Street Stories: 100 Years Of Homelessness In Vancouver

False Creek Flats flooded with squatters The boom times following World War I ended abruptly in the autumn of 1929. While the wealthy struggled in tough times to maintain a semblance of former grandeur, workers were being evicted in droves. Approximately 12,000 properties were forfeited for non-payment of taxes in one year of the Great Depression alone. Single men were ineligible for benefits; the families of men who refused to be voluntarily incarcerated in work camps -- and even some union organizers -- were similarly disqualified from relief benefits. In 1931, 500 men, because they had no fixed address and were therefore ineligible for relief, were encamped in shacks and hovels on the recently filled False Creek flats north of the CNR train station. There was one tap for water and no sanitary services in the cramped quarters. Conditions were ripe for disease, and when one man was diagnosed with diphtheria, the camp was closed down and dismantled overnight. Most of the men went to work camps in the Interior where they toiled for a dollar a day. The communist-influenced Relief Camp Workers Union led over 100 strikes and walk-outs trying to win better conditions. In April of 1938, when the relief camps were closed, some 1,600 workers occupied the post office on Hastings Street, the art gallery, and the Hotel Georgia, demanding better treatment, including housing. The occupation of the post office lasted a month and was ended by an early morning police raid, which resulted in much damage and injury to the sit-down strikers. WWII veterans seize the Hotel Vancouver Returning World War II veterans also had a difficult time finding housing and could not afford hotels. Tired of living in substandard conditions, a small group of veterans took over the old Hotel Vancouver at Granville and Georgia streets. The hotel had been recently replaced by a new building and the old facility was slated for demolition. In early January 1946, one veteran, who had camped out with three others in a tent on the lawn of the provincial court house (now the Vancouver Art Gallery) to protest the lack of decent housing, was ordered by police to move on. He ended up at a meeting of veterans at the Legion Hall on Seymour Street. The 35 men at the meeting decided to occupy the old hotel and open it up for others in their position. The guards on duty did not even try to stop them. They hung a banner outside reading "Action at Last Veterans! Rooms for You. Come and Get Them." Soon they were 700 men registered in the old hotel and nobody wanted to tell them to leave. In fact, many local businesses and the public supplied meals. . . . http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/01/09/100YearsNoHome/

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