Home is where the heart is… warm, comfortable, secure, sacred… The situation in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver; however, has escalated to the point where Canada’s stance on housing is violating fundamental Human Rights as outlined by the United Nations. 

On April 13^th, the Pivot Legal Society, the Carnegie Community Action Project and the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition (IOCC), filed an official complaint to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, citing that Canada, the Province of British Columbia, and the City of Vancouver are in violation of Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), of which Canada is a signatory. There’s no place like home. In a developed, industrious country such as Canada, there’s no place for homelessness.

“Small places, close to home… are the places where every man, woman and child seek equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.  Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.  Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." —Eleanor Roosevelt
(Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, United States, In Your Hands, Address Delivered at the UN on the Tenth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Mar. 27, 1958).