Housing Offensive Out West

OCAP's good friends the Anti-Poverty Committee of Vancouver have been really pushing the envelope in the fight for housing over the past couple of months. First, on October 22nd they targeted an old downtown hotel which was left vacant in the midst of the local and national housing crisis and then a few days later chased down the Mayor on Halloween. Two months later they are still occupying abandoned buildings and sticking it to the Provincial and Municipal Governments on a nearly weekly basis. Over the time that they have been carrying out these actions there have been squats taken or attempted in Victoria and right here in Toronto by OCAP.

As the Harper Government cuts funding to poor people's services, child care and housing we can expect to see the necessity of uniting from Halifax to Vancouver in the struggle for housing more and more.

Vancouver though has it's own special problems that the APC is trying to fight. In 2010 it will host the Winter Olympics. An international spectacle which promises to suck dry government spending, further gentrify the downtown east-side, open the door to social cleansing by the Vancouver Police and make Vancouver an unbearable place to live. Luckily along with other solid grassroots organizations, the APC is organizing against the games.

The Housing Offensive in Vancouver is further proof that the harder repressive governments push on people the harder people will push back. Watch this space for updates on the Struggle for Housing from Coast to Coast.