DISPLACEMENT = DEATH

A mass decampment of Hastings Tent City is looming.

If you support our unhoused neighbours, demand the city drop its decampment plans.

Evictions like this violate human rights. #StopTheSweeps

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Support the call to #StopTheSweeps and urge every government representative to do the same!

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Dear [recipient position will go here] [recipient name will go here],

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Earlier this week, news broke regarding a leaked plan from Vancouver city staff. The plan details a massive surge in police enforcement to signal “an escalation in approach.”

Pivot Legal staff have heard credible reports that this ramp-up in escalation could begin as early as Wednesday.

With the looming threat of a VPD-led operation to displace people sheltering along Hastings Street, we are calling on all levels of government to halt this plan. There are very real safety risks that people sheltering along Hastings are experiencing – but mass displacement does nothing to remedy fire safety, toxic drug supply, gender-based violence, or other pressing public safety issues. Instead, it will exacerbate the stressful conditions that people are already forced to navigate daily.

Advocates working directly with unhoused community members have repeatedly noted – there simply are not enough suitable shelter and housing options in Vancouver. Without adequate housing options, this latest plan for forced displacement simply recycles the familiar churn of homelessness, constantly circulating poverty and displacement in the DTES, without ever resolving the underlying conditions. As Pivot noted in its 2022 report on the use of street sweeps: “residents are constantly forced to make difficult choices regarding personal property, making decisions without any sense of security and the constant potential for enforcement.”

The City of Vancouver’s latest plan for Hastings Street will lead to mass, ongoing displacement of people who rely on public space – without any assurance that adequate, dignified, and permanent housing options will ever be made available. This is simply unconscionable. This is also a clear violation of the human rights of people sheltering outside.

Every level of government must commit to upholding human rights and the rights of displaced Indigenous people – who comprised 39% of Vancouver’s homeless population in the most recent point-in-time count. Displacing people who live in poverty – with nowhere to go – signals the City’s willingness to condemn our most marginalized neighbours to the devastating consequences of displacement, which may include death.

Rather than continue the failed government strategy of constant displacement, I ask elected representatives, bureaucrats, and human rights advocates to ensure that every unhoused community member is treated with respect and dignity – which means an immediate cessation of the City of Vancouver’s Two Stage Approach to Ending Encampment.

I support the call to #StopTheSweeps and urge every government representative to do the same.

Regards,
[your name will go here]
[your email address will go here] [your location will go here]

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