'Vancouver must do better': 700+ academics decry DTES decampment in open letter

Hundreds of Canadian academics are banding together to decry the dismantling of a homeless encampment in the country’s poorest postal code.

More than 700 people signed “An Open Letter from Academics Against Vancouver’s encampment evictions” in response to the city’s efforts to remove all tents and structures from East Hastings Street.

The letter is addressed to 25 B.C. politicians, including the premier, Housing Minister, Health Minister, Vancouver’s mayor, the entirety of city council, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 114.

“We are opposed to the inhumane and harmful forced displacement the City of Vancouver has undertaken to decamp the Downtown Eastside (DTES), and to the involvement of police in decampments,” the letter reads.

Efforts to dismantle the encampment began April 5, when city staff moved into the East Hastings area with the support of dozens of police officers.

At the time, there were an estimated 80 tents and structures in the encampment—down from the peak of 180 last summer when the fire chief first issued an order for their removal.

At a press conference later, Vancouver’s top officials argued the move was necessary to address growing safety concerns and fire hazards, while acknowledging there aren’t alternative housing options for all those who will be displaced.

The move had been anticipated for days, after internal city documents were leaked by the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), which rationalized the tent city takedown was necessary to “reset behaviour.”

Academics behind the open letter call it “a preposterous strategy” and “victim blaming” language.

“To say the Hastings tent city and the survival strategies that come with it are the ‘cause’ of the problem is to ignore the reality that they were the effect of a very real problem of systemic policy failure that impacts us all but that only happens to be most visible in the Downtown Eastside.

Instead of removing tents and structures from the DTES, academic are calling on the mayor, council and city staff to redirect public resources to “creating, maintaining and preserving the affordability of dignified, non-carceral forms of permanent housing for encampment residents.”

In addition, the letter implores city workers represented by CUPE Local 1004 to refuse to do the work.

“Vancouver must do better to uphold the human right to housing and to health for all residents,” academics wrote. “Supporting revanchist vendettas through decampments is therefore ultimately nothing less than an act of collective self harm,” the letter concludes.