The Bosman Hotel houses more than 100 residents with mental health and addiction issues, but faces an uncertain future. Photo by Justin Langille.
Safe and stable housing hangs in the balance for at least 100 Vancouverites with the looming closure of the Bosman Hotel Community.
A joint project between the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and PHS Community Services Society, the Bosman Hotel is a key part of the MHCC’s At Home / Chez Soi experiment to study the link between mental illness and homelessness.
The project has provided over 300 people with mental health or addictions issues access to housing, health and social support services since 2009. One hundred of those participants were also given a place to live in the Bosman.
But the project is ending in 2013, putting the tenants’ future in doubt.
Liz Evans, executive director of the PHS Community Services Society, is working with MHCC, different levels of government and other homeless advocacy organizations to protract the housing beyond next year.
“We are hoping to extend the lease. The owner of the building is willing to do that. This would give us time to work on developing a plan to find decent permanent replacement housing, ideally purpose built and near the existing project,” Evans wrote in an email to Megaphone.
Although she didn't provide Megaphone with numbers, Evans says stable housing at the Bosman has decreased tenant trips to the emergency room and involvement with the courts.
In issue #103 we explore what Canada can learn from Sweden, Norway and Iceland when it comes to protecting sex workers. Can decriminalizing the purchase of sex reduce harm? Find out why former Vancouver city councillor Ellen Woodsworth is standing up for gender equality and better exit services.
Check out Megaphone’s preview of the DOXA documentary festival, which begins today (Friday). We also take a look at the uncertain future of the Bosman Hotel, which houses more than 100 residents with mental health or addiction issues.
David Suzuki tackles the fed’s environmental review process, Poncho ‘Party’ Sanches sees success in your stars, and we walk you through the best arts events in town. Plus poetry from our community writing workshops.
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For the past four years Constable Jodyne Keller has been helping the city’s homeless with housing and social assistance forms, giving them socks and blankets or simply letting them know that she’s looking out for them. As the Vancouver Police Department's homeless outreach coordinator, she’s leading a change in the way the police respond to the city’s growing homeless population.
But as she reaches out to the homeless community, she’s met some resistance from fellow police officers and homeless advocates. Keller’s challenge is not only to get the homeless off the street, but to also change the way other police officers interact with the homeless community and convince advocates that they’re all on the same side.
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In issue #102, Megaphone goes on a ride-along with the Vancouver Police Department’s homeless outreach coordinator. It’s a new relationship between the police force and the city’s vulnerable population that has some homeless advocates singing its praises and others questioning whether it's the best use of resources.
Also in this issue, we review a book of poetry and a book of short stories from two talented Vancouver-based writers (and Megaphone volunteers). We also look at the crumbling Missing Women's Inquiry and we give you a guide to the city's best art events.
And don't miss out on David Suzuki's wise words about Canada's marine ecosystems or this edition's horoscopes. Plus vendor voices, profiles and poetry from our community writing workshops. All this and more!
At the very top of the spiral marble staircase in the Carnegie Centre, past the century-old stained glass windows depicting Milton, Shakespeare, Spencer, Burns, Scott and Moore, there’s a small, light-filled classroom. Inside, 10 people sit around a table holding pens, scraps of paper in front of them. This is the Thursdays Writing Collective, a weekly workshop run by SFU Writer’s Studio alumnus Elee Kraljii Gardiner. But this isn’t your typical week at Thursdays, because today Kraljii Gardiner’s handing out contributor copies of V6A.
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Flaunting a varied roster of contributors who range from emerging to well-known, a new anthology named after the Downtown Eastside's postal code, V6A, unmasks the multifaceted personality of Vancouver's most misunderstood neighbourhood. In the lastest issue of Megaphone, we talk with some of the writers who reflect the neighbourhood's hyper-varied inhabitants.
Also in this issue, we look a photo project that explores health, housing and HIV; David Suzuki takes a shot at the religious right; we get ready for our Voices of the Street literary issue launch by showcasing some of the new work from the featured artists; and much more.
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Herb Varley has packed a lot into his 27 years of life. He’s worked in construction, in warehouses and in the Museum of Anthropology. He’s coached basketball, conducted theatre classes, and toured B.C. and the prairie provinces as an actor. On top of all of that, he’s a green belt in jiu jitsu and sits on the board of directors for the Urban Native Youth Association.
The only thing Varley hasn’t done, it seems, is graduate from high school.
Varley, a First Nations man of Nuu-chah-nulth and Nisga’a descent, is not alone in this predicament. The high school graduation rate for Aboriginal people in B.C. topped out in the 2009/10 school year at 51 per cent, below the much healthier 82 per cent for all students. In Vancouver it’s much grimmer, with just 32.1 per cent leaving school with their Dogwood Diploma compared to 82.5 per cent of students overall.
But reversing more than a century of racism and inequality in education that Vancouver’s Aboriginal peoples face is a long, slow process.
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Issued twice-monthly and organized entirely by volunteers, the Carnegie newsletter is one of the Downtown Eastside’s oldest independent media outlets at 25 years running. But it’s pulling its last copy off the presses next month thanks to a cut to their provincial gaming grant.
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Megaphone's 100th issue is hot off the presses and in our vendors hands this week! We know, we don't look a day over 20, and our content is just as fresh as the day we started (Just don't mention the wrinkles and grays. We're sensitive.)
We celebrate our landmark issue by giving props to the strong network of North American and international street papers that have made street news one of the strongest forms of printed media around today. From Nashville to Sweden, Japan to South Africa, street news offers low-income and homeless people dignified work and an outlet for their voice, and offers our customers strong, independent journalism and an insider's perspective on poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction.
Also in this issue, we look at the education barriers facing Aboriginal youth in Vancouver, the Carnegie Newsletter publishes what could be their final issue after 25 years, and local non-profit film company Reel Changes promotes social justice issues through film and charity donations. Issue 100 includes all of our regulars, too, like David Suzuki, vendor profiles, event listings, poetry from our writing workshops, and more.
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Many members of the feminist community take the position that any and all sex work is exploitive and should be abolished. But Katrina Pacey, always one to take the road less travelled, has dedicated her professional life to fighting for more rights for sex workers. Within the feminist community, it’s a controversial position that has caused her to lose some supporters over the years. But it could also help save the lives of thousands of vulnerable women across Canada.
Pacey is a founding member of Pivot Legal Society, an award-winning Downtown Eastside legal advocacy organization. She and her street-level sex worker clients have been fighting to have Canada’s prostitution laws struck down. As the ongoing Missing Women’s Inquiry has shown, the country’s current criminal laws have left sex workers vulnerable to the prejudice of the police and exposed to horrific violence.
As Pacey’s fight winds its way up from the streets of Vancouver to the Supreme Court of Canada, the outcome could finally offer sex workers the safety and protection that has been tragically lacking for decades.
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