Civil City or Social Cleansing?

Today the mayor announced a 10 point plan to combat nuisance by 2010, and by nuisance he means those pesky homeless people that litter our otherwise beautiful city. We should give them tickets for panhandling and littering, and step up our police presence to try and get rid of them. Where are they going to go? Well that's not the City's problem, they only get 8 cents of every tax dollar. Its not the Province, because nothing they have done has made homelessness worse. Nothing. And don't think this is about the Olympics just because the first three points are to be completed by 2010 and they are taking 1.3 million dollars from a not yet approved slush fund.

This so-called plan reeks of Expo 86. Social Cleansing to make the city safe for the Olympics. The police can ticket drug users all they want, without treatment its a never-ending circle, and the cops know this. And I doubt they'd be happy with this press release as it accuses them of not doing their job in the first place. The Civil City is just another excercise in beurocracy, adding layers to an already complex game of pass the housing buck. Do we really need another "team" to assess homelessness? Here, I'll save you guys 1.3 million dollars...we have a homeless problem: build houses. Why is this so hard to comprehend? You think people are going to pay a ticket for littering when they don't even have a place to live?

I understand the the city needs to take a 'broken window' approach, but this goes beyond that. Its more akin to Guiliani's Times Square cleanup. Even anti-harm reduction champion Jamie Lee Hamilton is concerned about the heavy hand of the law.

So Sullivan makes a team to attack the problem. Maybe someone from Pivot Legal, or DERA, SPARC, City Hall's housing director Judy Graves? A representative from Vancouver Coastal Health? A person from BC Housing? The Food Bank? Nope. How about Stockwell Jetski Day? David Floor Crosser Emerson? Diane Finley, a Conservative MP from Ontario? Why not! Or suburban Conservative James Moore? How about a BC Liberal from Shuswap, George Abbot? Or maybe some BC Liberals John Les, Wally Oppal, and Claude Richmond. Great to see a lot of local Vancouver experts on homelessness and members across the political spectrum. Jesus.

APC spokesperson Steph Cameron said, "besides being an immense waste of money the city is saying with this plan that poor people must be controlled not helped." They promise more protests and squats. "We will take direct action to stop this proposal from being passed. But if it is passed we will demand an account for every cent spent on this waste of time. We want to know how much more money the city is willing to waste on things like a litter audit, while people are freezing on the streets".