Harm Reduction Vancouver Downtown Eastside V6A & Justin Trudeau

[Zopiclone bandit]

I'm based in the UK (England) but due to the wonders of the Interweb I've got to know someone I'll not name very well over a few years & this person lives right in the middle of V6A.
How is this allowed to go on if you are aware of the place? Canada to me was always a nice place but the truth is fucking shocking!!!! I've seen Filth & stuff before in London, the city I live very near to called Birmingham & lived in "Social Housing" for over half my life but that place is something else all together.

I know that moron Trudeau just got back into power, did he say anything about the place in trying to help people there or even go on a tour of the place when trying to get voted back in?

If you have no idea what I'm on about...................

 

[deficiT]

I'm not sure I'm familiar with what you're talking about. The trailer didn't really illuminate too much besides talking about fentanyl, and the only thing that comes up when you Google v6a is some Yamaha product. What's v6a?

 

[JTemperance]

Yeah, Hastings and the Downtown Eastside have been pretty crazy for a long time, at least I remember it being that way as far back as the late 90s... but it seems to have gotten worse in the last several years. All the bigger cities on North America's west coast are in the midst of a huge homelessness crisis -- Vancouver, even Victoria; Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., and a lot of smaller places in between.

People argue back and forth, whether the homelessness is caused by the dramatic increase in house prices and rents over the last 5-10 years (so people can't afford to live indoors), or whether it is caused by over-tolerance on the part of liberal city governments (so people migrate to live in tents and do drugs). Personally, I don't see how the rent increases could not have had a huge impact, especially since (IIRC) most people are homeless in the same area they lived in before. It seems like more "social housing" (especially efficiency units with minimal rules) is the obvious answer. (I think Vancouver at least preserved more of the SRO hotels than the US cities did, so there are less people literally sleeping in tents on the sidewalk.)

On the other hand, the permissive culture has probably lead to an increase in visible stuff over the last 10 years, like how brazenly shoplifters will run out with stuff (which is then resold openly on the street) or how brazenly drug users will smoke or shoot up on a busy downtown sidewalk. And it makes sense that lax drug laws on the west coast might encourage users to move there from harsher areas (more so in the US), not to mention the much better climate for outdoor living (especially in Canada, considering B.C. is the only province with a mild winter).

Something that nobody mentions regarding quality of life in cities like Vancouver is that over the last 5-6 years, the opioid [] "epidemic" in N. America got all the hype, but meth was quietly having a huge resurgence, with rock-bottom prices and high purity. (It's at least 7x cheaper than 15 years ago -- you can buy an eighth today for what a half-gram cost in 2005 -- if not closer to 15x cheaper when the purity increase is factored in.) Unsurprisingly, has led to a lot of people in a state of full-blown amphetamine psychosis, wandering down empty streets in the middle of the night, screaming threats at the top of their lungs... and sometimes they sucker-punch innocent passersby. The older-school heroin/crack addicts never got up to so much insanity.

 

[SunriseChampion]

The Lower Mainland in British Columbia (Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley) and Vancouver Island have by far the most mild climate in Canada (palm trees grow in Van...good luck with that here in Ontario, for example).......this acts as a magnet for various hard-on-their-luck folk from the entire half-continent of a country.....which would help explain the extreme severity of the issue there. Rough sleeping being easier in places where the temps rarely reach well below zero.

 

[Joey]

This is a major misunderstanding a lot of people have, without watching the video. I bet he just announced ministry of mental health and addictions federally. I bet his platform was both based first two lines in 2015 vote wher I voted for him based on his stance in legalization and indigenous rights. He’s actually a really good guy no matter how you hair split on some other mistranslation, clearly.