Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, Vince Tao, the Vancouver area network of drug users, on the political pressures that led to the closing of Yale Town's overdose prevention site.
Speaker: Despite record -high drug poisoning deaths in Yaletown, the city of Vancouver is closing an overdose prevention site on Seymour Street. So far, there's no guarantee that another site will be open to replace it. In a recent article for the Mainlander,
Speaker: Vince Tao asks, who will fight for the Yaletown overdose prevention site? Vince Tao is a community organizer with VanDoo, the Vancouver area network of drug users, and he's joined me today to talk about what's happening in Yaletown. Hello, Vince. Hello. So let's talk about, this is called the Thomas Donegy overdose prevention site. It's on Seymour and Helmpkin. What's its history?
Speaker: The Thomas Donaghy overdose prevention site, it's only been open at that location for about a year. Originally the operations were located in St. Paul's Hospital. And unfortunately that site closed down because one of its volunteers, his name was Thomas Donaghy, was actually killed by someone, a client who frequented the original site. And so it was relocated to its new site where it's currently still operating in Yaletown.
Speaker: And it's located in a building, I think with other health services. And yeah, this is the site that's just earlier this year, ABC council and in a quite unilateral move. Actually it's strange. It wasn't taken to council, but rather directed by staff that it would be closing next year in March, 2024.
Speaker: In your article, you try to make sense of the city's decision to close what's essentially a life -saving service amidst ever climbing overdose mortality rates, and you ask, who benefits? Who does benefit, do you think?
Speaker: I think it's always a good question to ask, who benefits? And yes, who benefits from closing a life -saving service? Well, I think we should look into just exactly what moved the city to make this decision, this unilateral decision that was not voted at council. And so there was some great reporting revealing that leading up to this closure that not one but two
Speaker: civil lawsuits, class actions, were filed against the site and both of them were backed by Wall Financial Corporation, which happens to be the owner of the condominium next door and also actually the building itself where the OPS is located. And so, you know, these
Speaker: Lawsuits say that the overdose prevention site interfered with the standard of living on the block, citing minor nuisances like having people walking around, unfounded narratives of increased crime and theft, but primarily what we would call quality of life issues where the OPS was accused of attracting, let's say, clientele that was not welcome in the neighborhood.
Speaker: And of course, we've seen this time and time again, the presence of, you know, low income folks, drug users, the unhoused, threatened to decrease or devaluate land values wherever these unwanted populations
Speaker: gather. And this is precisely what's on the paper in these class session lawsuits. It's quite clear what Wall Corporation's perspective is. They don't want the OPS because it brings in an unwanted crowd. And, you know, these people are real estate moguls. They're people that trade land and sell land for a profit. And of course, yeah, anything that
Speaker: that may threaten those land values must be eliminated. And that's exactly who benefits then. It's the landowners, it's the property owners in the neighborhood, it's the the Yale town rich. And so they used legal methods, let's say, through these classification lawsuits to take down this OPS, but I'm sure that there were dealings within the city as well. As I said earlier, this decision to close this life -saving
Speaker: overdose prevention site next year was not made by the council. It was not seen. It was not a motion that was debated by our elected officials. Instead, it came directly from Sandra Singh. She's the head of the biggest portfolio in the city, arts, culture, and community services. Her office issued a letter that was publicized by ABC counselor Peter Meisner on Twitter.
Speaker: Yeah, I want to ask you about Peter Meisner. What role did he play in the closure of the site? And so, you know, you'll, you'd see leading up to the closure itself, there was VL Town homeowners, which Peter Meisner calls his hashtag, Yale Town Neighbors, posting online, sending photographs of the OPS or the immediate
Speaker: Area outside of it complaining again of public nuisances and debris on the floor so on and so forth and Peter Meisner responding on Twitter saying oh something must be done, you know, this is a atrocity so there's a back and forth on Twitter and
Speaker: Voila, you know, we see this back and forth. Peter Meister kind of committing to do something for his Yale town neighbors. We see these class action lawsuits be filed sequentially. And then suddenly city staff makes this unilateral decision not to renew the lease of the OPS next year. What powers and responsibilities does the city of Vancouver have with regard to harm reduction services?
Speaker: Well, specifically around overdose prevention sites, the city has the power to lease land for overdose prevention sites, safe injection sites, harm reduction sites generally. They have the power to essentially give leases out and allow these services to operate with the kind of exemption offered by the province to operate a safe consumption site.
Speaker: And so the city has a really important role with the lease, with where these sites can operate, are sanctioned to operate. And so we would think that the operation of overdose prevention sites seven years into a toxic drug poisoning crisis, this should be like a pretty clear conclusion that we should be opening more overdose prevention sites rather than closing them down.
Speaker: particularly in areas that are hardest hit by overdose death like Yale Town. It's shocking that this was made without any democratic input besides complaints on Twitter, which can be selectively broadcast and some voices amplified over others. It's the nature of this platform.
Speaker: This is not a democracy and this I think will have larger implications beyond harm reduction in terms of like how the city makes decisions that affect the most vulnerable people in Vancouver.
Speaker: I understand that Councillor Miser and Yalestown residents have criticized the site's operator, and that's Rain City Housing and Vancouver Coastal Health, who funds it. And they've criticized them for their lack of control over the site. So what I'm wondering is how those two bodies have responded to that criticism.
Speaker: What's really disappointing, as I talk about in the article, is that there's been very little response officially from both of those bodies, Vancouver Coastal Health and Rain City. In fact, Rain City has been completely quiet on the issue.
Speaker: Of course, overdose prevention sites, the populations that they serve, you know, are maybe very different from what Yaletown is used to as a neighborhood that's been quite overdeveloped and gentrified over the last couple of decades. And this is something that, you know, that accepts that we live in a city that unfortunately has a deep class stratifications and different ways of living. And of course, this is, you know, there are ways in which we can, in a neighborly way, resolve, let's say, tensions and conflicts that
Speaker: you know, occur in any city. But of course, that is not in the interest of those who wanted to take down this OBS. They wanted to eliminate the problem in the interest of protecting land value, property, and battling this, I think, trumped up idea that with OBSs, with drug users comes criminality. I think that's, you know, a convenient narrative that benefits very rich people like Peter Wall.
Speaker: Now, Councillor Meisner has declared his support for securing an alternative location for the site before it's closed. Does that deal with the issue? I am not optimistic that will happen. I would like to see an alternative site in Yale Town be opened. But the cats out of the bag, like Peter Meisner has made it very clear
Speaker: who he sides with in the kind of language that that site uses to talk about drug users. If they don't like it in that location, they're not going to like it, you know, two blocks down. And I think that this is, it's bigger than just this site itself, where we have been seeing across Canada and particularly in BC and Vancouver, an increase vitriol and fear in the discourse around harm reduction. It's quite alarming and actually, you know, I think a mounting
Speaker: kind of media hysteria and moral panic around harm reduction and drug use that's been trumped up and gaining steam all throughout 2023. And the closure of the Yeltown OPS is just one example of the kind of deadly effects of that discourse. And so whether or not Peter Meisner will make good on that commitment, that very thin commitment to relocate the site, by even allowing this site to be closed down,
Speaker: by sanctioning and actually, well, actually deciding to not renew the lease of Thomas Donohue O .P .S., we're allowing the forces of reaction and the forces that want to see more drug users and poor people dead on the street win. And that's, I think, should be a wake up call to everyone.
Speaker: I think that Vancouver, there used to be an idea that there was a bipartisan consensus around harm reduction. That harm reduction was something that the city was quite proud of in terms of its importance on the world stage as an innovative and necessary new field of practice and inquiry into saving lives. And we're seeing that drastically be rolled back in all quarters
Speaker: not just in Vancouver and BC, but all across Canada. Pierre Poliev and the Progressive Conservative Party has been targeting harm reduction and making it into a national campaign, fueling his audience's fears around crime and criminality. Then we have Kevin Falcon more locally at BC United, vowing to end decriminalization and crack down on drug use and the BC NDP's health policies.
Speaker: this is a dangerous time that we're entering. And I think that the Thomas Donohue closure has not even happened yet. It should be a wake -up call to everyone who cares about drug users, cares about people who have been dying on the streets to wake up and see that something must change and we must take up a movement form of harm reduction again. This is, you know, I think indicative that harm reduction itself has been over -professionalized and left as a, you know, a field
Speaker: of saving lives just for a small subset of professional actors and workers. No, I think harm reduction should be a social movement, a general movement to fight a crisis that's killing seven people a day. Only if we bring harm reduction back into the hands of everyday people rather than specialized experts or particular workers. It's not to say that they don't do great work, but in order to actually fight the tide of reaction that's coming against us,
Speaker: I think we need to restore that aspect of harm reduction. It's movement quality and it's general social quality that is everyone's responsibility to save lives. And we have to fight back against those voices and those powers that want more bodies to pile up. Thank you so much for talking with me today, Vince. No, thank you.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Vince Tao, community organizer with Van Do, the Vancouver area network of drug users. He's also part of the editorial collective of The Mainlander, an online publication covering local politics and social issues.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
