On Wednesday, April 5, Vancouver Police and City of Vancouver staff began their most recent decampment of people and their housing structures from the Downtown Eastside. Bystanders estimated at least 100 police officers made their way to East Hastings Street and blocked off a large area, preventing people from entering past a certain perimeter. People living on the streets had to remove all their belongings. In these scenarios what belongings remain, unattended or otherwise, are trucked away to the landfill. If folks do not move along, they risk being ticketed or arrested.
There are now approx. 100 constables on Hastings. @VancouverPD are creating an 'exclusion zone' barring community & legal observers from entering, waiting for @CityofVancouver to arrive.
This paramilitary tactic was used against Wet'suwet'en land defenders & at Fairy Creek. pic.twitter.com/en4UEE06St
— VANDU (@VANDUpeople) April 5, 2023
Street sweeps in the Downtown Eastside have been growing in frequency and intensity with officials citing safety and fire concerns. But decampments or street sweeps are counterproductive, expensive, and harmful, with implications for people affected by viral hepatitis (hepatitis B and C). Violence towards homeless people and municipally-led decampments are not just a Vancouver issue, either. Cities like Nanaimo, Quesnel, Prince George, Kelowna, Abbotsford, Surrey, Victoria, and Vernon have all taken punitive approaches to varying degrees at various times.
There are many issues with decampment and street sweeps ranging from loss of community and isolation to trauma and overdose. The overarching question remains: where now? Shelters are full, housing is not available, and people are living in extreme poverty. People will be pushed further into the margins, dehumanized by the same people who are tasked with public safety. Safety for who? The human rights of poor and homeless people are repeatedly violated. Terry Teegee, Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations, has been vocal about municipal destruction of encampments being in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, given that Indigenous people are overrepresented in homeless counts due to the ongoing impact of colonization.
It might not be the first thing you think of, but decampments have implications for viral hepatitis. They can increase community risk of viral hepatitis transmission or disrupt people who are receiving ongoing hepatitis B treatment or curative hepatitis C treatment.
Here are a few scenarios:
- They are halfway through their course of treatment hepatitis C, which could rid them of the virus, but their medications accidentally get left behind and are trashed. They might not be able to access their care provider or pharmacist right away due to their life being turned upside down.
- They are disconnected from their outreach and healthcare support team that provide nutritional supplements, harm reduction supplies, and medication.
- They moved many blocks away from where they had been staying which was close to an Overdose Prevention Site where they could also get harm reduction supplies. Now they do not have any injection supplies, but their friend says they can share the used equipment he has with him. They are not sure of their friend’s viral hepatitis status.
- In the rush to leave the encampment a bunch of important papers with details about their important health information and follow-up appointments got soaked in the rain making them unreadable.
- They are disconnected from their friends, family, and safe social connections because everyone was forced to scatter.
Housing, shelter, and social connection contribute to maintaining (self-defined) wellness, whereas displacement, isolation, stigma, and criminalization contribute to negative health outcomes including untreated viral hepatitis causing liver disease and sometimes death.
BC Hepatitis Network condemns the recent and ongoing decampments and street sweeps in Vancouver and communities across BC, as they perpetuate harm and discrimination and create vulnerabilities for people living with or at risk of viral hepatitis and other blood-borne infections.
Further reading:
- #StopTheSweeps campaign to end daily displacement and dispossession in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
- Street Sweeps & Disability Justice interview with Pivot Legal Society and Gabrielle Peters
- Project Inclusion study on anti-homeless and anti-substance user stigma perpetuated by policing, health care, and courts from Pivot Legal Society
- Tent Encampment Protocol in Canada from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, and the handout version
- Health Impact of Street Sweeps from the Perspective of Healthcare Providers published in the Journal of Internal Medicine
- Impact of Encampment Sweeps on People Experiencing Homelessness from the US-based National Health Care for the Homeless Council
- Unstable Housing and Hepatitis C Incidence Among Injection Drug Users in a Canadian Setting published in BMC Public Health
Note: The hepatitis B and C viruses are transmitted when blood that contains the virus enters another person’s bloodstream. Viral hepatitis is not spread through casual contact and requires blood-to-blood contact with the virus present. Anyone can get viral hepatitis, but it does disproportionately impact people who experience discrimination due to housing status, drug use, race, incarceration, and poverty. Hepatitis B has a vaccine and ongoing treatment like many other chronic illnesses, and hepatitis C has treatment with a cure rate of over 95%. Find more information on our website here.
BC Hepatitis Network is a provincial community-based organization that supports viral hepatitis work through education, peer support, and engagement with related research and advocacy initiatives.
Are you a healthcare provider, community worker or educator who wants to talk about viral hepatitis or this blog post? Connect with Kate at kate@bchep.org.
Leave a Reply