NEWS RELEASE about Police/PrisonsHousingDirect Action posted on April 29, 2011 by zozi
Police Arrest Eight Housing Activists At Fraser Shelter
Police, City of Vancouver, and BC Housing Force the Closing of Emergency Homeless Shelter
UPDATE: POLICE ARREST EIGHT HOUSING ACTIVISTS, CITY OF VANCOUVER AND BC HOUSING FORCE THE CLOSURE OF FRASER STREET SHELTER
April 29th, Vancouver Coast Salish Territories – At 8 pm today a Vancouver Police Department force of approximately 30 police officers, ten squad cars, and three wagons forced the closure of the Fraser Street Homeless Shelter at 677 East Broadway. Eight housing activists were arrested, refusing to leave the shelter on the grounds that the emergency shelter needed to remain open for the homeless.
As of 9 pm, they are in police custody at 222 Main Street (corner Corvdova), please call the numbers below to check if jail support is still needed.
Ivan Drury, of the DTES Neighbourhood Council stated, “It is despicable that it takes this many police officers and this amount of city resources to force the shutdown of a shelter. They could have used the resources to continue to fund this shelter and the other HEAT shelters that were closed this week.”
Earlier in the day, pressure and advocacy from housing activists forced BC Housing and the City of Vancouver to provide decent affordable housing to all the shelter residents, based on their invidividual needs and wants. But some of that housing won’t be available for several weeks. When residents proposed that they be allowed to stay at Fraser and Broadway until the alternate housing is available, City of Vancouver Deputy General Manager Brenda Prosken refused the request precisely because the shelter spaces are in such high demand and recognized that if they kept the shelter open, then people would start coming back to it.
Supporters thendeclared that they were continuing to occupy the shelter in order to demand the reinstatement of funding for this necessary service. “If the city has the authority to shut these shelters down, then they have the authority to keep it open” said Stella August of the DTES Power of Women Group. Compared to other co-ed shelters, the Fraser Street Shelter had a high proportion of women accessing the shelter, particularly women who work the street in that area.
“RainCity has been running these shelters for a few years, and the moment we open them they are full at capacity within 48 hours, and they are full to capacity until the moment they close,” said Sean Spear, Associate Director of RainCity Housing. “If the shelters were to stay open, they will fill up to capacity again.”
The closure of the Fraser Street Shelter is the last in a series of unnecessary shelter closures. Women in the Downtown Eastside are particularly vulnerable to shelter closures, forced onto the street or into unsafe housing situations. “Shelters are a band-aid solutions that are grossly inadequate and insufficient. What people need is safe and affordable resident-controlled housing. We will continue to organize until everybody has decent housing and that 24-hour low-barrier emergency shelters, especially for women, are opened year-around.”
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