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CONCORD PACIFIC GET OUT!

Saturday,October 11th
2:00 pm
Victory Square Park (Cambie & Hastings)

The Anti-Poverty Committee is taking action against the Concord Pacific Development site at 58 W Hastings (Hastings at Abbott). We will be taking action on October 11th as allies in the community in our collective struggle. We are inviting those that are interested in continuing the resistance against the demolition of the [Downtown Eastside] to join us for a march and demonstration to the 58 W. Hastings site. We will be serving free food, music and speakers.

Come and speak out against the gentrification of the DTES and tell Concord Pacific they are not welcome in our neighbourhood.

Background on DTES Olympic gentrification:

How quickly this city has forgotten what happened in 1986 when Expo raged through Vancouver. The effects felt then on the DTES mirror what is happening today.

“The announcement of Vancouver as host city for the 1986 World’s Fair created a market for land speculation in neighborhoods that bordered the site. Landlords evicted between 500 & 850 people in order to use their units to accommodate tourists for the fair. Most evictees were unemployed, elderly, poor, and either handicapped or in a poor state of health… In addition, between 1,000 & 2,000 low income lodging house units were lost to demolition or conversion to non-residential uses, while 1,150 residential hotel units were lost in the few years following the Expo, as the Pacific Place, a giant mixed-use development, was constructed on the Expo site.” (Fair Play for Housing Rights, p. 25)

Not only did Expo 86 transform a large section of the downtown area at the expense of low-income housing, it also created an improved climate for corporate investment and to greatly expand BC’s tourist industry. Twenty years later in a 2007 report by the Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (COHRE) on the impact of Olympic Games, stated what folks already struggling in the DTES knew all too well, the “Hosting of the Olympic Games requires host cities to develop important infrastructure. This requirement, along with gentrification processes… usually result in drastic changes in a city’s urban plan, and lead to people losing their homes, facing increased poverty, the loss of community, and even violence.”(Fair Play for Housing Rights, p. 15)

To date following the Olympic bid appoximately 1000 units of low-income housing have been lost in the DTES. They have been taken through building closures, major rent increases and the heavy handed gentrification that Vancouver has imposed upon those most marginalized in society. Market housing is currently being built at a rate of 3 units to every 1 unit of social housing in the DTES.

Following the transformation of the Woodwards complex into a playground. For the rich, the present attempt by Concord Pacific to further gentrify our neighbourhood with the proposed “Greenwich” condo development is a clear act of increased violence against the residents of the last hold out of low income housing in this city.