Vancouver parks to offer free 'basic necessity' menstrual products in all washrooms

The board could join other municipal agencies, including in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster and Port Moody, in offering the products for free. All schools in B.C. were also mandated to offer the products in their washrooms by the end of last year but not all are doing s.

 

  Susan Lazaruk  Updated: February 6, 2020 

 

The Vancouver parks board may become the next municipal agency to offer free menstrual products in its public washrooms.

Commissioner Gwen Giesbrecht is scheduled to make a motion at Monday’s meeting to direct the board to “recommend cost-free menstrual products be made available at all park board facilities.”
“It’s a biological function that women take care of in public washrooms,” she said, adding the products are also used by transgender people.

Just as soap and toilet paper are provided, so too should the basic necessity of menstrual products, she said.

Municipalities including Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Burnaby, New Westminster and Port Moody have started offering free menstrual products on a permanent or pilot project basis, said Neal Adolph of the United Way of the Lower Mainland, which is operating a similar program for social services agencies, called Period Promise.

And the province mandated through the education ministry that all schools in B.C. were to offer free menstrual products in school washrooms. The province provided $300,000 in funding, but not all schools are yet doing so.

“The vast majority of school districts” have complied, the ministry said in an emailed statement. “We anticipate all districts will be providing menstrual products in washrooms very soon.”

The United Way in its annual collection campaign amassed 500,000 individual products and distributed them to Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley social service agencies, such as youth homes, shelters for victims of domestic violence and drop-in neighbourhood houses, said Adolph.

It expects to collect another half million products during this year’s drive, from March 3 to 31.
The United Way also is conducting research with 12 of those agencies about what products are being used and how many are being distributed and what kind of benefits that is making to the people who receive them and to the community.

The United Way, which received $95,000 in provincial funding for the research, is planning to release an interim report at the end of next month and a final report at the end of the year, said Adolph.
It’s not known how much providing the free products will cost or where the money will come from, he said.

Giesbrecht said if the motion is passed by commissioners on Monday, staff will be asked to draft a policy, which would include costs to implement and maintain the service at the board’s 100 or so public washrooms, and other logistics.

“It’s not shown that people go in and take a number of the products. They use what they need and leave the rest,” she said, adding that assumption is based on anecdotal evidence and on the fact that toilet paper isn’t stolen from public washrooms.

And if menstrual products are hoarded or stolen, “it’s a small piece of the whole picture.”
Pinky de la Cruz, manager of city facilities for Coquitlam, said staff are happy with the city’s pilot project started last year. The decision to make it permanent will go back to council after staff has collected and analyzed data, including a public survey.

She estimated installing machines in the remainder of the 72 washrooms that don’t have them will cost about $35,000, and supplies are estimated to cost $25,000 a year.

(c) 202 Vancouver Sun

‘How is that better?’ Clearing Oppenheimer Park will leave homeless in alleys: commissioner

By Simon Little Global News

Posted January 21, 2020 12:39 pm

The Vancouver Park Board held its first meeting since the winter break Monday night, but how to deal with the entrenched homeless camp at Oppenheimer Park was not on the agenda.

The board sent out a media release hours before the meeting saying that it was in the “final stages” of procuring a third party to help it facilitate a “decampment” of the park.

Hiring a third party was one of several key steps the board seemed to be necessary in early December, before it would seek an injunction to order campers to vacate. Amending the city’s camping in parks bylaw and securing housing for the campers are also required in that plan.
 The release provided no timeline to hire the third party.

The Non-Partisan Association (NPA)’s John Coupar, one of two park commissioners who have been pushing for an injunction since early summer, said he’s frustrated with the board’s pace.
“The board works under majority rules. They are moving forward with some steps, I’m happy to see those steps going forward, though obviously I’d like to see them go a little faster,” he said.

“It’s taken longer than I would have liked.”

Coupar said area residents and nearby businesses are feeling forgotten by the city as the situation in the park deteriorates, pointing to a deadly assault on New Year’s Day.

But former board chair and Green Commissioner Stuart Mackinnon defended the board’s approach, saying clearing the park without a bigger plan is pointless.

“Get an injunction and where will those people go?” he asked.

“They’re not going to go to Point Grey (Park), they’re not going to go to Killarney, they’re going to stay there, but they’re going to be on the streets, they’re going to be in the doorways, they’re going to be in the alleyways. How is that better?”

Mackinnon couldn’t say when the board would bring on its third-party consultant, other than to say an announcement was “imminent.”

But he said the board has been left to deal with an issue — homelessness — that is far out of the scope of its powers or resources.

“We know that Oppenheimer is a symptom of the problem, it is not the problem itself,” said Mackinnon. “We have people camping in many of our parks in the city.”

He said the root cause of the Oppenheimer encampment, and the cycle of evicting homeless people from parks and their subsequent return, won’t be addressed until there is adequate housing for the homeless.

© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Residents sleeping outside urged to visit Powell Street Getaway or extreme weather response shelters

January 9 2020

 
As temperatures drop this week, Powell Street Getaway – next to Oppenheimer Park - continues to open as a warming centre to ensure people have an option to come inside from the cold. Due to increased City of Vancouver funding, Powell Street Getaway has been open more frequently this winter, opening when the weather is 0 degrees instead of the previous threshold of -5 degrees.

The Province, in conjunction with Homelessness Services Association of BC and community organizations,  also opens additional shelter spaces when extreme weather alerts are issued on evenings such as tonight when the temperature is 0 degrees or feels like 0. Details on these shelters are attached.

 

Additional warming centres open from January 12

Warming centres will be activated from Sunday, January 12 to Wednesday, January 15. All are welcome and people can bring their carts and pets. People with their own bedding may choose to sleep at the centres and hot drinks and snacks are available.

 

Warming centre locations

January 12 to 14:

• Britannia Community Centre (Hours: 9pm to 8:30am)
• Vancouver Aquatic Centre (Hours: 10pm to 6am)
• Overdose Prevention Society (Hours: 11pm to 8am)

January 15

• Britannia Community Centre (Hours: 9pm to 8:30am)
• Overdose Prevention Society (Hours: 11pm to 8am )

The City urges anyone who is sleeping outside on a cold night to make use of facilities such as Powell Street Getaway or to call 2-1-1 to find out about available shelter spaces.

Since the start of winter, warming centres including Powell Street Getaway have been open on 23 nights, with more than 2,600 visits.

 

Are you concerned about someone sleeping outside?

If residents are concerned about an individual, they’re encouraged to check in with the person safely to see whether they want help, then direct them to a warming centre or EWR shelter PDF file (225 KB), or call 2-1-1. Members of the public who would like to donate warm clothing such as new socks, toques or gloves can call 2-1-1 to find out how.

During the day, those in need can also access low-cost meals and free shower and laundry facilities at Carnegie, Evelyne Saller, and Gathering Place community centres. These locations and other public buildings, such as libraries and community centres, are also available during their opening hours as spaces to warm up during extreme weather conditions.

Recycling your Christmas tree

Bring your tree for chipping, donate to charity

Every year, City staff and Lions Club volunteers provide Christmas tree chipping events. After the trees are chipped, they are taken to the Vancouver Landfill to be composted.

Your cash and non-perishable food donations collected at the events will be distributed to local charities.

*** Remove all decorations and tinsel ***

When:
Saturday, January 4 and Sunday, January 5, 10am to 4pm

Where: 

• Kerrisdale Community Ice Rink parking lot
  (5670 E Blvd, north of 41st Ave)
• Kitsilano Beach parking lot
  (Cornwall Ave and Arbutus St)
• Sunset Beach upper parking lot
  (Beach Ave and Broughton St)
• Trout Lake Community Centre parking lot
  (3360 Victoria Drive, south of E 12th Avenue)

Set out your tree for collection

Live, cut Christmas trees will be collected from households with City Green Bin service during the weekend of January 11 to 12, 2020. To ensure pickup, residents should set out their tree by 7am on Saturday, January 11.

To get your tree ready for pick-up:

• Remove all decorations and tinsel
• Lay the tree on its side
• Leave the tree loose (no bags, string, or rope)
• Do not put your tree inside your Green Bin

January 11 to 12 is also a designated leaf collection weekend. Leaves should be set out in paper yard waste bags or in store-bought bins (max. 100 litres) by 7am on Saturday, January 11.

Drop off your tree at the transfer station or landfill

Bring your tree to the Vancouver South Transfer Station or Vancouver Landfill for free until January 31.  

Remove all decorations and tinsel beforehand

Happy New Year!

for better parks and a better city

wishing you all health, happiness, and love

All the Best for the Holiday Season!

'Fierce and undaunted': Vancouver sex workers advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton dies at 64

 Hamilton was among the first to sound the alarm that a serial killer was preying on Vancouver sex workers

 Vancouver Sun·

Matt Robinson & Scott Brown

December 24, 2019·12:25am

Jamie Lee Hamilton had spirit and moxie. She was innovative, generous, funny, fierce and opinionated, and her death represents a great loss for Vancouver.

Those were among the words friends had for Hamilton, a longtime advocate for transgender and sex workers who died Monday at age 64.

David C. Jones, a Vancouver entertainer and writer, last saw Hamilton on Saturday, when she was baptized. He and a group of Hamilton’s other friends had filled her room at the Cottage Hospice, where she had been receiving care since Dec. 9, to sing Amazing Grace.

Hamilton was very weak that day and she could only speak in single words at a time rather than full sentences. What Jones told her then serves as a last goodbye between the two friends.

“I said you are an amazing person and you have done so much for the city and for me, and you’re a great friend and I love you.”

Contrast that with their first interaction, when Hamilton publicly criticized Jones over a stance he held on an issue. Hamilton held strong opinions, but she also had the ability to separate people from actions with which she disagreed. The two eventually became close friends, so close even that she allowed him to buy a trio of her outfits for use in a panto of Rumpelstiltskin.

Hamilton began to transition in 1969 so that she could live in the world as a woman, as friend Becki Ross put it, and she started to work in the sex industry as a teenager.

Ross, a sociology professor at the University of B.C., has known and worked with Hamilton since the mid-1990s, when she ran for Vancouver city council. It was the first of several political campaigns for Hamilton, who also ran for Vancouver park board and school board.

Hamilton was among the first to sound the alarm that a serial killer was preying on sex workers in Vancouver. She protested police inaction in 1998 when she dumped 67 pairs of stilettos on the steps of Vancouver City Hall to raise awareness about missing women.

“There were some individual police officers who were sympathetic,” Hamilton said of that period. “But the political opinion of the police department was obscene: That [the missing women] may have moved away and there was no proof of a serial killer.”

Hamilton established and operated Grandma’s House on Pandora Street as a safe haven in the Downtown Eastside for sex workers. But it was closed as a “common bawdy house” by police in 2000.

“That wasn’t the sole purpose of the house,” Hamilton told The Vancouver Sun that year, adding that it was also a refuge where prostitutes could get a meal, clothing and access to street nurses. “Obviously, the police have a different take on that.”

Robert Pickton was arrested two years later and charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder of women who had disappeared from the Downtown Eastside. He ultimately confided that he had killed 49 and he was convicted in 2007 of six counts of murder.

In 2016, Hamilton and Ross co-founded Canada’s first sex work memorial outside St. Paul’s Anglican Church, at the West End intersection of Jervis and Pendrell streets. The memorial, a retro lamp-post with a red bulb, honours sex workers in the neighbourhood who were forced out by city hall, police and the provincial government in the 1980s. Hamilton was among those who had been violently expelled from the area, Ross said.

Hamilton fought every day for decades for the decriminalization of sex work, and she spoke as a guest lecturer at UBC, the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, Capilano University and Douglas College, Ross said.

Hamilton returned earlier this year to the West End to live before she entered the hospice in early December.

Ross last saw her friend on Dec. 12, when she was still in high spirits.

“I just did not know, and I don’t think anyone did, how compromised her body was, and how she just wouldn’t survive this, because she’d survived everything else,” Ross said through tears.

“To me, she was just always so fierce and undaunted and unflagging in her drive to live and to snatch every bit of meaning and pleasure and everything worthwhile out of life that she could.”

mrobinson@postmedia.com
sbrown@postmedia.com


(c) 2019 Vancouver Sun

Postscript: Jamie Lee was a fierce defender of the independence of the Park Board and an advocate for neighbourhood services. She ran many times for Park Board Commissioner and will always be remembered as 'Queen of the Parks'. My condolences to JLHs family of friends. She will be missed and remembered. Stuart Mackinnon

City urged not to use shooting to justify Oppenheimer 'decampment'

A Pivot Legal Society letter urges elected officials to "press pause" on using the incident to justify efforts to remove the tent city.

Nick Eagland Vancouver Sun

Updated: December 13, 2019 

The day after police swarmed the Oppenheimer Park tent city following a shooting that put one man in hospital, a Vancouver advocacy group is urging elected officials not to use the incident as justification for putting its occupants in further harm’s way.

Vancouver police went to the park just after 5:30 p.m. on Thursday after shots were reported. A man with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound was taken to hospital by ambulance and is expected to recover, Const. Tania Visintin said. No one has yet been charged.

On Friday, Pivot Legal Society held a press conference at the park followed by a party to mark the tent city’s first anniversary.

Pivot staff lawyer Anna Cooper said that while few details about the shooting have been released, her society is concerned by the huge police response.

“This is a typical case, in point, where we’re very responsive to what are actually extremely rare situations of shootings and people getting injured, and then we’re really slow to respond to the daily grind of exposure and displacement, which is what is actually killing people,” Cooper said.

On Friday, Pivot sent a letter to the mayor, council and park commissioners asking them to consider how the heavy police response may have made things worse for the tent city occupants.

“VPD officers slashed open many residents’ tents last night in the course of their operations,” Cooper wrote in the letter. “Setting aside for the moment whether those actions were a reasonable exercise of police authority, the result is that many people’s homes and shelters are now exposed to wind, rain, and a lack of privacy. This is both a health and safety issue.”

Pivot’s letter also urges elected officials to “press pause” on using the shooting to justify efforts to remove the tent city.

She pointed to an October police statement that linked the shooting of a woman in a car near the park to a rise in violence “as gangs compete for territory around the park.” A month later, police said their investigation revealed that a son had actually accidentally shot his mother.

“If you look at what is actually risking the lives of homeless people, it’s not homicide,” Cooper said. “I’m not saying that gun incidents don’t matter. Obviously they’re very scary. But they are not the thing that people living on the streets are most scared of because they’re not the thing the majority of them know and love are dying from.”

A B.C. Coroners Service report released this year found that 56 per cent of deaths of homeless people between 2007 and 2016 were accidental, compared to three per cent by homicide.
Police could not be reached for further comment late Friday afternoon.

Earlier this week, park commissioner Stuart Mackinnon said the park board’s goal is to help people move out through a respectful “decampment.”

Mackinnon said Friday that he has been concerned about the safety of those living in the tent city since it formed a year ago. He stressed the urgent need to find them adequate housing.

“Crime is a fact of city life and that neighbourhood is particularly prone to it, so of course I’m concerned for people who are living in the park, always,” Mackinnon said.

“If there was adequate shelter available people wouldn’t be living in the park. This is why they’re there, this is why we’ve taken this route because we don’t feel that putting people onto the street is the answer.”

At a meeting Monday, park commissioners directed staff to find an independent third-party organization to assess what the needs are of the homeless population there and make recommendations how to meet them.

Police are asking anyone who has information about or witnessed the shooting to call the major crime section at 604-717-2541 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

With files from Derrick Penner

neagland@postmedia.com

twitter.com/nickeagland

Park board finally taking steps, carefully, to clear campers from Oppenheimer Park

The park board will engage a third-party group to assess the park's current state and continue working with park residents to seek housing.

Derrick Penner

Updated: December 11, 2019 

 

 Vancouver’s park board is prepared to seek an injunction to clear out campers living in Oppenheimer Park, but that won’t happen until there is an adequate plan for alternative shelter space and services for the homeless there, the board chair said Tuesday.

 

At an in camera meeting Monday night, park commissioners directed staff to find an independent third-party organization to assess what the needs are of the homeless population there and make recommendations how to meet them, Stuart Mackinnon said.

After more than a year of park occupation by homeless struggling to find places to live, Mackinnon said park board’s goal is to help people move out through a respectful “decampment” of the facility.

The park board decided to step up action now because of safety concerns with encampment residents “taking warmth into their own hands” with implements such as propane heaters inside tents.

“We want to make sure everyone is safe and everyone can stay warm,” Mackinnon said. That will be one of the conditions the third-party entity will be trying to meet.

He added that it is intended to be a respectful process that engages with the campers living in the park in a more of a community response to help what has become a unique community within the city.

“Once conditions (of the plan) are met, the board has authorized the (parks) general manager to seek an injunction through the courts,” Mackinnon said. However, he didn’t set a schedule for that.

Parks general manager Malcolm Bromley said staff are in talks with potential third-party organizations, those with track records in the Downtown Eastside and trusted relationships with the residents there.

Bromley hopes to unveil the successful candidate before Christmas, but acknowledged it is likely some campers will be in the park through the winter.

Parks staff hope to have the plan complete within the first three months of 2020, but Bromley said it is more important to get the “decampment” right than do it quickly.

“I’m reluctant to put a date out there because if we miss it, it will be deemed a failure,” Bromley said.
Bromley added that much of the timing will depend on the findings and recommendations of the third party.

Mackinnon said the work will also be done “with a commitment to the principles of reconciliation,” acknowledging that studies have shown Indigenous people to be homeless in a far greater proportion than their overall population.

“I want to reiterate that the encampment is not the source but a symptom of a much greater problem of homelessness in our community,” Mackinnon said.

The park board will also consider revisions to its park-use bylaw that prohibits overnight camping in parks to rewrite rules that have been ruled unconstitutional in court challenges in other cities.

Bromely said park board staff have been consulting officials in Victoria and other communities where courts have ruled that people can’t be barred from sleeping in parks when no alternative is available.

He added that they are considering options for accommodating reasonable access to parks and how to align that with other complementary services that can be presented to the park board.

depenner@postmedia.com
twitter.com/derrickpenner

Park Board approves additional measures to support decampment plan for Oppenheimer Park, including a conditional injunction

Vancouver Park Board

News release
December 10, 2019

As winter temperatures continue to deteriorate conditions for people experiencing homelessness in Oppenheimer Park, the Park Board has directed staff to work with partners to meet a number of conditions to further the voluntary decampment plan, supported by an injunction once conditions are met.

Among the conditions sought by the Board, staff will engage a third party to conduct an independent assessment of the current situation in Oppenheimer Park to provide recommendations to enhance safety, provide support, and seek appropriate shelter for people in the park as part of the decampment plan. This work will be done with a commitment to the principles of reconciliation and in consultation with those in the park.

Park Board staff have also been directed to deepen existing partnerships between the City, BC Housing, and the Park Board.

The Board has instructed staff to revise the current bylaw, which precludes people from sheltering in parks, in order to bring the bylaw up to current standards, in accordance with other municipal models, and to meet legal precedent.

The Park Board has authorized the General Manager to seek an injunction once the conditions are met. 

“While we know this will take time, I am optimistic that we have developed a plan to improve conditions for people experiencing homelessness in Oppenheimer Park and to move toward a safe resolution to the current encampment in the park,” said Stuart Mackinnon, Park Board Chair. “The Board is committed to enacting a compassionate and holistic approach to this difficult and complicated challenge that touches everyone in our community.”

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Media contact:

Vancouver Park Board

pb.communications@vancouver.ca | 604-257-8699