STAND for Housing-Homes for All-Little Mountain
Silent clusters of housing activists stand on Vancouver streetcorners
Saturday 23 Feb, for one hour, 1-2pm, with banners and wearing colour co-ordinated
scarves. Calling attention to the Provincial budget's failure to
seriously address Housing and Homelessness, and at the federal level-- the need
for a permanent national low-income housing program.
Paying respect to the hundreds of dead and dying homeless men,
women, and children- victims of legislated poverty and government neglect in BC and
Canada. In Vancouver they populate our streets and lanes, huddle in parks and
encampments, burn to death in doorways, are crushed in back alley garbage bins.
Nine "STAND for Housing-Homes for All!" sites, the first in what will become an ongoing series of Stands:
- Main St. & 33rd Avenue (Kia Salomons and CA for Little Mountain Housing)
- Main St. & King Edward (Ned Jabobs and CALM)
- Arbutus & King Edward (Maggie Geiser and Citywide Housing Coalition)
- Broadway & McDonald (Julie Hughes and CHC)
- Broadway & Heather (Rider Cooey and CHC)
- Commercial & 1st Avenue (Dave Diewert and Streams of Justice)
- Cordova & Gore (Anne Kennedy and the Social Gospel Coordinating Group at St James
Anglican Church)
- Burrard & Nelson (Bobbie Phillips and the St Andrew's-Wesley United Church Housing
and Mental Health Action Group)
- Oak & W 49th Ave (Unitarian Church Social Justice Committee)
These Stands for Housing, plus additional locations organized in future by other
groups, neighbours, adults, and young people, will continue at regular intervals (to
be announced) until serious policies and funding are dedicated by federal,
provincial, and municipal politicians to building new, permanent low-income housing.
Using the surplus billion$ of our prosperous economy for new, permanent low-income
housing is the primary mechanism by which homelessness must be defeated.
Rebecca Coad and Dan Grice-- NDP and Green candidates respectively in the Vancouver
Quadra by-election, have committed to 'Stand' with others at the Broadway and
MacDonald location.
Regrettably, Conservative Deborah Meredith declined through a staff person to Stand,
and Liberal Joyce Murray's office failed to respond to two invitations to attend
this non-partisan event. If Murray does appear at the Arbutus and King Edward
Stand--without campaign signs, leaflets, or buttons--she will be welcomed.
The public and media are invited to join us at any of the above locations. The idea
of the STAND is based on the moving example of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
whose children were "disappeared" by the military, 1976 to 1983. They stood every
week in a city square wearing white scarves until the generals capitulated. The
scarves became an international "brand" for peaceful protests.
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Contact: Maggie Geiser, Citywide Housing Coalition, 604. 619-5050
for more information about the Little Mountain Housing Project contact CALMhousing@hotmail.com
sign their petition at www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?CALM
calling attention to the Provincial budget's failure to
seriously address Housing and Homelessness, and at the federal level-- the need
for a permanent national low-income housing program.
Homeless Nation interviews the "STAND for Housing-Homes for All!" location of Main and 33rd avenue where the residents are taking a stand to protect their 224 low income residential units from rezoning.
