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LETTER: End vanlife stigma, Squamish

Vehicle residents are often subject to discrimination and stigma and the discourse used by the District of Squamish (DOS) is no different. The District continually refer to vehicle residents as vulnerable. This is erroneous.

Vehicle residents are often subject to discrimination and stigma and the discourse used by the District of Squamish (DOS)  is no different. The District continually refer to vehicle residents as vulnerable. This is erroneous. Living in a vehicle does not make one vulnerable.

A wide variety of people live in vehicles, some who need extra support, and many who do not. In fact, many vehicle residents claim that the only thing they are vulnerable to is stigma and the continued state efforts to deject and displace them from public lands.

However, vehicle residents are not disappearing and are only increasing in numbers.

Regarding recent events at the Municipal Campground near Brennan Park,  these vehicle residents wanted to keep paying to stay because it provided basic amenities, privacy, security of land, and importantly, a community of belonging. When it came time to leave, many left unwilling and only out of frustration with the daily visits from the state. While some were fortunate enough to fit through the application filter of other affordable campgrounds, others simply returned to the daily displacement of the streets or were relocated to a place determined by the District. A few who were immobile remained because the options provided by the DOS were unrealistic for them, ie: the shelter or towing them to another town. It is important to understand that many vehicle residents do not consider themselves homeless or shelter folks; their vehicle is their home.

The District needs to stop seeing this as a housing crisis. This is about privilege, land access, and a failure to recognize other ways of seeing. When Mayor Karen Elliott says that people resort to living in vehicles due to the lack of affordable housing, she fails to recognize that for many, vehicle living is a matter of choice that needs to be accommodated with inclusive policy — not pity. Vehicles are a form of housing that provide privacy and freedom that conventional housing does not. Vehicle residents have dignity in their housing which is wrongfully stripped away every time bad policies result in them being displaced or judged. 

 It is hard to comprehend how housed residents, from the security of their home, can complain and willfully ask for the campground’s closure — an outcome that marginalizes community members. It is more difficult to understand how the current council obliges such requests. Breaking up the campground only worsens conditions because it further marginalizes and destroys community. What is at stake here is not a piece of land, but our own humanity and the equilibrium between warmth and cutthroat.

By failing to provide inclusive solutions for vehicle residents, the DOS is in fact an accomplice to this bigotry, resentment, and stigma. Vehicle residents want community and place just as much as our traditionally housed community.

The time to change our ways and commit to the discipline of respect for the lives of all people is overdue.

Those in charge should be striving to change the consciousness of this community rather than willingly take part in an unsustainable and unjust system.

The colonial laws we are subject to are not permanent and can change. This old battle over land need not continue as is. It is time to invent new ways and provide inclusive policy so vehicle residents can live safely without being subject to state forces, marginalization, judgment, surveillance and daily displacement. If this involves shaking the naysayers out of their accustomed pattern of lives — then so be it.

Thomasina Pidgeon
Squamish

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