Vancouver, B.C. is providing unexpected moral guidance for thieves. Don’t steal once — steal daily. Then it’s apparently not theft!
Does this sound a little strange? Nevertheless the City of Vancouver is itself adopting just a policy, and the homeless with their pitifully few possessions are the victims of an immoral and repugnant city action.
Homeless people have no place to put things . . . because they are homeless. Their only possible place to leave the little they own is on public property. In Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, street sweeps daily pounce upon this property — at least, if it is not literally held in arms — with all the wrongheaded spirit of “finders keepers, losers weepers.” Theft, in other words.
We’ve had recent reason to comment on such immoral highhandedness which tends to escape notice as an inconvenient consequence of major tent encampment clearances1.
Vancouver, however is taking this quite deliberate theft to a new level of frequency. Readers can assess for themselves whether such actions conflict with Vancouver’s Homeless Action Awareness Week, which wrapped up yesterday. Read more in The Tyee: Street Sweeps Steal from Homeless People, Say Downtown Eastside Advocates,at Global: DTES residents, advocates say ‘street sweeps’ targeting city’s homeles and at the CBC: Homeless advocates call for end to Vancouver street sweeps
