The third world.......Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and Canada's homeless epidemic.

A UN official has been touring Canada, including Vancouver's downtown Eastside, and I think he's a little shocked at what he's seeing.

The Federal Government has estimated the number of Homeless in Canada, at 150, 000, but an Independent study says it's more than likely twice that amount. And growing, too quickly. With the Olympics in Vancouver and some rather disturbing evictions happening, it will only get worse.

VANCOUVER He's only half way through a national tour examining homelessness in Canada, but a UN official says the truth about the issue is disturbing and far worse than statistics suggest.

Miloon Kothari arrived in what's commonly known as Canada's poorest postal code on Tuesday as part of his two-week trip through Canada as the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing.

How long have people been speaking out about the issues on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver? Too bloody long. Gordon Campbell the and the Mayor of Vancouver are now preparing for the World to come to the Olympics. And the Homeless and poor, and the drug addicted that live in the city are now seen as a 'PR issue.'
The Top cop in Vancouver is also in on the act now. His brilliant plan is Provincial deportation.

Vancouver's police chief thinks he has a novel solution to that city's property crime problem. He wants to send out-of-province criminals "back home."
Chief Constable Jim Chu asked the city's business leaders to help buy one-way tickets for what he calls a "home-for-the-holidays initiative."

I guess it's not quite Syria, or Siberia, although the streets in Toronto can be bitter cold in the winter. Will we soon be needing passports to move from Province to Province?

And what will their definition of "Criminal" be? Loitering? Panhandling? Being seen during the Olympics and cluttering up the scenery? I vote for the latter.

Jason Gratl, president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, told the CP that police should concentrate on policing instead of travel arrangements.
"This air miles scheme is laughable," he said. "It's a business executive answer to a serious policing issue."

The board of trade is collecting fricking AIR MILES to enforce this dizzy dumbass scheme.

More than that though, this is a trend. This is business as usual for Olympic planners. Atlanta.

Meanwhile, ACOG has moved to rid the downtown area of homeless people. The city council has passed several laws over the last two years making loitering, "aggressive panhandling" and even "cutting through parking lots in a suspicious manner" crimes.

Enforcing these vague laws is left to the discretion of the cops. After enough harassment, some homeless people accepted the city's offer to buy them a bus ticket away from Atlanta.

Others were unceremoniously booted out. A small-business owner in the Atlanta area wrote Workers World about a homeless man who told her he had been ousted from the shelter where he slept, given a bus ticket -- and threatened with violence if he was seen in Atlanta anytime before the end of the Olympic games.

Alberta was handing out one way bus tickets to BC, to welfare recipients to trim their welfare rolls a few years ago too. Klein made the meanest cuts, even to those so severely disabled they can never work again. This is the free market in action as always.

Shameful.....So what has one group in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside done? They have asked the UN for help, and for another country to donate housing to Vancouver's homeless population. I keep hammering this, but just once more to humour me.

Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. At least the top 1% is doing GREAT! The mean spirited cuts to the social safety net, and catering to the largest wealthiest corporations aren't helping us as a whole.
The banks and industry are doing just great, while every average Canadians position becomes more and more precarious!

We ask you, as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, to intervene on our behalf with the Vancouver municipal government, the government of British Columbia, and the government of Canada, to urge them to end homelessness and improve housing conditions
in our neighborhood, the city, province and country.

There are so many who buy into the Conservative mythology of the Librul media, and "welfare Queens" things are getting worse, and never will get better.

Committment statement for the 2010 games includes:

Housing
a) Protect rental housing stock
b) Provide as many alternative forms of temporary accommodation for Winter Games visitors
and workers
c) Ensure people are not made homeless as a result of the Winter Games
d) Ensure residents are not involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in
rent due to the Winter Games
e) Provide an affordable housing legacy and start planning now

Yesterday afternoon, UN Special Rapporteur for Housing Miloon Kothari gave his report and findings in Ottawa.

In the visit to Vancouver I also looked into the potential impact of 2010 Olympic Games on the right to housing of low income people. In my mandate I have looked at the negative impact on housing in cities that host mega-events, such as the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, and the Commonwealth Games. These impacts
include forced evictions for construction of infrastructures, city beautification and speculation of land and property and measures to remove homeless people from cities prior to and during the event.

Vancouver and the BC Government are right on the ball with each and every one of those examples.

The UN Rapporteur went much further than that even;

"What is beginning here has already happened in the U.S., where you speak to people (and) they say, `the homeless are there by choice,' or `it's those drug
addicts,'" Kothari said in an interview yesterday. "That is a very serious mental shift."

Kothari ended his two-week visit to Canada yesterday with harsh words for provincial and federal politicians, painting a dramatic picture of a crisis caused by governments' deep funding cuts in the mid-1990s to housing programs and social assistance that once helped impoverished Canadians afford a home.

A mental shift indeed. How many pre-conceived notions about the homeless and those living in poverty have taken on the perspective of Neoliberalism? When did we stop seeing those in need as human? And start to see laziness, and criminality?

An inconvenience? There is more than one inconvenient truth to be told.

Major H/T and thanks to David Eby at The Vancouver 2010 Olympics, displacement and homelessness blog