The homelessness situation in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is out of control mostly because people do not have their basic needs met. Here is a brief rundown of recent events:

• Two SRO hotels (Vogue and Lucky Lodge) evicted their long term vulnerable residents
• Fires have made at least four SRO hotels uninhabitable, and two people were killed in one fire
• Hundreds of people are tenting on Hastings St. without basic sanitation and washrooms, and promised washrooms haven't materialized
• A leaflet was distributed, threatening to torch all the tents and their residents as well as Insite
• Tensions are rising between housed and unhoused residents
• The city is threatening to make the tenters on Hastings move to nowhere

COPE is calling for immediate short, medium and long term actions to deal with this multi-level crisis.

In the short term:

• Immediately provide washrooms for tenters on the street.
• Close off some side streets and/or find a space like a parking lot where people who are tenting on Hastings can go and be, and where we can provide washrooms, water, electricity and basic sanitation, overdose prevention and cultural programming. 
• Fund peers to organize and maintain these safer places.
• Provide real safe supply that anyone who uses street drugs can access so they don't die.

Medium term:

• All three levels of government start acquiring hotels and/or any empty apartment buildings that can be offered immediately to unhoused people for dignified housing. 
• If none or insufficient numbers are for sale, immediately acquire a site or sites for tiny house villages, and either buy or build tiny houses for unsheltered people so they can at least be dry and have a door to lock by winter. Provincial and federal governments should pay for this but if they won't the City should.

Long term:

• Plan for thousands of new units of dignified new housing, with a timeline for when we will actually have enough so no one has to be unhoused. Senior government should pay for this with the City providing the land. 
• The province needs to raise welfare and disability rates to meet the real cost of living.

Read COPE's full statement here.