Vancouver's Downtown East Side

by Linda Solomon
Mayor Gregor Robertson hit the ground running on his first day as mayor of Vancouver with a press conference at City Hall this morning where he announced the creation of a “Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT). The team, he said, will be responsible for providing immediate actions that the city can take to help people off the street and into a safe environment over the next 90 days. Members include Janice Abbott, Executive Director of Atira Women’s Resource Society, Jim Chu, Vancouver Police Chief, David Eby, Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association and Patrick Stewart, Chair of the Aboriginal Homelessness Steering Committee. Other members are listed at the end of this article.

“Urgency is what this is all about,” he said at a press conference today in which he announced a 90 day plan to get the estimated thousand people sleeping on the streets of Vancouver into shelters.  You can read the rest of this article on The Vancouver Observer.