Responding to fears that Downtown Eastside residents will be swept off the streets during the Olympics, a Sunshine Coast group is providing a round-the-clock haven for women in downtown Vancouver, and launching a "hostess" program to affirm residents' self-worth.
"Fear in the Downtown Eastside is escalating," said Gwen McVicker, president of Roberts Creek-based Linwood House Ministries, noting that the residents she works with are afraid of being forced into shelters or given bus tickets and told to leave town.
To address these fears, Linwood House Ministries has committed to keeping its "Great Room" at Pender and Abbott streets open for women 24-7 during the two weeks of the Games in February. Women will be able to warm up, have a bite to eat, chat, listen to music and rest up somewhat, though the facility isn't allowed to offer a place to sleep per se. An organization called 614 Vancouver will be providing similar services for men in an upper floor of the same building.
Beyond that, Linwood House Ministries is training 18 to 20 Down-town Eastside women as "hostesses" to the area, to give them a role to play during the Games, and to build up their self-worth to assuage their fears of being displaced.
"It's giving our women value and dignity, dressing them up, making them look good so that nobody is going to sweep them away," she said.
The group of hostesses-in-training has already had four training sessions, two on the Coast, and two downtown. They've learned to articulate their own stories, and also the stories of the Downtown Eastside. Each of them, she said, has been given a two-block "territory" downtown, and is learning both what services and resources are available nearby, as well as the history of that section.
"Like if you were in the Blood Alley area, what is the history of Blood Alley?" she explained. "What's the history of Carnagie Community Centre? What did it start off as? Or the Woodwards building?"
During the Olympics, the women will be out in pairs, acting as hostesses to their neighbourhood.
As to whom they'll "hostess," she said that remains to be seen.
"During the Olympics, we see everything from visitors to people who are there to help, to their own people who might be in distress. So we've done crisis [training]. We're hoping to have a cellphone for every person so there's easy communication," McVicker said.
The Great Room will be a focal point for the hostesses to come and go from, and one of a number of options they can offer to women in distress on the streets.
McVicker hopes this will allow the hostesses to participate in the Olympics and take pride in what's good about the Downtown Eastside.
"We want them to rise up to the occasion and to be ambassadors for what is good," she said. "So kind of entering into the Olympic spirit, even though there's such a negative Olympic feeling in the Downtown Eastside. I think it's combating that in some ways."
Despite the recently-adopted and contentious Assistance to Shelter Act, which grants police the ability to force a homeless person to a shelter in extreme weather conditions prior to letting them choose to stay or not, and which opponents have called the "Olympic Kidnapping Act," Vancouver Police Department (VPD) Chief Const. Jim Chu recently emphasized the department's priorities during the Games.
"We want the world to appreciate that Canada is an open and free society that places the highest values on the rights of the individual," he said in a VPD Olympic update in October.
He added that the VPD, which will oversee security in the Downtown Eastside while the Vancouver Olympic Committee deals with venue security, has adopted the principles of justification, proportionality and non-intrusiveness to guide its actions.
Linwood House Ministries is still looking for people to sponsor Olympic hostesses. A donation of $300 covers all costs for one hostess, including uniform, training, meals during the Olympics and an honorarium for those who complete the assignment. More information can be found at linwoodhouseministries.typepad.com.
