 Non-profits and Ken Sim's former chief of staff say vow was broken over Hastings Street encampment | | |  | | | Every Wednesday morning, around 40 stakeholders on the Downtown Eastside meet to address urgent issues, share resources and contacts and talk about ways to work in partnership with the City of Vancouver.
It’s called the Coordinated Community Response Network (CCRN), and representative Steven Johnston said that before police, firefighters and the city moved in to clear the Hastings Street encampment, they thought they had an understanding with the city.
“There was an expectation that folks wouldn't be decamped until housing supports were in place,” he said.
“So I think it was a surprise that the city chose to move when they did, given that those units were still a month or two away from being built or ready for occupation.”Where did that expectation come from?
None other than the mayor of Vancouver’s chief of staff, Kareem Allam, in a meeting with most members of the CCRN and almost every ABC councillor days before Sim was sworn in.
“I went on the record to the entire room and reiterated that it would not be our approach, that during the entire four years of ABC, we would not be sending in the police to decamp Hastings,” he said.
But Allam left the mayor’s office in early February. Two months later, citing safety issues, the city felt the need to break that expectation.
Now, he’s speaking out, saying that while it’s incumbent on the federal government to provide more support, the city has made things more difficult in the short term.
“These populations have been dispersed, and my concern … is that they’ve been separated from the services that they were relying on.
“This is complex, but the second you start to displace people from their day-to-day services, their outcomes get worse.”
It’s a point echoed by Johnston.
“In a lot of cases, we’ve lost contact with clients that we've built relationships with that we have trust with,” he said.
“Folks are being driven further away from services and supports, and they're finding different places where they feel safe to set up tents, which is exacerbating tensions in surrounding areas.”
One of those areas is Yaletown, where a number of people took to social media this week to express concern that more people were camping and smoking fentanyl next to the overdose prevention site.
“It’s been well established that the [overdose site] doesn’t have the full suite of services to address the issues that the neighbourhood has been experiencing,” said Allam.
“So the displacement and disbursement is a challenge.”
The city government has changed. But the tradeoffs to different types of actions are the same as ever. | | |  | | | 2. Surrey | After months of deliberation, the provincial government is set to make its decision on policing at 9:30 Friday morning. Revert to the RCMP, and it means expensive severance payments to hundreds of Surrey Police Service employees. Stick with SPS, and the province risks a war with B.C.’s second-biggest city in overriding them on its biggest issue. We’ll see what happens!
Read more | | | |  | | | 3. Port Coquitlam | Brad West announced that his city would be fixing every pothole in the city a week after saying pools would be free all summer, and the predictable calls for him to be Mayor of Everything reigned on social media. We’ll note once again that while mid-sized suburban cities can move much faster than bigger cities can, they can take tips on how to proactively get wins on basic service delivery. Read more in the Tri-City News | | | | | |  | | | 4. Chilliwack | The latest situation Illustrating tensions around homeless issues across the province was in Chilliwack, where a video of the Vancouver-based Union Gospel Mission dropping off someone went viral. Mayor Ken Popove alleged it was proof homeless people are intentionally shipped to the Fraser Valley, with UGM providing plenty of context to the incident that didn’t exactly stop the mayor's rhetoric.
Read more in CTV News | | | |  | | | 5. Kelowna | Artificial Intelligence and municipal government: where can they come together? The City of Kelowna is among the municipalities fastest out of the gate, using new technology to try to speed up the permitting process. Whether it works or not will be eagerly watched by plenty of municipalities — and it’s very likely that different departments in different cities will have their own experiments in due time. Read more in the Vancouver Sun | | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for this this week! In the meantime, check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
