Residents in DTES could miss cheques as mail halted on two-block stretch
Canada Post says carriers feel unsafe on East Hastings
Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside could be without their next government cheques due in two weeks because Canada Post has stopped mail service to two blocks of East Hastings Street because carriers have said they're concerned for their safety.
“If they (residents) are on welfare or disability, they would have no way of getting their cheques” on April 27, the day the next social assistance cheques are due to be delivered, said local residents advocate Brittany Graham, executive director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users.
The lack of postal service “has immediate repercussions and causes concrete harm” to residents who rely on government cheques or gifts from relatives to pay their rent or meet other expenses, said Anna Cooper, staff lawyer for the Pivot Legal Society.
Canada Post suspended delivery service March 23 for the 000 and 100 block of East Hastings because of carriers' “health and safety concerns,” but, in an emailed statement on Thursday, declined to specify the concerns.
Mail delivery “cannot be at the expense of worker health and safety,” national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Jan Simpson, said in an email. But she also declined to elaborate.
While Canada Post works on a permanent solution, it said customers have been advised they can pick up mail from a Canada Post office two kilometres away, causing concerns for businesses as well as residents.
“We used to get all our bills delivered and if anything was going on in the neighbourhood, the notices came in the mail, and now we don't,” said Ahmed Nasser, manager of the 50 Cents convenience store in the 000 block of East Hastings.
Residents who no longer get mail are being discriminated against under B.C.'s human rights code because of where they live, said Cooper.
“Canada Post cut off people's basic means of delivery with no notice” and requires they travel 14 blocks to get their mail, she said. “The rest of us don't have to walk 14 blocks to get our mail and they shouldn't have to either.”
Graham said some residents don't have the necessary government-issued identification to pick up their mail and it's a long and involved process to get ID.
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart was unavailable Thursday to comment on the suspension of mail services specifically or the issue of community safety in general, but released a statement saying the change is temporary and the city is working on a solution.
Vancouver Coun. Rebecca Bligh said the city is working on an interim solution to possibly have the mail pickup location closer to where the residents live.
She also said she wants to know if there were “a specific incident that triggered” the suspension of service.
Vancouver police is “not aware of any reports made by Canada Post workers,” spokeswoman Const. Tania Visintin said in an email Thursday.
In a later news release, police said they were investigating three “completely random and unprovoked” stabbings with hypodermic needles in the DTES over the last six months, each of which were unrelated to the others. In the third assault, on Sunday at 6:45 a.m., a man was stabbed in the leg by a man holding a needle near Hastings and Columbia streets, said Visintin. That's within the 100 block, where Canada Post has suspended delivery.
Graham said residents in the area have few places to congregate because there are few benches or parks in the 10-block radius of the DTES.
Many of the SROs have policies that ban guests and, because there are few supervised using sites like the one run by the Overdose Prevention Society, it's safer for people to use with others in public areas than alone in their rooms, she said.
People in the community treat others with respect and “it's a false idea that the Downtown Eastside is a dangerous area,” she said.