Abandoning the SRO: Public Health Withdrawal from Sanitary Enforcement in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Jeffrey Masuda

doi:10.1177/00961442211018795

Abstract

This paper situates a ten-year period of political upheaval in addressing the problem of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing in Vancouver, Canada, within an epistemic transformation of public health. Until 1970, the Vancouver Health Department exemplified a colonial history of public health in establishing the city's skid road as a cordon sanitaire. But the 1970s saw a sudden fading of the Department's authority just as a more collaborative approach to housing policy was emerging. The sunsetting of sanitary enforcement was driven in part by the arrival of a "new public health" that became primarily concerned with defining public health problems and solutions through the regulation of racialized bodies and behaviors-a cordon thérapeutique. By the 1980s, this shift constituted an epistemic and regulatory abandonment of SRO housing, leading to the accelerated deterioration of the entire housing stock and costing incalculable human suffering and the loss of lives.

Highlights

On June 12, 2017, the City of Vancouver shut down the Balmoral Hotel, a run-down century-old Single Room Occupancy (SRO) building located in the heart of the predominantly low-income Downtown Eastside (DTES)
This paper examines the relationship between housing bylaw non-enforcement, the decline of SRO habitability, and the public health crisis in Vancouver through the prism of policy failure theory.[6]
Concerned that the Vancouver Health Department (VHD) was grossly understaffed and underpowered, Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) began something of an insurgent inspections process, surveying forty rooming houses to point out the urgency of the problem of deteriorating conditions in hopes of impelling action.[89]

Summary

Introduction

On June 12, 2017, the City of Vancouver shut down the Balmoral Hotel, a run-down century-old Single Room Occupancy (SRO) building located in the heart of the predominantly low-income Downtown Eastside (DTES).

Results

Conclusion