Chanel Ly

Learning from organizing against gentrification in San Francisco

At the end of March, four Vancouver Downtown Eastside (DTES) organizers went to San Francisco to learn about how people there are organizing to fight gentrification.  The four are King-mong Chan, Jannie Leung, Chanel Ly and Wendy Pedersen.  On April 20th The Volcano interviewed Wendy and Chanel about what they learned. (…)

SRO Collaborative launches in the Downtown Eastside

with Wendy Pedersen

A Tenant Convention, SRO School, organizing “class action” suits to get repairs done, Youth for Chinese Seniors, and Video Voices of SRO tenants – these are some programs that the newly forming SRO Collaborative is taking on in its first year. The Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative works to improve habitability and prevent renovictions in Single-Room Occupancy hotels in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. Our strategy is to start organizing within the worst of the worst – the privately-owned SROs. Modelled after the SRO Collaboratives in San Francisco, we hope to help build a stronger renters rights movement here. We have some funding from Atira Development Society to get this project going in 2015. If this project is useful to SRO tenants, we will continue to develop it. (…)