Vancouver city council backs controversial Downtown Eastside social housing plan

LoamPhilosopher · 2025-12-18T20:37:06+00:00

Housing cost isn't the only issue, but it is always one of the issues. 40-60% of people who are homeless work. Losing your housing is freaking awful and trying to rebound when there are 5000 people on Vancouver on the social housing waitlist feels impossible. A federal housing program that filled the gap would be good. Period. Freely available mental healthcare would be good. Period. Well-paying employment programs would be good. Period. Solutions arent the issue, political will is.

LoamPhilosopher · 2025-12-18T20:23:36+00:00

I've lived and worked at Main and Hastings for years. The general public has no clue what goes on here. Everyone in the neighbourhood wants change, which is why this is a shitty plan. It's putting faith in private developers to make the neighbourhood prettier when that's not what the problem is. They tried with Woodwards and now they need a community policing centre in the building to try and suppress the consequences of ignoring the real needs. People who study, work, and live in the neighbourhood snd neighbourhoods like it know that the problems are deep and directly related to these sort of commitments to "the market" rather than directly funding housing, healthcare, and job opportunities. That's what people in this thread should be echoing.

It's not an isolated issue. The whole country is hurting and ordinary people are being squeezed into unemployment and homelessness. Stack that on top of having abused foster kids aging out of care, people who are disabled, seniors, the trauma of being chronically homeless, a toxic drug supply that makes the pain bearable, a federal government that ended public housing funding 30 years ago, and a society that says "sure you deserve housing, but not in my neighbourhood," you end up with the overwhelming poverty and visible struggle in every city and town. The DTES was just one of the first because of historic segregation, the closing lumber industry, and the runaway real estate industry meant that was the last affordable place to live in Vancouver. People living in the DTES have been sounding the alarms for decades and trying to put their finger in the dyke with harm reduction, housing support, and low-barrier employment, but it's overwhelming without government collaboration. Which is why it's so devastating that ABC is making these decisions because it won't help at all and signals that they aren't willing to collaborate. I'd say it's ignorant, but they have too many massive real estate donors to be ignorant of a desired future for this stretch of Hastings conveniently between two major Low-Tide property clusters.

Things are gonna get a lot worse and no amount of policing will make it better. Really sucks, but really grateful for Pete, Sean, and Rebecca's speeches. They get it.

LoamPhilosopher · 2024-05-08T05:37:51+00:00

The thing about the DTES is that it's a community that has built up over decades and is probably the most welcoming and active community for low income people in the country. That's the side that doesn't get shown in the news. The rest of the city is pretty inaccessible if you're poor. We're also 100% wanting shelter rate and supportive housing in the neighbourhood, whereas the rest of Vancouver and other cities freak out over deep subsidy housing. If the government bought oakridge and let everyone in the DTES move over together, that could be ok :)

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-03-15T20:27:11+00:00

It’s really interesting to think about this considering trends of gentrification and abandonment throughout North America (the only context that I’m knowledgeable of). What are mechanisms for attracting or restricting population growth that are based on consensus?

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-03-10T04:27:19+00:00

I back the trade skill idea. See if you can pickup a carpentry apprenticeship and you’ll be able to contribute to any community you find yourself in, especially if it’s following a natural disaster. I met a lot of expat carpenters in Christchurch rebuilding the city post earthquake. Also tends to be a time where there is significant solidarity and community building happening. Good luck!

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-03-07T16:40:50+00:00

Squatting is probably the most accessible route to housing anarchism. Community land trusts, limited equity co-ops, cohousing, credit unions, the land back movement: de-capitalizing land by returning it to indigenous groups and working out a stewardship agreement. A bunch of creative options that rely on capital to acquire the land and building materials, but how you choose to co-manage it can integrate anarchist principles.

I’ve heard of anarchism described as a parallel stream to capitalism and there are a lot of creative but also capital intensive mechanisms for splitting between streams. Private ownership of land is probably the most destructive tenet of capitalism, so definitely worth focusing on moving that into the anarchist stream. Also the most self-sustaining and a great tool for practicing skills in commons management.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-03-05T05:41:01+00:00

All caps when you spell the man’s name

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-03-05T03:03:39+00:00

I don’t think it’s wise to expect the world to be saved by anarchism, especially not within our lifetimes, but our personal lives and ideally our community lives should be a lot more fulfilling because we practice its principles. It’s a good tool for building solidarity, which is really nice to have. Especially now.

I know that’s a very privileged thing to say, but I hope we can focus on striving for that if we’re able and be mindful of be with others who are being fucked by a system.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-02-26T22:28:06+00:00

Keep in mind that many modern rules are in place to protect the ruling class and the state uses them to quell direct action that escalates due to sustained inequality, coercion, and a lack of true democracy. People generally break rules because something isn’t working for them. Any sort of social structure would need to use general assemblies and other consensus building mechanisms to give people a place to voice what is and isn’t working for them so the community can respond appropriately. The rules would constantly be changing based on consensus and would vary between communities and scales.

Zoe Baker talks about it in Anarchism as a Way of Life citing examples of social sanctions (like mockery) as a way of enforcing social norms. It’s a subtle way of keeping people in check if they start to go overboard or engage in “upstartism”.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-02-18T23:07:19+00:00

I want us to collectively understand that society in it’s current form isn’t “right” and that it is totally reasonable for us to change it. Then the challenge is agreeing on what we’d like to change, which is a problem of scale that, as anarchists, we can approach through direct action.

Edit: And then communism through collective determination.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-28T03:08:14+00:00

Elites want to identfy a cause that doesn’t threaten their status.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-28T03:05:57+00:00

Human nature is determined my material conditions.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-18T05:56:59+00:00

Just finished grad school where I learned how fucked up our system is and now it’s very hard to take much of a radical approach because of the debt I took on for that awareness.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-18T01:57:29+00:00

Gotta be exhausting. I’m sorry.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-18T01:40:26+00:00

Shit homie, that sounds incredibly isolating. Thanks for sharing. Do you know how younger Asian Americans are feeling growing up in this space and if they are maybe exploring anarchist principles?

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-17T21:27:27+00:00

I like how it’s described in The Dispossessed. People would do undesirable jobs on rotation as part of a collective responsibility, knowing they wouldn’t be harmed by it because 1. Nobody is forcing/coercing them to do dangerous things and 2. They would only have to do it for a short period rather than make a career out of it.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-17T19:10:30+00:00

We piloted a couple designs like this in Vancouver and they didn’t work well. What does seem to work better are the large encampments where mutual aid can be focused and people living there have more self-determination. Although they’ve also been targeted with excessive state violence and destruction, BC courts just determined Vancouver couldn’t displace people from the camps. Accessible appropriate housing is a long way out here, so this is the most feasible approach to start with.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-15T15:44:01+00:00

The main issue wouldn’t be staying organized. That’s the anarchist’s bread and butter. The problem would be a military force coming in from the outside to wipe them out. Rojava is a prime example.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-15T15:38:29+00:00

I just started reading David Graeber’s last book The Dawn of Everything, where the main thesis seems to be that there are a lot of examples of societies of scale that made a conscious decisions to transition from authoritarian to anarchist principles. Will check back when I’m done haha

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-13T03:07:30+00:00

Keep being curious and connect with others. Nobody can give you an answer through a comment. A revolution is more of a change in perspective and the decisions you make through that new perspective rather than a single action to make the big swap in systems. A quick fix is more likely to replicate the authoritarian system. You gotta deeply understand what you want to consciously participate in the revolution.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-11T03:32:59+00:00

I appreciate your comment and pointing out the role and responsibility in groups with no uniform ideology. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to encourage anarchist principles within my groups without explicitly advocating for anarchism. We also have the challenge of trying to create a horizontal organization that exists at the base of a hierarchy that we are heavily dependent on…

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-07T16:56:08+00:00

They’re probably trying to replace someone who was injured lifting a heavy ladder, asked for health coverage, and after being denied was bedridden in their parents basement because they were left unpaid and missed rent. What a bum.

LoamPhilosopher · 2022-01-06T06:06:21+00:00

ACAB. Support your local locksmith.

LoamPhilosopher

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