Downtown Eastside lodging houses and hotels.  However, although the Powell Rooms building was inspected regularly by the City, there have been no City Standards of Maintenance Orders for the lodging house since November of 2001.

“It boils down to community volunteers doing the job of Coastal Health and the City because, for some reason, they would rather close hotels than ensure that they are livable,” said Eby.  “If the government won’t do its job and protect low-income people from losing their homes, what will happen to the Olympic commitment to prevent homelessness?”

The pending closure of the Powell Rooms (25 units) and the ongoing closure of the Lucky Lodge (48 units total) by the City and the Province follows the dramatic closures of the Burns Block hotel (18 units) and the Pender Hotel (36 units) in March, 2006.  These rooms, together with rooms lost due to rent increases brings the total of low-income units lost or under imminent threat to 375 for the first seven months of 2006.

——————————————————-

Further Comment:    David Eby (778) 865-7997 – Pivot Legal Society

Dr. F.J. Blatherwick (604)675-3804 – Vancouver Coastal Health

——————————————————-

The 2010 Inner-City Inclusivity Commitment to protect low-income housing and ensure that people are not made homeless was part of the Vancouver Bid Book, the formal application to host the Olympic Games. 

To read the Inclusivity Commitment Statement, click here

About Pivot Legal Society
Pivot’s mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins.   We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law. 

China: Olympic Fuckup

Posted on by

Via Japanprobe, video proof from the Chinese Marathon that China can't pour water out of a boot if the instructions are printed on the bottom.

Good luck with instituting their "no spitting" "no smoking" and "no critical thinking" initiatives in time for the Olympics.

PSA: Downtown EastSide evictions systematically clear the way for quick-buck development

Posted on by

From Pivot. And if you're wondering why this has the "Olympics" tag, think it over…it'll come to you, at least by 2010 it will.

Burns Block Tenants Taking Owner to Arbitration

Vancouver: On March 30, 2006, the City of Vancouver evicted 18 tenants from the Burns Block building at 18 West Hastings for fire code violations in the building.  Tenants were ordered by police and fire officials to leave the building immediately with all their possessions.  Pivot Legal Society is now assisting former tenants in making residential tenancy claims against the owner.

“I was lucky to find a place, I only had to spend one night in a shelter,” says Alfred Melnychuk, one of the former tenants “I moved all of my belongings in a shopping cart to my new home. I’m 53 years old with bad knees, and I had half an hour’s notice of the eviction.”

Melnychuk is one of the lucky ones; at least two other tenants evicted from Burns Block are now sleeping on the street. 

The Neighbourhood Integrated Services Team inspection on March 30, 2006 that resulted in the closure of the Burns Block building was described by the City officials as a routine inspection.  It was the first such inspection by the Fire Department in almost two years. The inspectors cited four reasons for the emergency closure: (1) blocked fire exits; (2) windows to fire escapes that were screwed closed (3) untested sprinkler systems; and, (4) untested alarm systems.

“One starts to wonders if the City is treating people in the Downtown Eastside differently because they are poor,” said David Eby, lawyer for some of the tenants.  “Obviously the landlord has to be held accountable, but it’s hard to imagine the City evicting residents of an apartment building in Kitsilano with so little notice, short of a bomb in the building.”

The Burns Block building is now for sale, and the owner has received several offers.  It sits beside the future City of Vancouver tourist walkway called the “Carrall Street Greenway,” and across the street from the Woodwards development. If the building is sold, it will be the second building closed and sold to developers as a result of City of Vancouver inspection actions in the last three months, following the Pender Hotel at 31A West Pender Street, which is transferring ownership on May 15 to the condominium developer who owns 33 West Pender.  The Pender Hotel is 200 feet from Burns Block. 

The tenants are seeking damages of $5,000 plus $1,000 in moving expenses from the landlord, as well as an order that the Burns Block building be repaired so that it is available again as housing.

With the closure of Burns Block, Vancouver has lost almost 300 low-income housing units since last June.  This is in addition to 514 low-income housing units lost in the Downtown Core between June 2003 to June 2005, the loss of which accompanied a simultaneous 663 person rise in homelessness.
__________

Further Comment:     David Eby (778) 865-7997

                             Alfred Melnychuk – Room 316 – Travellers’ Hotel – 57 West Cordova Street

The C Factor: China begs its citizens abroad to stop being so, you know, Chinese

Posted on by

Chinese VisaSpitting on a Vancouver sidewalk is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $110, as several people of both sexes have lately found out, greatly to their surprise. Our Chinatown is large and busy and very, very Chinese, so to discover that something so iconically Chinese is actually banned is a bit of a culture shock to many. It looks like a Chinatown. It smells like a Chinatown. But, according to the new policy of enforcement, the goal is that it won't feel quite so much like a Chinatown anymore when you walk around in sandals.

Thank god.

"Paved with open oysters" was Dickens' verdict on the sidewalks of New York, for much the same reason. Just today I saw two men and one woman blowing their noses onto the sidewalk (quite a trick and, while I appreciate the dexterity and practice it must take to master, punishable by an equally stiff fine praise be to god). And not a cop in sight! That's $330 lost to our public coffers. I'm thinking of working up a Huggy Bear Hug it out bitchbusiness model based on ratting out the snotlings, but am not sure if it should be commission-based per incident or if we could work out some sort of pay-by-volume-of-bust deal, like with drug informers.

I could be the Huggy Bear of mucus!

In the meantime, the Chinese goverment at least is trying to teach its people that carrying certain Beijingoist qualities overseas, particularly to snotty old Singapore, is not the greatest make friends tactic the world has ever seen. Much likeChinese Tourists in London the website set up to teach Americans how to behave abroad, there's a new initiative to teach the previously-isolationist Chinese how not to be loathed when travelling. I mean, when travel abroad was punishable by death, it stands to reason not many people were able to avail themselves of the opportunity, so we've got a billion newbies hawking away on planes and smoking up a storm in oxygen tents worldwide, to say nothing of trying to scam the other tourists.

The daily reported that Wong and Sum cautioned Fan, who possessed an identification showing he was ordained as a monk, that Malaysia was not a place for bogus monks to deceive the public for donations and his act had tarnished the image of Buddhist monks.

Naturally, the government realizes that there will be lots of tourists coming to Beijing for the Olympics, and they're prefer if the Chinese weren't as Chinese for that either, so the government is training the actual residents of the city to behave as if they were travelling abroad. Easier than explaining your culture to a mob of foreigners, I guess, at least in countries where they're already conditioned to obey stupid, culture-eviscerating orders on a daily basis.

There will be a black market in spittoons, mark my words!

Beijing has launched a campaign to make its citizens more "civil" in the run-up to hosting the 2008 Olympics. Games organizers have repeatedly said the city needs to teach its people to stand in line, stop spitting and littering and generally be better mannered.

I just hope there's a section in there about bears and cellphone cameras…

Operation Global Media Domination: Gay Pirates kick Bloggers Ass

Posted on by

TIAThe raincoaster blog is quite proud and, in fact, almost insufferable about the fact that we have cracked the top 350,000 blogs in Technorati. If you've done better than that, we don't want to hear about it. No, really. We get all weepy and snappish when we hear about that sort of thing unless it's accompanied by a heartfelt "and let me teach you exactly how I did that" email.

PeterPan, I'm talking to you.

And while it's nice to be promoted so my stat counter starts at 30, rather than zero, there's a brief yet heart-stopping period every day when I appear to have negative readers. And we all know my readers are as positive little bundles of human sunshine as it is possible to be, right? Totally, bitches!

In a search term roundup this week, it is quite clear that Gay Pirates kick the ass of all blog-related posts. There are the classic greatest hits: mango porno, Narnia porn, and octopus sewing patterns. And curling. Lotsa curling.

Eagles are good, too. Raptors apparently rank high in the blogosphere; I can see that, you know. Winging through the sky, falling upon their prey like a thunderbolt, soaring in regal isolation, making Technorati their bitch.