Last week, a BC Supreme Court judge granted the City of Vancouver an injunction to evict all people living in the recently erected tent city at Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside. This legal battle is a decent indicator of everything that it is wrong with how our society advocates for the rights of the homeless.
The policies implemented by the city do nothing to improve the condition of the homeless, and perpetuate a disturbing pattern of behaviour which treats the homeless as intruders on land that ought to belong to them.
The logic behind the court’s decision is dubious. While acknowledging that the reality of a tent city poses many unique safety concerns such as drug use, open flames, low sanitation standards, and frequent incidents of violence, the court has failed to recognize that these concerns are not resolved simply through eviction, but rather are everyday realities of being homeless.
Similar to city police ushering homeless youth from the downtown prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics, the injunction was less about the welfare of homeless populations and more about removing the ‘social nuisance’ that the city and our society seem to see homelessness as.
We generally implement programs for the homeless that push their problems out of our field of vision. This happens so that we can proceed with our lives without the residual guilt that accompanies being a ‘winner’ in an economic system that favours the lottery of birth, and a political system that has left Aboriginal peoples — who are disproportionately represented in the homeless population — far worse off in society.
City policies treat the homeless as intruders on land that ought to belong to them.
These policies are ineffectual and harm society as a whole. The Canadian Homeless Research Network cites a report estimating that “between 1993 and 2004, Canadian taxpayers spent an estimated $49.5 billion maintaining the status quo on the homeless problem.” The status quo is that the homeless population has a far greater level of mental health problems, and institutionalization in both jails and hospitals.
According to the CBC, current prison costs are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, providing social housing for a basic standard of living costs approximately $200 a month. This research empirically shows that policies to combat the homeless, as opposed to combating homelessness, have little more practical consequence than producing exorbitant costs for society at large.
This is not to say that the court’s decision is without merit. Proponents of the eviction might argue that indoor shelters and increased oversight might substantially improve the welfare of the residents, while others may argue that the shelters will be uncomfortable, dirty, and overcrowded. However, both situations share a glaring commonality.
Both are temporary and thus fail to solve an intrinsic problem in the lives of the homeless: a lack of permanence. Without permanent housing and a basic standard of living for subsistence, these policies are simply maintaining the status quo. Permanence provides an individual with the security and basic conditions necessary to escape a cycle of poverty.
Is Oppenheimer Park a superior option to the city’s proposed temporary shelters? I would argue that it does not matter. The very fact that the issue has devolved to quick-fix solutions for a systemic problem proves that our society has failed in its duty to protect the most vulnerable and at risk.
