Megaphone is buying a vendor database program from a representative from the International Network of Street Papers so we can better organize our sales and help our vendors.

The program will allow Megaphone to keep detailed sales and personal information, so that if a vendor is going through a rough time and needs certain assistance, we can keep track and offer help.

It will also allow us to print our Megaphone vendor ID badges.

Because we are small organization, we are only being charged $200 (which is a great deal), with 10% going to the INSP.

We are looking for someone to help us buy this program so we can help our vendors. If you are interested, please email me at: sean@megaphonemagazine.com.

The Province, CKNW and Global News have been doing a series about the renewing hope in the Downtown Eastside the past week called Operation Phoenix.

Check out some of the stories here:
The Province
Global

Although sometimes a bit over the top ("This is where the swollen tide of human misery from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside washes up"), it's great that these news organizations are trying to raise awareness about the Downtown Eastside. Combined, the series is pretty extensive and informative and does a good job of humanizing the people and issues in the neighbourhood.

However, I do take some issue with the Province and Global's (I haven't heard the CKNW pieces) angles with the stories – a kind of naive introduction to the neighbourhood. While I appreciate that these pieces are intended to reach people who do not know much about the Downtown Eastside and help them understand the issues residents face, I wonder why there has to be such a distance between the reporter and the people in the neighbourhood.

And every year, more of them are ending up here, at St. Paul's Hospital emergency room, taking more resources from our overburdened health-care system.

Does the healthcare system only belong to some of us? Do people from the Downtown Eastside not buy and read the Province? Isn't the point of the series to remove barriers between the Downtown Eastside and the rest of the city/province and show that our similarities are far greater than our differences?

Again, I understand that this is tabloid journalism and is meant to speak directly to John Q Public (and not all pieces do this). And I do believe the pieces are respectful and well-intentioned. But sometimes the best intentions to connect people can end up reinforcing the divide.

Yesterday I attended the official launch of Streetohome, a new foundation in Vancouver set up to help the homeless.

Here's a story I wrote about it for The Tyee.

I was pretty impressed with the list of people on the foundation's board of directors – as well as the people who were in attendance at the event. After all the controversy over the initial suggestion that the private sector be brought in to help build homes, there were as many left-wing politicians and non-profit exec directors as lawyers and CEOs.

Sam Sullivan has been called Vancouver's worst mayor by many and was chased from power by his own party. City manager Judy Rogers was fired almost immediately by new mayor Gregor Robertson. But if Streetohome succeeds in getting the private-sector passionate about ending homelessness then the two will have left an incredibly important legacy behind in the fight against homelessness (and might even allow the city to begin to forgive them for the Olympic Village fiasco).

Megaphone vendor Garvin Snider appeared on Global TV last night promoting Megaphone (he shows up at the 7:02 mark).

The show is part of Global and the Province's Operation Phoenix, which aims to raise awareness about how people can help the Downtown Eastside.

Congratulations and big thanks go out to Garvin for getting the word out. He has been an incredible and inspiring champion of the magazine and the neighbourhood. We are all very proud of him.

This past week I was sent by The Tyee to northern British Columbia to file a series of stories about homelessness. I was traveling with NDP MLA David Chudnovsky and his constituency assistant Kate Van Meer-Mass as they showed a screening of the film, Our Way Home – a movie about their journey through B.C. to raise awareness to the province's homelessness crisis.

Here are my reports from:

Prince George
Vanderhoof
Burns Lake
Smithers

While I was only able to visit four towns/cities/villages (the roads were too dangerous to make it to Hazelton), my visit to the north left me with a number of strong impressions:

1. The problem is much worse and much more obvious than I thought.

2. The homeless are primarily aboriginal.

3. There are few resources for the homeless.

4. There have just been a handful of new affordable/social housing units built over the past eight years.

5. If there is a long recession, these communities will be devastated. There would be no safety net to catch them.

and

6. People here are incredibly polite and kind.

7. Tim Hortons is a wondrous addiction.

According to a story in today's Toronto Star, the Harper government is going to announce $2.075 billion in spending on social housing in Tuesday's budget.

"The spinoffs are significant and we are meeting a real need to mend a tear in our social safety net," said Diane Finley, the minister of human resources and skills development.

Finley said yesterday she's confident she's made the case for the big investment to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and hopes to see the result of her new sales pitch on Tuesday.

"There is a very significant need ... to upgrade the quality of the social housing that is in the current inventory," Finley told the Star in a telephone interview.

The housing package is expected to include:

• $1 billion to renovate existing social housing.
• $600 million for on-reserve housing to help address a frequent call from aboriginal leaders to improve the state of housing. "There are significant investments required there," Finley said.
• $400 million for seniors housing.
• $75 million for housing for people with disabilities.

The funding would be a major victory for housing advocates, who have been pressuring the federal government to start spending on social housing. Canada, which has between 200,000-300,000 homeless, is the only G7 country without a national housing strategy.

The Toronto-based Wellesley Institute, which has been one of the country's leading advocates on homelessness/housing, welcomed the announcement:

If confirmed, the housing plans show that the Harper government is paying attention to advice from housing experts and advocates (including the Wellesley Institute), and also the three opposition parties – which have been unanimous in calling for a major increase in housing spending.

However, the Institute says there are still a number of questions that need to be answered before people get too excited. Will this money be for one year or stretched out over two years? Will this include emergency relief funds? Will the renovation money only be for social housing or landlords that provide affordable money?

It's also important to remember that as necessary as these funds are, it only scratches the surface. There is a desperate need for NEW social housing in this country, but half of the new funds will go to renovations. The Harper government is about to run a $64 billion deficit—there is no reason why more than $1 billion couldn't go towards new social and affordable housing for Canadians.

Pivot Legal Society and the Carnegie Community Action Project held a press conference today attacking the Sahotas and the Laudisios for being "slumlords". Here's an article Megaphone assistant editor Amy Juschka wrote for the August 22nd issue about the Laudisios:

Doubled Over: Downtown Eastside landlords find new ways to exploit tenants

By Amy Juschka, with files from Blake Sifton

Tight lipped and weary-eyed, Anna Laudisio does not smile as she looks up from the glass partition that separates her desk from the rest of the lobby at the Brandiz on East Hastings. Sharp and calculating, she recognizes me as an outsider the moment I walk through the door of her Single Room Occupancy hotel. And although irritation is evident in her tired eyes as she tells me, once again, that she doesn’t speak to journalists, I keep returning to the Brandiz because Anna can’t seem to help herself.

“They’re like animals,” she blurts out, pointing to a tenant’s written complaint on the lobby notice board, which claims that someone has been defecating out the window of the Brandiz. Anna doesn’t trouble to keep her voice down, though a number of her tenants are with us in the lobby. “These people just have a natural propensity to be filthy.”

In a neighbourhood teeming with unscrupulous slumlords, the Laudisio family is well known among police and housing advocates in the Downtown Eastside. And while their notoriety comes as no surprise, given Anna’s general disdain for her tenants, this family of landlords has found a new way to exploit their residents by forcing them, against their will, to share cramped and dilapidated ten-by-ten units after charging them the full price of a private room.

Anna, 50, her husband Mario, 56 and their two sons, Giuseppe and Gianni, own the Lucky Lodge at 134 Powell, the Hampton Rooms at 568 Powell and the Brandiz Hotel at 122 East Hastings. While the family’s history includes charges of welfare fraud, numerous fire code violations and the facilitation of theft under $5,000, the family has now discovered a way to legally exploit their tenants.

“They’re stacking us in like sardines now with two forced into a room,” says Fred Ironstar, a First Nations man who has resided in two of the Laudisio’s Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels. “I had my own room at first at the Brandiz but then this woman was moved in and we were forced to share.”

A few months after being doubled up at the Brandiz, the Laudisios moved Ironstar to the Lucky Lodge when he complained that his roommate was stealing his cash and personal belongings. And while Ironstar now has his own room, his living conditions at Lucky Lodge are in gross violation of the City’s Standards of Maintenance By-law.

I meet Ironstar outside the Lucky Lodge and we talk for a while before he takes me on a tour of the building he calls home. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after enduring the residential school system, Ironstar is now on disability, having being diagnosed with cancer.

“I’m fighting the federal government right now on residential school issues,” he explains. “I’m hoping that I can get a settlement so at least I can get out of here, it’s very important that I get out of here.”

Ironstar, whose wife returned home to Saskatchewan after her mother suffered a stroke, hopes to find a new place by the time she returns to Vancouver.

“My wife, she only has 40 per cent of her vision so she’s disabled,” explains Ironstar. “You think she’s gonna put up with shit like this? I told her I’ve gotta get us another place because my place is just swamped with bedbugs, I sleep with the lights on.”

We enter the Lucky Lodge and climb the dank steps to a dark hallway, where Ironstar tells the two men, smoking behind the reception desk, that I’m a friend who is picking something up. I’m asked to surrender a piece of I.D. but one of the men jokes that it’s not a big deal because I don’t look like much trouble. I’m surprised at the relative ease with which I’ve been able to enter the building.

The security at Lucky Lodge is in stark contrast to the Brandiz, where Anna watches the door like a hawk and would surely be suspicious of anyone who looks out of place. Ironstar unlocks the door to his room and cockroaches scatter in every direction. His window is propped open and a small fan runs on high but it’s no match for the oppressive wave of hot, stale air that we are hit with upon entering.

“My place is infested with cockroaches and bedbugs,” he explains, as he takes me around the room and points out the many cockroach holes that he’s attempted to block with whatever he can find. Cockroaches spill out as he removes the papers and tape from the holes lining the walls and floor.

“My wrist was broken when I was mugged in the building for a pack of cigarettes, but the bedbugs are so bad here that they infested my cast and started laying eggs. I just couldn’t take the pain and itching anymore so I had to cut the cast off myself and now my wrist won’t heal.”

Lack of running water is also an issue for tenants at both the Brandiz and the Lucky Lodge.

“I have no water,” says Ironstar as he holds up the severed tubes that should connect running water to the sink in his room. “I was promised water last year at Brandiz and now I’ve moved here and I still have no water. I can’t even shave or brush my teeth.”

While the Laudisio’s ‘upgrade’ of Ironstar to a single room at the Lucky Lodge can hardly be considered an act of kindness, he could be considered fortunate when compared with other tenants who are forced to share cramped and pest-infested rooms, much like Ironstar’s, at both the Brandiz and Lucky Lodge.

Although underhanded, doubling up tenants is technically not illegal as the City of Vancouver’s Standards of Maintenance bylaw indicates that a sleeping unit, “equipped to be used for sleeping and sitting purposes,” has to have at least 50 square feet of gross floor area for each occupant.

“The Laudisios’ rooms have all been measured by the city,” explains Constable Jodyne Keller of the Vancouver Police Department. “Legally the rooms are big enough to accommodate two tenants so our hands are tied.”

According to Constable Keller, who has had numerous dealings with the Laudisios throughout the years, the family rents to tenants on the presumption that they will have a private room but quickly move to double them up.

“Anna’s very tricky,” says Keller. “She’ll show you an empty room and you’ll say, ‘Great, I’ll take it.’ She signs your intent to rent and you take your slip to welfare. When you go back she says, ‘Oh, that room I showed you yesterday, it’s full now so I’m gonna have to put you here.’ The room is already occupied. And she’s doubled you up.”

With the average welfare recipient receiving $375 a month in shelter allowances, the Laudisios are able to take in $750 a month for a 100 square foot room with no bathroom or cooking facilities and, according to tenants, no running water.
When questioned, Anna Laudisio replied that her family’s practice of doubling up is good for the tenants. “Doubling up rooms is the greatest thing that ever happened to these people,” she says. “They’re lonely, they have no company… they don’t get any calls; no brothers or cousins or friends call them. It’s good for them to have a roommate.”

But while the practice of doubling up may just straddle the line of legality, in the past the Laudisios have found themselves on the wrong side of the law. In 2005, the Vancouver Police Department launched a ten-week long undercover operation entitled Project Haven, which targeted three Downtown Eastside SROs; the Astoria, the Gastown Hotel and the Laudisio’s Lucky Lodge.

Project Haven revealed widespread trafficking of drugs and stolen property in the Lucky Lodge. Anna and Mario Laudisio were found to be committing welfare fraud and buying stolen property from undercover officers.

“The Laudisios arrived and we say, ‘Hey, whatever you need we can get… so they start putting orders in for us to go steal something and bring it back and sell it to them for next to nothing,” explains Constable Keller.

Officers sold watches, electronics and home furnishings to the Laudisios for a fraction of the retail price. Charges of fraud under $5,000 were laid but the Crown opted not to go forward with charges for the purchase and possession of stolen property because they believed it would be too difficult to prove that the Laudisios knew the items they were buying were stolen.

The Laudisios were, however, ordered to turn over their business license for the Lucky Lodge to their son and were subsequently barred from the property. They were also charged, but not convicted, of welfare fraud in 2007, after a similar sting by the VPD.

While the Laudisios are now careful to remain within the loose confines of the law, it remains evident, by their practice of doubling up tenants, that they continue to discover new and colourful ways to exploit Vancouver’s most vulnerable.

Dina, a young First Nations woman who is currently doubled up with her boyfriend at the Lucky Lodge also complains of no running water and pest infestation.

“It’s cramped and there’s not enough room,” she says. “They said when we moved in that we would have water but it’s been three months and still no water. It’s cockroach infested too but they don’t listen.”

The Laudisio family is well known to housing advocates in the neighbourhood. “They cause more trouble than any other landlords in the Downtown Eastside,” says Doug King, an advocate with the Downtown Eastside Resident’s Association (DERA). “The amount of complaints we get revolving around them is especially high.”

While DERA is aware that the Laudisios are doubling up their tenants, they are reluctant to take action out of fear that complaints could lead to the loss of more social housing stock. Sitting down with director, Kim Kerr and community legal advocate, Sabrina Driuna, I am told that DERA is now especially careful when it comes to taking on landlords in the neighbourhood.

“In the old days you would put on pressure and you might get something done but today you just get the hotel closed,” explains Kerr.

DERA worries that taking on the Laudisios for doubling up their tenants could result in more people living on the streets. For them, doubling up is the lesser of two evils.

“Even though doubling up tenants is an unscrupulous act and I can’t believe that the province is allowing it to go on, at this point DERA isn’t making a stink about it because it might result in more hotels being shut down by the province,” says Driuna.

Laura Track, housing lawyer and campaigner with Pivot Legal Society, is also at a loss over the Laudisio’s practice of doubling up. “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any law that prevents a landlord from double bunking,” she says.

Track contacted the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance about the matter and was told that the Ministry’s official position is that if a tenant has a room, the landlord is entitled to a shelter payment, regardless of whether they are doubling up their tenants. Track regrets that the practice appears to be legal but it seems her hands are also tied on the matter. “What pisses me off is that these landlords are able to take in two shelter payments for one room.”

So while advocates and police watch from the shadows with bated breath as the Laudisios continue to exploit our society’s most vulnerable and fear that cracking down on them may result in more homelessness, the Laudisios unscrupulous acts may end up pushing people onto the street anyway. After showing me around his apartment, Fred Ironstar says he may end up choosing the streets over the ‘housing’ provided for him by his government because the conditions inside are worse than those outside.

“I’m going to leave here and sleep on the streets,” says Ironstar, on his way to collect bottles and cans in order to buy himself a coffee. “This is just too wrong.”

Unless you've been too busy injecting steroids to notice, the big news in Vancouver is that the city is on the hook for the $875 million Athlete's Village.

(Check out Frances Bula's blog for the best breakdown of the whole fiasco.)

While most in the mainstream media are playing this out as a big shock, there really is no surprise here. As Vaughn Palmer points out, this mess was entirely predictable.

If you want to take it one step further, I strongly advise you check out Chris Shaw's excellent analysis of Vancouver's 2010 bid process in Five Ring Circus. Shaw shows how governments and developers exploit patriotism and pride and use the Olympics to make a fortunate in real estate sweet heart deals.

For all the above reasons, this horrible "Believe" Olympic song is beginning to sound and feel like an expensive and painful kick in the groin.

Mayor Gregor Robertson released some preliminary stats about three of the four emergency shelters it launched when it took office last month.

(For some reason, the press release isn’t up on the mayor’s site and appears to have just been sent out to the city’s listserve. And, as David Eby points out, it doesn’t include numbers from the Aboriginal Friendship Centre.)

There are some very surprising and positive results:

More than 4,000 visits to emergency facilities were reported during the first two weeks of operation in December, providing shelter for 280 people each night.

Fantastic. Robertson and Vision Vancouver should be applauded for acting so swiftly to get this done. It also shows how inept the NPA was during its three years in power.

The other interesting fact is that First United Church has been hosting an average of 210 people a night. When Robertson announced that funding had been found to turn First United into a night shelter they said it would only host 150 people a night.

That more than 200 people are jammed into the pews and on the floor at First United every night speaks volumes about the church’s staff to deal with this load and how they’re able to do so much with so little—the church is getting $40,000 for three months, compared to $1.5 million for 200 beds at the other three shelters.

It also shows how popular low-barrier shelters are with the homeless. Unlike many other shelters, people can bring their dogs or shopping carts with them at the new ones Robertson helped open. At First United, they can come and go as they please throughout the night. This proves that shelters in Vancouver can and need to be more accommodating and accessible to the homeless, who have very few options to begin with.

However, Robertson’s stats don’t prove that they’re actually taking people off the street. There has been some question whether people who use other shelters are simply moving over to First United because it is open earlier and has less rules/restrictions. Rev. Ric Matthews has even said a few people who have homes have staying at the church because it feels like a “sleepover” with their friends. Until we get some stats about shelter numbers in the area over the same time, we can’t say for sure what is going on here.

And while it’s crucial to get people off the streets no matter what, especially in below freezing temperatures, the fact that more than 200 people are sleeping on hard pews and the cold floor has raised some criticism that the homeless deserve better.

I don’t think anyone believes that church pews are a suitable or longer-term solution, but a necessary one in an emergency. As Eby points out again, the Liberal provincial government has chronically under funded shelters and low-income housing during it’s two terms in power. This is partly why Metro Vancouver’s homeless population has jumped from roughly 1,000 in 2002 to 2,600 in 2008. The municipal government can only do so much with what little it has.

However, Berlin’s Reichtum 2 shows that we can be doing much better in providing temporary shelter (although, maybe we don’t have to go that far right now).

As Matthews has said, shelters need to give people a better sense of belonging. Robertson and his HEAT team appear to have done that with their new emergency shelters. But what happens when funding for these shelters ends in two months? And how do we move beyond plugging people up in a church or in shelters period and start getting people into healthy and supportive housing?

All crucial and complicated challenges that Robertson and HEAT will have to deal with over the next three years. The emergency shelter program is a good first step, but there is obviously so much more to do.

This is a bit late, but I just discovered this.

Wow. It's almost like Vision Vancouver was doing some reverse psychology and trying to get young people not to vote for them.

This is almost as ridiculous as when Vancouver singer/rapper Josh Martinez threw up Vision Vancouver gang signs with mayoral candidate Jim Green during the 2005 election.

As this video clearly demonstrates, there is nothing remotely rap about Vision Vancouver. Gregor Robertson plays the tuba, for christ sake. Polka is probably the only thing that would be appropriate.