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W2TV: Raise the Rates MLA Welfare Challenge
Coast Salish Territory – 600 block Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver BC. Near the local office of the BC Ministry of Housing and Social Development.
On May 26, 2011, a group named Raise the Rates launches the MLA Welfare Challenge. A Challenge to BC MLA’s to see if any will live on the province’s rate of $610 for a single person.
Raise the Rates states an MLA accepting the challenge would be engaging in real action reseach and gain some understanding of what life on welfare is like.
It has been 25 years since Vancouver MLA and later Speaker of the House Emery Barnes spent 7 weeks living on the welfare rate of the time. Among those issuing the challenge to MLA’s is Constance Barnes, daughter of the late Mr. Barnes and a CoV Parks Board Commissioner. She explained with pride her father’s act to support a raise in welfare rates.
Based on his experience, Emery Barnes stated that the welfare rate for a single person without disabilities should be $700. That is 25 years ago and equivalent to $1,290 today, more than double what is the present welfare rate.
Bob Hopwood of Raise the Rates states they will provide MLA’s support and advice and work with them to ensure the month is a valuable and insightful experience.
As the legislature is in session until June 2, Raise the Rates states after that would be a good time to start with July 1 being the latest. MLA’s have until June 16 to respond. Raise the Rates commits to provide $610 to one MLA from each party and link them to people on welfare to hear their stories and experiences.
As MLA’s determine the welfare rates, they should be able to survive on them as 90,000 BC families and individuals do. Along with the MLA Welfare Challenge, Raise the Rates also has demands as Jean Swanson explains.
By taking the challenge, MLA’s would find current welfare rates for most does not provide enough for nutritous food or adequate shelter let alone hygiene or transportation.
The average rent for a one bedroom apartment in Vancouver is $1,012 a month. Even in the lowest rent area of Vancouver the average rent is $805 a month. Raise the Rates is a coalition of over 20 organisation in BC concerned about poverty and nomelessness in the province.
For W2TV, Sid Tan reporting from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver BC.
Making up Methadone: International perspectives on inequality, social justice and methadone maintenance therapy
This event was part of a workshop which brings an international group of researchers to Vancouver to discuss the social and cultural dimensions of methadone maintenance therapy for opioid dependency.
An evening of presentations and dialogue focused on key dilemmas connected to this longstanding but often still controversial treatment. Lived experience, inequality and social justice are themes considered from the vantage point of different global contexts.
April Smith of AHA MEDIA is very honored to be a Keynote Speaker at Northern Voice conference 11 at UBC
April Smith and AHA MEDIA will be presenting a Keynote Speech at Northern Voice Conference on Friday May 13, 2011
April Smith, Hendrik Beune and Peter Davies make the letters AHA with their fingers while at Woodwards Housing in Vancouver Downtown Eastside (DTES)
April is a citizen journalist and co-founder of AHA MEDIA.
“I’m a citizen journalist and co-founder of AHA MEDIA. I have also been involved with W2’s Fearless City Mobile Project – which has presented here at Northern Voice in previous years – and I facilitate social media literacy classes at LifeSkills Centre and Oppenheimer Park. In my teaching work, I encourage and promote peer training to support education in technology.
I believe, if my neighbors in the Downtown Eastside are able to access communication and technology – as people do in other neighborhoods – I feel it will help create positive change. I know this because it’s helped me create a better life for myself.
I work with W2, which is active in this area of breaking the digital divide and believes access to technology and communication is a human right. For those who have been following, W2 is finally opening a 10,000 square foot community media centre at the Woodward’s Atrium. From this fabulous new space, W2 will help people with their digital storytelling, with a crossmedia lab that broadcasts on CJSF and Coop Radieo, and Novus and Shaw Cable, and the internet.
Programs like Fearless City Mobile and this new media centre put technology in the hands of people and will help more people overcome marginalization by connecting people with society and supporting their self-representation. I know this work is important for transforming people’s lives because it’s where I began. This is my story.
I am cheerleader for positive community building and outreach. Through art, music, and community promotion, I am a self-taught advocate for social justice and positive neighborhood unity. This is really important given that the voices of our marginalized groups are usually mediated by others, rarely do we represent ourselves. Out of W2’s Fearless project was born our social enterprise ” AHA MEDIA.”
AHA MEDIA is a small business that supports social justice by creating spaces for people to represent themselves.
My interests are documentation of daily life in the Downtown Eastside, highlighting the positive, while bringing to light the injustices that occur in the neighborhood.
I have filmed observations, both subversive and situational, over the last 3 years.
Using social media, new media, mobile technology, photos, videos and blogs, I concentrate on sharing the stories and voices of the otherwise-silenced inner city community. Through our website AHAMedia.ca we reach our neighbors, reach Vancouverites from other neighborhoods, plus a global audience
April Smith, Hendrik Beune and Richard Czaban make the letters AHA with their fingers while at Woodwards Housing in Vancouver Downtown Eastside (DTES)
I hope to inspire everyone at Northern Voice!
DVD Release of With Glowing Hearts the Movie in Vancouver!!!!!
With Glowing Hearts is a documentary about social media creating social change filmed during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
See the new trailer for our recently completed Feature Length Documentary Film. An intimate and inspiring portrait of social media for social change. This is the #van2010 Winter Olympics social media story.
AHA MEDIA visit inside Fraser Street Shelter at 677 E Broadway by Fraser St in Vancouver
AHA MEDIA together with Wendy Pedersen and Dave Murray of Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) visit the Fraser Street Shelter at 677 E Broadway by Fraser St in Vancouver that is due to be closed down on Friday April 29, 2011
Homeless will start Tent City to demand shelter
Vancouver: Five emergency shelters are scheduled to close because of lack of funding and commitment from the city and province starting on April 27th. Homeless reps from three shelters with the support of housing advocates announced their intention to start tent cities outside shelters if funding is not renewed within 24 hours.
These 3 shelters are slowly emptying out and scheduled to close immediately:
747 Cardero St (Wednesday)
1442 Howe St (Thursday)
677 E Broadway @ Fraser St (Friday)
There are about 20-30 people remaining in these 3 shelters. Residents in these shelters lack options once their shelters close. They can’t rent apartments because of stigma from landlords. No social housing is available. Many can’t bear to go back to an infested, unsafe SRO in areas where they used to use drugs or have been “red zoned” by police.
As Marta from the Howe shelter said, “I’m going to stay right here in the alley. We are here because we don’t want to be alone. We got nobody. Everyone else has a family, we don’t. This is our family.” Marta said she doesn’t buy the excuse that governments don’t have money. She explained that each person in her shelter is eligible for $375 a month for rent on welfare and if you multiply this by 40 people per shelter that means BC Housing already has $15,000 a month to spend to keep her shelter open.
“I can’t go to an SRO”, said Chase from the Cardero Shelter. “I’ll go crazy and just end up back on the street. If this shelter closes, I guess I’ll head to the Super Value parking lot. That’s where we came from before they opened this place up.” “If I lose this place, these regular meals and my guaranteed spot here, then I’ll go back to selling drugs to survive,” said Deanna, also from the Cardero Shelter. Don from the Fraser shelter who is about 65 years old said: “Two women near IGA on Broadway got me to come here about a month ago. I’ve been outside a long time. I guess if they close this, I’ll be in the doorways, back laneways and behind restaurants.” Kerry from Howe said: If this closes I’ll find an abandoned house. I have my Coleman stove. I hope nobody will notice me. If this shuts down, the government will spend more money on corrections. People here will be panhandling, living in the allies. You would think they would rather we stay in the shelter.”
Shelter residents are under stress from poor health and because of the impending closure, but despite that, there is a strong spirit among many who want to stick together and form a vigil in front of the shelter to make their concerns heard. Advocates have joined together to defend shelter residents from losing their ground, their networks of support and these makeshift homes.
Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project said, “We are mortified that we have to fight for these shelters every year. Premier Clark promised to regularize funding for shelters. She needs to show she’s in charge and get funding within 24 hours plus commit to building 2000 social housing units a year in BC. We need the Mayor to live up to his promises to end homelessness, buy land for social housing and cancel his office renovations in order to pay to keep these shelters open as long as needed.”
Gail Harmer, Council of Senior Citizens of BC, talked to shelter residents and asks: “Do Vancouverites realize that increasingly seniors are among the people using these temporary shelters? We simply cannot afford housing costs even after we sell all our possessions and go without medications and food!! We appreciate the ‘care’ and ‘community’ of these temporary 24 hour shelters. With their closing, the housing options offered by BC Housing are less appealing than the streets! Can you imagine?!”
“Last spring, the City and Province shut down 5 shelters. Now they are shutting down 5 more, kicking people who have nowhere else to go onto the street. There is no good reason to do this. Everyone suffers. This cruel and precarious situation has to change,” said Tristan Markle of Vanact! “Mayor Robertson won power on the backs of the poor and working-poor, promising to make Vancouver affordable and to end homelessness. But the City is becoming less affordable every day, and the numbers of homeless are only increasing. We need a big change.”
“Here we are with shelters closing in the same week the City of Vancouver passes a law saying it is illegal to put up shelter on a public street,” said Doug King, lawyer at Pivot Legal Society. “The lack of understanding is appalling.”
For more information, contact:
Wendy Pedersen, Carnegie Action Project (604) 839-0379
Nate Crompton, Vanact: 604-700-2309
Doug King, Pivot lawyer 778-898-6349
Advocates:
Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity
BC Association of People on Methadone
Carnegie Community Action Project
Citywide Housing Coalition
Council of Senior Citizens of BC (COSCO)
DTES Neighbourhood Council
DTES Women’s Centre Power to Women
Gallery Gachet
Indigenous Action Movement
Pivot Legal Society
St. Augustine’s social justice committee
Streams of Justice
Teaching Support Staff Union Social Justice Committee
Urban Subjects
Vanact!
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users
Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society
Background info:
1) Homeless Count
According to the 2010 homeless count, the number of homeless in Vancouver has increased 12% from 2008, from 1576 to 1762. The count shows that the homeless continue to be disproportionately Aboriginal, older and in poor health. Until now, most homeless people have been able to find shelter beds; the closure of these shelters will mean more than 600 people will sleep on the streets of Vancouver.
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/housing/pdf/VancouverHomelessCount2010.pdf
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