Olympics blamed for Vancouver housing woes

By Published On: November 4th, 2006Comments Off on Olympics blamed for Vancouver housing woes

A coalition of anti-poverty advocates accused organizers of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games of inadvertently dislodging hundreds of indigent and elderly people while preparing for the Games.
    “We’ve seen hundreds of people in the Downtown Eastside lose their homes,” Kim Kerr of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association said this week.


A COALITION OF ANTI-POVERTY
advocates accused organizers of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games of inadvertently dislodging hundreds of indigent and elderly people while preparing for the Games.
    “We’ve seen hundreds of people in the Downtown Eastside lose their homes,” Kim Kerr of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association said this week.
    With the temperature now dipping below freezing each night, Kerr said poor senior citizens and people with AIDS and hepatitis C are being pushed onto the streets with nowhere else to go. Developers have bought up hotels which long housed the indigent.
    Those developers are eager to convert the buildings into boutique hotels and condos in one of the world’s hottest real estate markets before tourists descend on Vancouver for the Olympics.
    The association has 400 units to house people, Kerr said, but that is not enough.
    “We have 8,000 people on our waiting list. Thousands of people have lost their homes since this city was awarded the Olympic Games,” he said. “There’s simply no place for these people to go. People in the Downtown Eastside die on the street.”
    The Downtown Eastside is one of the most crime-ridden and dangerous neighborhoods in western Canada. Residents in the area have noted an increase in the number of homeless panhandling and sleeping on the streets in the last six months.
    The coalition offered no direct proof that any evictions were directly attributable to Olympics planning. While a number of hotels that provide housing for the indigent have been closed, some have lost licenses as a result of infractions and criminal activity.
    Officials from the Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games didn’t immediately return calls for comment.
    The coalition noted that Games organizers vowed no one would lose housing as a result of the Olympics. The city’s bid to obtain the 2010 Games pledged to protect rental housing stock, rental costs and the prevention of evictions.
    “Pretty well every one of these promises has been broken,” coalition member Conrad Schmidt said.

— The Associated Press 

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About the Author: Pete Rugh