With just three tents left in the Olympic Tent City on Thursday afternoon, and more than 60 homeless people from the village now housed, the occupation of the Concord Pacific lot on West Hastings has been a resounding success.

Organized by a number of community groups, the tent city began on February 15th as a way to raise awareness about homelessness during the Olympics. Roughly 100 people lived in the village during the Games. The site, slated to become a condominium project, has been the source of a prolonged battle between Downtown Eastside activists and the developer.

After tent city organizers briefly occupied BC Housing offices and, coincidentally, right at the end of the Games, BC managed to find housing in provincially-owned SROs for about 40 homeless people from the village. Having gotten housing for its residents (and presumably because the Games were now over) organizers decided to disband the village.

The activists say the sudden availability of housing showed that the tent city's public pressure worked by forcing the government to act. However, BC Housing insists that the tent city had no impact and suggests that had each homeless person simply applied for housing individually, they still would have been housed.

Not likely.

Look no further to what happened after the activist groups went home. The organizers might have left, but the homeless stayed on. Without security, food or a bathroom, homeless campers kept up the call for housing.

After the city ordered Concord to remove the squatters, activists stepped in again and managed to find social housing for about 30 of the new campers. They're scrambling to find housing for the last remaining residents.

How is that hundreds of people across Vancouver are concentrated in shelters every night, but don't have BC Housing swooping in and handing out housing, but when the homeless squat on private property in public view, homes suddenly become available almost over night?

As Carnegie Community Action Project organizer Wendy Pederson told 24 Hours, “Tent villages work”.

She's right.

The activists brilliantly pushed the provincial government into a corner. Evicting a group of homeless people occupying the site of a future condominium project in the heart of the Downtown Eastside would have made for some bad optics. Likewsie, not evicting the squatters would continue to bring more attention to this city's housing crisis.

Pederson has promised further tent cities when the HEAT shelter shut down at the end of April, pushing about 500 people from the shelters onto the streets. Embarrassing the provincial government with tent cities seems to be the only way to get it to act.

(Photo by Jay Black)

THREE Rs East Van rallies to save a two-room schoolhouse. Aww.

RISING TIDE FLOATS ALL BOATS Activists says that, because of climate change, smart condo owners in Vancouver should buy the penthouse.

W.E. Activists want to prevent West End from being overrun by new development like the development that brought them there and displaced the previous residents.

HOMESTYLE Tent cities a huge success

Megaphone's 8 week workshop at the Gathering Place is coming to an end on Wednesday March 31st. The final class will be a special reading by the students and by the BC Book Prize nominee for poetry for her book Red Nest, Gillian Jerome.

Join the student and Gillian Jerome for an afternoon of poetry and prose at the Gathering Place (609 Helmcken Street) starting at 4pm, March 31st.

Hope to see you there!

YOU BET BC Place Casino is not a sure thing because of zoning.

TENSE Activists defy city order and stay at Downtown Eastside tent camp.

OLYMPICS Local Shops Saw Little Profit During Olympics

CAN DO Binners, however, cleaned up. Ahem.

WRITINGS Guess who is most likely to stock books by Canadian authors? Amazon.

NEVER AGAIN Please, for the love of Benji, stop naming your stores, restaurants, and clubs after your address.

SORT OF EMERGENCY NUMBER Vancouverites love their 311.

GEEKS Vancouver City Hall has unleashed all sort of data feeds.

CITY HALL Allen Garr has the goss on that City electrician's dismissal.

Sad news on the homeless advocacy front: Homeless Nation Vancouver will be shutting down at the end of the month.

In a notice posted on the organization's website on Friday, coordinator Janelle Kelly said, "After a successful pilot program, HomelessNation.org sought to continue the project and secure core funding. Despite much effort, we were unable to secure sustainable core funding. Last summer saw the closure of both the Montreal and Victoria chapters of Homeless Nation. The end of March will be the official shut down date of Homeless Nation Vancouver."

Started in Montreal in 2003 by documentary fillmmaker Daniel Cross, the United Nations award-winning project grew to St. John's, Toronto and Victoria and Vancouver. Homeless Nation outreach workers helped give homeless people access to cameras and computers so they could communicate their stories directly to other Canadians, and the world.

"We place donated computers into shelters and drop-in centres - providing opportunities to create audio, visual or written testimonials from those whose voices are kept silent by their circumstances," it says on the organization's website. "We provide computer and Internet training. We meet Canada's homeless individuals where they are, and collaborate to add as many voices to the chorus as we can."

In Vancouver, Homeless Nation did an amazing job giving the city's homeless a platform as the city went through one of its biggest transformations: preparing to host the Olympics. Homeless people were able to speak directly about what it's like to live in a city that continued to become increasingly unaffordable and could give their opinion on what needed to be done to fix the problem.

One of the organization's most powerful projects was a series about suicide prevention—sparked by the loss of one of its young members. Homeless people spoke emotionally on camera about what it was like to lose so many of their friends at such a young age and encouraged others to fight through their pain.

While the outreach work may be ending at the end of this month, the good news is that Kelly says the website will remain active. Hopefully it will continue to provide the ground-breaking and important footage that it has done over the years.

OUCH Councillor Geoff Meggs collides his bike with a car. He's hospitalised but will be okay.

FUN CITY The Stanley Park Farmyard and Bloedel Conservatory are at death's door. If this were movie, this is where Sandra Bullock would show up.

BIKE LANE New Dunsmuir bike lane opens today.

NEIGHBOURHOODS Meet the Victoria-Fraserview Neighbourhood.

A very comprehensive summary of the issues faced by Vancouver's low-income people in shadow of the Olympics, from Democracy Now.

EVERYONE COUNTS City of Vancouver's homelessness coordinator suspects that homelessness is down in advance of the annual count.

WOMEN Happy 100th anniversary, Women's Day. Fun Facts: It's only the 93rd anniversary of voting for women in BC, 91st for voting Federally, and 40th for obtaining mortgages in women's own names.

HOMELESSNESS Frances Bula has a fantastic story in Vancouver Magazine that basically says you can't shopkeep and build your way into solving homelessness.

WOODLANDS Survivors left out of settlement hope for moral persuasion.

STREET FOOD Japadog is heading to New York.

POLICE Questions Justice Patrick Dohm's appointee should consider in police Const. Griffin Gillan public hearing.

JUSTICE Innocent man beaten by police sues the City.

HOMELESSNESS Let's be "realistic" about ending homelessness, says Gregor Robertson.

CAPITALISM Binners did great business during the Olympics.