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Episode transcript
ANNOUNCER
The world’s best arrived here at the Whistler Olympic Park for this, the first ever ski jumping…
HOST (ANDIE CROSSAN)
Vancouver was host for the Winter Olympics in 2010.
You might remember—beautiful scenes of skiers flying down Whistler mountain and snowboarders catching air on the slopes just above the city.
ANNOUNCER
…beautiful takeoff. Let’s hope he gets some air at the bottom of the hill…
HOST
This is where I’m from.
The beaches, forests, even the luxury high-rises, it’s all breathtaking.
But life in Vancouver is becoming harder for its most vulnerable people.
NEWSREADER
The numbers are stark, the reality is grim. A record number of people are experiencing homelessness in and around Metro Vancouver.
HOST
For decades, this city has been dealing with escalating inequality.
With homeless encampments taking over some of the city parks.
PAUL ALAUZY
…Having that level of richness, uh, next to that level of poverty. It’s crazy.
HOST
That’s anti-Olympic activist Paul Alauzy.
PAUL
The scene is already violent in Paris to see like, uh, homelessness, uh, next to like a big luxury hotel and, uh, luxury shops. But here, this really is the most like, violent example of capitalism I saw in my life.
HOST
Paul has come all the way from Paris to Vancouver to learn about the anti-Olympic movement here.
He arrives during the deepest darkest part of winter where a rare snowstorm has sparked a crisis.
Particularly for a group of people living in a tent city.
SPEAKER 1
Hey are you here to help? You want to grab something?
HOST
On this day, Paul along with some local activists are trying to fortify the makeshift village. They bring over a truck full of supplies.
SPEAKER 1
Are you here to help too? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Who else wants to grab some?
PAUL
I mean, uh, we literally walking in like at least 20 centimeters of snow and it’s freezing cold. And it’s crazy how like, I mean, it seems to be the obvious things to do, you know, like just build a house for the people who, who are in need. So yeah, let’s try and do that.
[“Is that one OK?”]
[“Yeah yeah yeah.”]
HOST
But police and park rangers are on the scene telling them what they can and can’t bring into the park.
PARK RANGER
Do you want me to take those from you sir?
PROTESTOR
I just want to say that we’re trying to build homes for unhoused people in the middle of winter.
PARK RANGER
I’d prefer not to see this escalate, but we just can’t have… you bringing all these construction materials into our park.
PAUL
So they have all these people with like, bulletproof vest and guns, and they’re telling you that, um, it’s a safety measure, and that, uh, this is because of the risk of fire.
And it is so cynical to talk about, uh, safety and risk of fire when people are freezing to death, you know?
HOST
Conflicts like these are on the rise.
Encampments are routinely raided and evicted.
NEWSREADER
Streets were blocked. Dump trucks moved in. And people in the encampment had to clear out…
HOST
Tent cities have a long history in Vancouver, dating back to before those 2010 Olympic Games. And it’s only gotten worse since.
So did hosting the Olympics turbo-charge the real estate market and make a bad situation worse? And what about the promises made to build social housing after the games?
This is State of Play, the podcast where we investigate the ways sports events change big cities… creating a state of exception that lasts long after the torch is passed on.
This season we are looking at the Olympic Games—past, present and future.
I’m Andie Crossan.
There is one particular promise we’re going to unpack this episode.
It’s a heated battle for social housing that spans 14 years and culminates in what is called the largest social housing project in Vancouver—which just opened its doors.
But before we go there I want to take us back to the late 2000s.
When Vancouver was exactly where Paris is… gearing up for the Games.
PRESENTER
The International Olympic Committee has the honor of announcing that the 21st Olympic Winter Games in 2010 are awarded to the city of Vancouver.
[cheers]
NEWSREADER
The Games are coming back to Canada.
HOST
Vancouver aimed to do things differently. Its new Mayor, Gregor Robertson, ran on a campaign to end street homelessness. The city wanted to create a positive legacy. The government signed on to what was called an Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Strategy, the first of its kind for any Olympic Games.
It’s a boring name for what were some big promises. 37 of them to be exact.
It included things like making event tickets more affordable, protecting rental housing, and ensuring no one was made homeless because of the Games.
It also promised an affordable housing legacy.
To help meet its commitments, the Vancouver Organizing Committee assembled a group of people to make it happen.
JEAN SWANSON
Well there was this inner city inclusivity committee that was made up of a really wide spectrum of business and social justice types.
HOST
That’s Jean Swanson. Everyone in Vancouver knows Jean.
INTERVIEWER
We’re joined by Jean Swanson now, you’ve pretty much devoted your life to dealing with the homeless, and you’ve written a book about it as well…
JEAN [giving speech]
Lots of young folks have been on my case to run for city council in the upcoming by-election… [cheers]… Yeah, some of them are here!
HOST
She’s an anti-poverty activist and a former Vancouver city councillor. And she’s been a powerful voice advocating for affordable housing in the city for over 40 years
She remembers those pre-Olympic discussions.
JEAN
We came up with a recommendation that there should be 3,200 units of social housing built as an Olympic legacy.
HOST
Part of the plan was to make use of new temporary housing for athletes at a scenic waterfront area. After the games, it would become a new community with shops and apartments, and more more than 700 affordable units.
VOICEOVER
The Olympic Athlete’s Village was to be the centerpiece of the Games’ social housing legacy.
HOST
So that was the plan. But no doubt you remember this:
NEWSREADER 1
Wall Street veterans call it the worst financial crisis of their lifetimes…
NEWSREADER 2
Financial market professionals and journalists and economists kept saying, “oh, this problem with subprime mortgages, that’s not going to affect the rest of the housing market, it certainly won’t affect the broader financial system. And then it did.”
HOST
In the late 2000s the US housing bubble burst, the global financial crisis hit—and the plan began to crumble.
The developer, a company called Millennium, no longer had the money to complete the project.
NEWSREADER
The previous council signed a deal to step in if Millennium, the developer of the village, couldn’t finish it in time for the games. When lenders pulled the plug in 2008, taxpayers were left holding the bag. $690 million dollars of debt.
HOST
The city of Vancouver took on all that debt.
And raced to complete the buildings that would house the Olympic athletes, just in time.
NEWS ANCHOR
From Vancouver, the world stage opening ceremonies at these Winter Olympics.
…Athletes from 96 nations, visitors from even more, cramming into 25,000-plus hotels and every guest room they can find. They are coming by land, sea, and air.
NEWS READER
And with just hours to go… [cheering] people are getting into the spirit.
GREGOR ROBERTSON
It was like the most beautiful February in history of Vancouver, and all cameras were on Vancouver…
HOST
Here’s then Mayor Gregor Robertson.
He was known for starting an organic juice company and riding his bike to city hall—on bike lanes he campaigned for, of course.
His West Coast lifestyle earned him the nickname Mayor Moonbeam.
GREGOR
I mean, that’s kind of marketing and branding that you could never pay for—off the charts—and that could have gone differently. It could have been raining the whole time like it usually does in February.
HOST
As the Olympic torch arrived, Jean Swanson was part of a different kind of celebration.
JEAN
I was so cynical. I of course refused to go to any Olympic events [laughs]. I was really busy organizing for the Poverty Olympics.
HOST
Jean and other activists wanted to call attention to what it was like for people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
JEAN
And it was a parody of the Olympics where we had mascots, Itchy the bedbug, Creepy the cockroach, and Chewy the rat. And we had games like the poverty line high jump, and the broad jump over the bedbug-infested mattress, and the housing hurdles. It was really a lot of fun.
HOST
And the event made news.
JEAN
We had people from all over the world, reporters from all over the world sticking their mics in our faces and asking us why we were doing it. And everyone had the same message. You know, if the money spent on the Olympics had been spent on ending poverty and homelessness, it could be done.
HOST
This is where the next chapter of our story begins.
When a group of housing activists descend on an empty lot on 58 West Hastings Street.
This is the main drag of the Downtown Eastside.
The area is ground zero for Vancouver’s homelessness crisis. With overlapping addiction and mental health issues.
It’s also less than a mile away from the opening ceremony.
The lot is owned by one of the city’s biggest developers. And it’s slated to become a luxury condo tower.
But activists have other plans. On the third day of the Games, they hop over the fence and declare it Olympic Tent City.
SPEAKER 1
Why spend billions on the Olympics when our country needs it the most?
[“Welcome to our tent city… woo hoo! Thank you, thank you for supporting us…”]
[“Welcome to the warriors and leaders of this community… welcome”]
HOST
The Poverty Olympics brings a crowd to the new encampment.
JEAN
We had a beautiful cockroach cake that one of our volunteers made. So we actually ended up taking it down to the Olympic Tent City for those folks to eat.
HOST
Jean says the tent city made homelessness visible on an international scale. It became a focal point during the Games. Here’s Jean at the tent city in 2010.
JEAN
All these condos around here… they’re all pushing up property values which is pushing up rents in hotels which is meaning that low-income people can’t afford to live in the hotels any more, which is why homelessness is increasing…
HOST
Samona Marsh was one of the first residents to set up camp at the Olympic Tent City.
SAMONA MARSH
Well there was just so many people that were being displaced. And government wasn’t doing anything. So we found a spot, and it’s an empty spot, so we went there. I can’t remember what day it was but, in the morning we cut the chain off, and we opened it up, and started Tent City.
HOST
Samona is a longtime resident of the Downtown Eastside, and an advocate for the rights of drug users. She says that the lot began with a few dozen inhabitants, then grew to house around 150 people.
SAMONA
…It was cool like, and just like getting there first and then watching all the people just like trickle in and then all of a sudden you like blink and it’s like, where did all these people come from? [laughs] We have no room.
HOST
Samona isn’t one to stand around and wait for permission. Especially when it comes to fighting for her community… and their bathroom needs.
SAMONA
…I have 150 people here that wanna go pee. Like how hard is it to bring down a porta-potty? So Thursday night I went out, acquired a Porta-potty, put it on the dolly and pushed it down to 58 West Hastings. I didn’t steal it, I just borrowed it right?
HOST
Samona knew she was risking arrest for trespassing when she moved into the lot. But the community there provided a sense of safety.
A massive banner hung near the camp, calling for an end to homelessness, gentrification, and the criminalization of poverty.
SAMONA
I know, like when I first was homeless, the cops would drive around and they would watch you make your structure and as soon as the last person was all settled in, they’d come by and be like, oh wait a minute. You can’t be here. You have to move along. So we’d have to pack everything up and move it, right?
And then they’d come with the street sweeps and just steal all our stuff and throw it in the garbage, you know, and it’s like if we had a spot then they couldn’t do that, right?
HOST
Instead of breaking up the camp, police made regular visits. But they stopped short of an eviction… after all, the world was watching.
SAMONA
Yeah there was more police presence, trying to like, “oh you can’t do that here and you can’t do that there.”
HOST
The Olympic Tent City became a fixture all through the Games. And at the end, many of the residents, including Samona, were told they’d be given priority when new social housing became available.
But Samona didn’t have time to wait. She and other tent city residents moved on to another encampment. And the empty lot where the tent city once stood, earned a reputation.
It represented the tension between the aspirations of wealthy developers and the needs of poor people.
[“Homeless people housing here! Homeless people housing here! Homeless people housing here!”]
HOST
That lot sat mostly empty for many years after.
But local residents never forgot the housing promises that were made during the Olympics—some of them already broken.
The city scaled back plans for social housing in the former Olympic Village.
Five years later, Vancouver’s Olympic Village had already blended in with the rest of the city’s upscale condos, high end health food markets, and craft beer patios.
So housing advocates turned their attention back to the Downtown Eastside. And a new fight began—where the tent city used to be. Back at 58 West Hastings.
People like Jean Swanson demanded that the building going up on that lot should be 100 percent welfare-rate social units.
So to make it happen they created another tent city in 2016 in the exact same spot.
[“Fight fight fight, housing is a right! Fight fight fight, housing is a right!”]
HOST
The city’s mayor responded immediately with a demand for residents to “decamp.”
But tent city residents and supporters refused to move.
The group marched on Vancouver’s City Hall, demanding a meeting with the mayor. Instead, Mayor Gregor Robertson comes to their neighbourhood a few days later. And he gets grilled on his election promise.
Remember, he’s the guy who wanted to end street homelessness.
SAMONA
We had a meeting, and he was there. And we’re like, well, we want it in writing. So we just brought a whiteboard and long white papers.
NEWSREADER
And before a chanting crowd on the Downtown Eastside, Robertson pledged to turn 58 West Hastings into welfare housing.
GREGOR [speaking in 2016]
We’re committing to taking this to rezoning next year, in the first half of the year, that building could be as many as 300 homes in it, 300 units. We’re going to be putting pressure on the BC and federal government to commit to making sure that all of those rooms can be at shelter or welfare rates.
HOST
Gregor Robertson signed a pledge, written in large print. It read: “We commit to 100% welfare/pension rate community controlled social housing at 58 West Hastings. Signed, Gregor Robertson. August 2, 2016.
The photo of the former mayor holding the pledge now hangs in the office of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, where Samona works.
Samona passes it on her way in the door.
SAMONA
It’s almost like they said what they wanted us to hear, right? Nothing they said was true.
HOST
That 100% welfare rate promise fell apart two years later.
GREGOR
I pledged that support for a hundred percent shelter rate housing basically because that’s what we needed there, but that decision ultimately rests with the province.
So we were holding our ground at the city for those years to say, you guys need to contribute. You know this is what’s necessary in the neighborhood, but we need your support to make that a reality.
HOST
Cost overruns pushed the city to once again cut the numbers of subsidized units by half.
The remaining apartments would be rented at just-below market rates.
JEAN
It used to be that social housing meant housing for low income people, but nowadays… they changed the definition. They changed it to mean housing that’s owned by government or a nonprofit where 30% of the units rent at the housing income limits. And the other 70% can be the sky’s the limit.
HOST
The city pushed through with its plan for the site, with half of the units at welfare rate and the other half at below-market levels. About $80 million dollars came from federal and provincial government loans. And a non-profit organization, the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation, pitched in the remaining $30 million.
JEAN
The thing is, most of that money isn’t actual grants. It’s loans that has to be paid back with interest. If you have to pay the mortgage you have to have high rents.
So governments aren’t paying to actually build the housing. They’re just giving nonprofits loans that they have to pay back with interest.
HOST
So after years of blueprints and development hearings, and zoning applications, the building is up.
For activists who have been fighting from the beginning though, it’s bittersweet. Samona says she’s heard a lot of promises over the years.
SAMONA
They said, oh, anybody who stays here as soon as we start building, you guys are the first ones to get in. And now it’s like you have to fill out three applications, and jump through this hoop, jump through that hoop…
HOST
She’s in low-income supportive housing now in the Downtown Eastside. This kind of housing often comes with strict rules… limiting guests and enforcing strict curfews.
SAMONA
I don’t need somebody looking after me. I’m 53 years old, I can look after myself, right?
HOST
Samona says she’s eager for a fresh start. She got a chance to tour the new building where the tent city once was, just before it opened.
MICHAELA
Hi, my name is Michaela. I work as a project manager at the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation. So I’ve been involved in finishing up the construction, picking out all of the finishings for the inside, and just moving along the tenanting process.
We’re going into a studio unit now. This is just slightly bigger than a microsuite…
SAMONA
I like how open they look and how bright they are. They don’t look so dingy, you know, the big windows makes a big difference.
HOST
Samona likes what she sees. That said, she’s still waiting to hear back about her application.
I talked with Queenie Choo, CEO of the non-profit housing association S.U.C.C.E.S.S, that operates the building and processes applications, including Samona’s.
ANDIE
Some people were basically told that they would get some sort of preference, in terms of being able to live at 58 West Hastings. Now for those people, has there been any kind of exceptions made or prioritizing of some of the people who have kind of, been in the long fight for this?
QUEENIE
Certainly the idea is for those people who have been living in that community for a long time, folks that require housing, but they can’t afford it.
So definitely we wanted to see them to be part of this pool.
You know, we are facing this housing crisis, especially in the metro Vancouver. I mean, still a lot of people still looking for affordable housing.
So, the upside is 231 individual will have a place, call home in the building, in 58 West Hastings. But do we need more? Definitely we need more to be able to meet the demand, not only now but for the future.
HOST
The Olympic Games left the city holding nearly $700 million in debt. To repay it, the city sold condos, rental units, and commercial space.
In the former Athletes Village, only 126 of the 730 units promised became affordable for low-income residents.
And at the same time, the city lost existing affordable housing to gentrification, an influx of people moving to the city, and rising property values, all accelerated by renewed global interest in Vancouver brought on by its time in the Olympic sun.
JEAN
I remember being at the airport once during the Olympics. And I was astounded because you know they have ads all over the airport on the walls, and they were all real estate ads. So I think one of the impacts of the Olympics was to entice buyers who came to the Olympics to buy property here. So that’s probably another factor, and another way that the Olympics have been involved in escalating the price of housing.
HOST
Here’s former mayor Gregor Robertson again.
GREGOR
We were the first big city to host the Winter Olympics, which is much more of a festival, you know, typically in a smaller ski town, than the summer Olympics.
And in this case it was a winter festival in a big city with hundreds of thousands of people partying in the streets downtown and having a great time. So in the years that followed, we had an enormous influx of companies coming from around the world, turbocharging the future economy of the city.
But it came at a cost of impacting our housing availability and affordability, so, you know, we couldn’t build fast enough to keep up with it…
HOST
An overheated real estate market, a drug crisis, and a lack of social housing have all converged into a perfect storm in Vancouver.
GREGOR
It was decades of the Canadian government not funding housing, and building social housing, and co-op housing. Basically pulling out of the housing field a decade before and not building enough for a decade before that.
All these factors I think intensified the crisis in Vancouver. So to think that we could have leveraged the Olympics to solve it, it would be ridiculous, but we did get a significant bump up in support from BC and Canada to get more shelter space open, to help people get off the street. You know, those are small victories in a very long war to make… housing accessible to everybody.
HOST
In recent years the city has seen a steadily growing presence of tent cities. Some that have grown to as many as 400 tents.
[“Get inside the fence! Get inside the fence!”]
NEWSREADER
The tent city residents found themselves cut off from their shelters. The encampment surrounded by a fence guarded by police and park rangers.
NEWSREADER 2
Park rangers and Vancouver police move in to enforce a bylaw which prohibits unhoused individuals from setting up their tents in the park during the day.
HOST
But years of enforcement have only affirmed that these residents have nowhere to go.
SAMONA
And then they spent all that money on the Olympics and it’s thinking, you know, if you would’ve spent half the money on the Olympics and built housing or let them move into Olympic Village like you promised, then there wouldn’t be half as many tents on the streets as there is now.
NEWSREADER 1
Soccer fans get ready. FIFA has released its much anticipated schedule for the 2026 World Cup.
NEWSREADER 2
The crowd at BC Place stadium didn’t have to wait long for the happy news. Vancouver was the first of 21 sites in Canada…
NEWSREADER 3
BC Place will host 7 games… Stadium officials say it will be the biggest event BC Place has ever hosted.
HOST
Vancouver will get back on that rollercoaster of mega-events with the FIFA World Cup in two years. The current mayor Ken Sim loves sports. Here he is speaking on local TV.
KEN SIM
I’m super pumped. Like literally it pains me to be sitting down right now. I want to be jumping up and down. It’s absolutely amazing. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.
HOST
But experts are already raising questions about cost overruns, which have already ballooned to twice the initial price tag. And then there’s the lack of accommodation needed for the nearly 1 million fans that are expected to flood into the city.
And so are we doing it again? Focusing on hotel rooms and Airbnbs for tourists and not prioritizing housing for people who are struggling to find affordable places to live in Vancouver?
I tried to talk to Ken Sim about all of this but his office declined multiple requests for an interview. So here he is again on local TV debating an expert about the World Cup.
KEN
We’re getting the equivalent of 30 to 40 Super Bowls in the city of Vancouver. That’s a branding exercise. That’s a sales exercise. You know, think of our restaurants and our hotels, and the hospitality industry… the economic impact that that will bring over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
HOST
The city is expected to shell out half a billion dollars for the World Cup, and whether it reaps the benefits remains to be seen.
Next time on State of Play we’ll bring you to Los Angeles, the host city for the 2028 Summer Games, where the threat of eviction looms.
INES ALCAZAR
They’re just taking our lives away from us. They’re taking our neighbours, they’re taking our churches, they’re taking our markets, they’re, they’re taking everything. It’s going to be gone.
State of Play is brought to you by the Global Reporting Centre and PRX.
Hosted by me, Andie Crossan.
Produced by Sharon Nadeem and Katarina Sabados.
Our senior producers are Sarah Berman and Jesse Winter.
Audio post production by New Fruit Media, with sound editing and mixing by Daniel Rinaldi and Valentina Fonseca.
Digital Production by Andrew Munroe.
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Art by Will Brown.
Our executive producer is Britney Dennison.
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