This week, City Councillors will be returning to City Hall from their summer break. One of the first orders of business will be to consider a large-scale condo development in the Downtown Eastside Hastings Corridor, directly across from the Raycam Community Centre and Stamp’s Place social housing. The applicant for the project – Vision financial…

Those who ride the 99 B-Line along West Broadway know just how full to capacity public transit is on this busy corridor. Transit analysts tell us that the current form of public transit on West Broadway is just not capable of carrying any additional passengers, and that if we are going to improve public transit…

While the world watches the closing ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London with excitement and enthusiasm, now is the perfect time to reflect on the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and to draw conclusions that the two years that have passed allow us to draw. In the years leading up to the Vancouver 2010…

Two social housing sites – the province’s Little Mountain and Metro Vancouver’s Heather Place – are about to be redeveloped. With today’s housing crisis, this should be good news. Both sites could easily accommodate an increase in the number of social housing units.  But the owners have no interest in addressing our homelessness crisis. Both levels…

Last week Vision Vancouver once again proved with certainty who they don’t owe their allegiance to: the citizens of Vancouver, the people who can barely afford housing, and the homeless. Vision Vancouver’s allegiance is only and solely to developers. Last Thursday night (July 19th), a rezoning application by Aquilini Investment Group for a high-rise development…

In a healthy society, protest is celebrated as a sign of life and fighting spirit. Whether it is Civil Rights advances in the Southern states, environmental struggles or widespread movements for social change, protest has always been a vehicle for transformation. Instead of seeing protest as a way of change, however, the state sees it…