More than 200 demonstrators marched on Saturday through Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to protest a lack of social housing and to call on government to raise the welfare so poor people can afford a room.
It was one of several housing protests across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley on Saturday, as activists occupied a recently “demovicted” apartment building in Burnaby and a new homeless camp was erected in Abbotsford.
In Vancouver, protesters marched to the Woodward’s building on West Hastings Street, the site of a tent city occupation in 2002. Many called on the government to raise the welfare shelter allowance.
Barbara Nepinak and her partner Derek Lacquette live on welfare in a single room occupancy hotel. But with their rent at $600 a month and welfare amounts of $375 each per month for housing, they must rely on food banks and odd jobs to eat.
For a month, they have been living in a tiny room with one small window at the Brandiz Hotel on East Hastings because they cannot afford a basement suite. They have no kitchen in their room or communal kitchen, and Nepinak, 47, says the building is always dirty, the toilet doesn’t work, and their room is infested with bugs.
Nepinak, a mother of six children who live elsewhere, says life is a daily battle against hunger, cockroaches, drug-users and violence from those who patron the bar downstairs.
“It’s so terrible that I don’t want to sleep there anymore,” she said, speaking before the march began at Oppenheimer Park.
But with her partner on disability for mental illness, they have difficulty finding steady work — and the wait for social housing, according to social housing advocates, is between three and five years.
Karen Ward, spokeswoman with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, said Brandiz is one of the worst SROs and at $600 month is unaffordable for anyone on welfare. For those on their own without a partner, it’s impossible, she said.
Ward said to fulfill basic food security needs, people need about $220 a month. That’s more than double the $70 Nepinak and her partner budget for food.
She said the lineups at food banks are growing longer every year. According to the Provincial Health Services Authority, the number of people in B.C. who rely on food banks grew by 28 per cent between 2008 and 2015.
“Food security is a major issue obviously when you have nothing left from your support cheque after you pay your outrageous rent for for a one-room unit. There is nothing left for food, transportation. You can’t afford a phone.”
Ward said for those who live on welfare, disability, or old age pension, finding housing is near impossible in Vancouver. Welfare recipients have been receiving $375 for shelter since 2007.
“It needs to be a least double that amount,” she said, adding that the average rate of an SRO hotel is around $475 but can run up to as much as $900 for one room.
Two years ago, protesters pitched tents in Oppenheimer Park for about four months in what they say was an alternative to living in cockroach-infested SROs.
In September 2002, about 50 protesters occupied the then-abandoned Woodward’s building. After they were forced to move following a court injunction, they set up tents on the sidewalk for three months.
Meanwhile, in Burnaby, evicted residents and activists occupied an apartment building at 5025 Imperial St. on Saturday.
Natalie Knight, a spokeswoman for Alliance Against Displacement, a group which advocates for displaced residents in Burnaby, said about 15-20 people have set up tents at the building in the Metrotown area. They hung banners from the roof reading “Stop Demovictions,” and “Hands off Tent Cities.”
“We call it demovictions, which is where tenants get evicted so that the buildings can be demolished to build high-rise condos. People are being displaced and many of them are from these three-storey walk-up buildings that historically have housed low-income people. They are in really precarious positions now where they have to go to shelters or stay with relatives,” said Knight.
Also Saturday, the homeless activists known as the Drug War Survivors said a new protest camp had opened in Abbotsford. A camp had previously been set up in the city in 2013 to protest a lack of housing for a growing number of homeless people there. The city later came under fire when it dumped chicken manure on the camp.
Elsewhere, an estimated 100 campers remain in a tent city behind the courthouse in Victoria. On Saturday, the province erected fences around the camp, four days after a judge ordered it to be shut down. The B.C. Supreme Court has said campers must leave by Aug. 8.
