The streets of the area provide them with some warmth as they are not alone. For the addicts, of course it provides them with a sense of security that their next dose is not far away. Facilities like the injection sites and other voluntary organizations providing them with food, shelter and clothing are within easy reach.  To move these people away from the sights of the visitors, certainly cannot be an easy task unless some drastic action plan including detox centres, mental hospitals and jobs for those who have been rendered homeless because they have been laid off work and not able to pay their rent, are not met.

With an aim to highlight the problem of homelessness in Vancouver to the international community, the Impact on Communities Coalition filed two new human rights complaints against VANOC, the IOC and its government partners earlier this year.  Impact on Communities Coalition Chair Am Johal met with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Council Complaint Procedure in Geneva earlier this year. Says he, “It is unfortunate that years after an Inner City Inclusive Commitment Statement was signed during the bid process, that we would have no choice but to go to Geneva and ask for the help of the UN to ensure that basic international human rights standards are being maintained in Canada in the lead up to the 2010 Olympics.  By putting forward these complaints we are declaring the Inner City Inclusive Commitment Statement as officially dead and nothing more than a whitewash.  This is our way of providing feedback to VANOC and its government partners since they won’t listen to us anyway,” said Am Johal, Chair of the Impact on Communities Coalition. The two complaints are based on civil liberties concerns and lack of tenancy protections leading up to 2010.  

An earlier complaint filed by the Impact on Communities Coalition with Pivot Legal Society and the Carnegie Community Action Project in April of 2008 related to the conversion of SRO hotels, was considered by the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Communication in April 2009.  The Working Group decided to keep the complaint under review.  “The Government of Canada should make public their submission to the UN to ensure transparency to the public.  Is Canada defending the principle of human rights at the UN Human Rights Council or are they willing to distort their record on housing?  Canadians have a right to know what their government is saying at the UN,” said Johal.

The Impact on Communities Coalition has also invited the new UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing and independent UN human rights monitors to visit Vancouver in January and February 2010. Meanwhile the Coalition has been on relay hunger strike to highlight the plight of the poor and the homeless till June 2010 to coincide with the 75th Anniversary of the On-to-Ottawa Trek.  It will end on the steps of Parliament Hill.

Meanwhile, Headlines Theatre Company in collaboration with the homeless population to create dialogue on safe, affordable housing has came up with a play “after homelessness…..”.  According to David of Headlines Theatre Company, these performances will give the homeless community and the general public a creative venue to use theatre to inform policy. Talking to The Asian Outlook, he said, “The after homelessness… project will generate a Community Action Report which will be received by organizations for use in their respective research for national, provincial, regional and local strategies on mental health and homelessness:  The Mental Health Commission of Canada, BC Housing,  The City of Vancouver, The Greater Vancouver Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness,  RainCity Housing and  Coast Mental Health.  Apart from the play, the project also includes a group art exhibition at Gallery Gachet for the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival and a series of Community Dialogues at the Firehall Arts Centre.”
“after homelessness…” project acts as a conduit, bringing diverse people together to share their experiences and solutions about creating supported housing. “Headlines is really good at bringing together people from all walks of life, experiences and backgrounds to talk about solutions,” said Dafne Blanco, Headlines’ outreach coordinator.  “Our work is about tapping into a community who has experienced the issues and also inviting the community at large to engage in the process,” she added.
 
Lived experience is what Forum Theatre is all about.  For “after homelessness…”, Headlines takes 20 people who have lived homelessness and/or mental illness into a week-long workshop, five of whom are the cast members for the play. The workshop uses theatre techniques to explore these issues. Then the cast, with David Diamond as director, create a fictional play out of their collective stories. Performances begin at the end of November, first in Vancouver and then in New Westminster.
 
At each show the play is shown twice; the second time audience members are able to stop the action and replace a character whose struggle they understand. “We are using theatre as a laboratory to rehearse possibilities to really complex issues,” said Blanco. “You can see the complexity of the issue from many points of view. That’s where the power of it resides.” The Community Dialogues will run concurrent to the show, and they bring together the “nuts and bolts” of creating appropriate housing, said Blanco.
 
“It’s not a lecture,” Blanco said, emphasizing that the Session are all about establishing dialogue between the audience and the panellists. “It’s about what can be done, not what has been done,” she added. Panellists include people from the City of Vancouver, BC Housing, the business community, housing agencies and people who have been homeless themselves.

The face behind the play is David Diamond, who has since 1981 directed over 400 community specific theatre projects on issues such as racism, gender roles, violence, addiction, self-esteem, First Nations' Residential Schools, species and habitat protection, water privatization, language reclamation and many, many others. David has directed workshops throughout BC, Canada and the USA, as well as in Namibia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Italy, Australia and Finland. He has also been involved in the writing and/or directing of all of Headlines' main stage plays, including NO` XYA` (Our Footprints), Out of the Silence, Mamu, Squeegee, Corporate U, THIR$TY, Don’t Say a Word, Practicing Democracy, Here and Now, Meth, 2º of Fear and Desire and Shattering. David has pioneered the development of live, interactive Forum television and web casting.

“after homelessness…” ran in Vancouver from Nov. 21-29 at the Firehall Arts Centre, and in New Westminster from Dec. 1-6 at the Holy Trinity Cathedral, at 8pm.  Attempts at raising awareness about the issue are immense but solutions far less to come by. The homeless will continue to garner attention till the Olympics, but what happens after the visitors are gone. Will it be status quo?