Only low-income community organizing will make the DTES a Social Justice Zone

By Ivan Drury

For many years low-income community groups and residents in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) have fought for a place at the planning table, mobilizing around slogans like “nothing about us without us.” But after two years of working on the City’s DTES Local Area Planning Process (LAPP) we know that being at the table is not enough. The first draft of the City plan makes it clear that the DTES LAPP is dominated by Vision Vancouver’s agenda and major real estate developer interests. But there is another way to look at this problem than as a pure defeat: if the DTES is to be made a Social Justice Zone, then it will not be proclaimed by City Hall, it will be made by our low-income communities.

A 5-point plan to make the DTES a Social Justice Zone

We acknowledge that the Downtown Eastside occupies the unceded territories of the Tsleil-Waututh,

(Drawing by Diane Wood)

Musqueam and Squamish Coast Salish nations.

The future of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is being made by super rich real estate investors and developers who are profiting off changing the neighbourhood from a place where low-income people feel at home into yet another fashionable strip mall. While city planners fuel the engines of real estate corporations by approving boutique condo towers, 5,000 people are living in increasingly expensive SRO hotel rooms that are unhealthy, bug/rodent infested and lacking kitchens/private bathrooms. As these SRO hotels become unaffordable, more and more people are pushed out into the streets and shelters. This housing crisis forces Indigenous women, children and others vulnerable to violence to live in danger and isolation. Gentrification, as a displacement pressure, is making these crises worse and, we fear, soon irreversible. 

DTES Community Plan challenges City Hall’s pro-developer planning process

By Ivan Drury

Phoenix at rally for social housing in Victoria BC. (pic. p0stcap)

As the main points of the City’s coming DTES Local Area Plan (LAPP) begin to emerge from the highest offices of city hall, a caucus of low-income people who have been involved in the consultation process around the LAPP are developing their own plan. The City’s Developer Plan will likely prioritize continuing the “revitalization” and “social mix” development of the DTES through making profit for corporations. The caucus’s Community Plan lays out the main points of what City Hall would have to do to make the Downtown Eastside a Social Justice Zone where low-income people are safer and more comfortable and where people come before profit.