The Anti-Poverty Committee

The Anti-Poverty Committee

november 2003, Vancouver BC
by Johanne Lapierre and Francis Murchison
click here to see all the pictures

Downtown Vancouver is an appropriate home of the Anti-Poverty Committee whose mission is to benefit the city’s homeless population. Started ten years ago by a group of concerned citizens, themselves homeless, Anti-Pov has been helping people that live on the streets access services such as welfare, homeless shelters, and social housing ever since.

Anti-Pov’s representative told us how, over the last few years, their job has become increasingly hard as government cutbacks have caused a drastic increase in Vancouver’s homeless (75% in the last year alone). The social services sector has been hit the hardest. Instead of increasing to accommodate the growing number of homeless, services have become next to nonexistent. To top it off, April 4th of next year will see the arrival of a two-year limit on welfare for employable individuals. This limit will cut off anywhere from 27,000 (according to the Vancouver Sun) to 50,000 ( according to Anti-Pov).
Anti-Pov doesn’t see homeless people as the cause of the problem in Vancouver, as they say in their newsletter:

“ The Liberal’s brutal policies have forced people to live by any means necessary and so we vow to defend the people by any means necessary!” (Victory Tent City Newsletter #1)

They engage in direct action in order to insure access to social services to any individual who approaches the committee for help. These individuals are accompanied through the process of looking for beds in homeless shelters, applying for social housing, and even to the welfare office by a caseworker. As described to us by James, a long-time volunteer with Anti-pov, the welfare system is intentionally user-unfriendly and having a representative of the committee along when applying for welfare often makes all the difference. The local welfare offices know this organization well, and they know what happens when they refuse a welfare checque to an individual represented by Anti-Pov. Within twenty-four hours they will be visited by a “flying squat” and they don’t like it. A small group of homeless people will camp out in their offices until the applicant is accorded a cheque on the next welfare issue.

In order to pressure the B.C. government to increase social housing, and get rid of the two-year limit, Anti-Pov has mobilized the city’s street people. On July 2nd 2003, a tent-city was set up in Victory Square, a downtown Vancouver war memorial. The camp has been twice legislated out of its location, but has continued expanding, now in two locations, Strathcona park, and Creekside park. When they can, Anti-Pov provides squatters with meals, free clothing, and tents.

some tents at the squat

As Anti-Pov puts it:
“We refuse to remain silent while our brothers and sisters sleep in the street! We refuse to remain invisible while the Liberals throw more of our brothers and sisters into the streets! We will fight back and we will win!” (Victory Tent City Newsletter #2).

The tent cities have brought the poverty of Vancouver’s streets out into the public eye where it must be considered, and the media has begun to focus with increasing frequency on the camp. We visited the tent city near an enormous waterfront golf-ball known as Science World. A small triangle of grass close to the waterfront held an assortment of haphazard shelters. Blue tarps protected all sorts of constructions from frequent rains. The area between the tents was filled with shopping carts, wood, old clothing, and all sorts of other accumulated bric-a-brac. In the slightly cleaner west side of the camp, we met a jovial middle-aged man named Marcel. He invited us into his dining room where we partook in a meal of leftover sushi followed by donuts. He told us how this section of tents was made up of people who work and who stuck together to find some tranquility away from the rowdier drug using crowd that permeates the rest of the camp. “We don’t want to be here,” he said, explaining how people need to see what’s going on and that the homeless aren’t just going to go away.

more and more tents!

Our contact at Anti-Pov told us that the tent city has brought bad publicity to the government and has allowed him to be in direct contact with the offices of Larry Campbell the mayor of Vancouver, and Gordon Campbell the premier of British Columbia. These government officials apparently have both communicated their intentions to Anti-Pov about their goodwill on poverty issues and their intentions to find a feasible solution to the problem. Although they remain doubtful of the government’s intentions to make real changes, James told us that he is convinced that one day there will be no more people living without shelter in the streets of Vancouver.