Earlier this fall, Vancouver’s Gallery Gachet was notified that 100 percent of their funding from Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) will be cut by December. With the implementation of VCH’s new DTES Second Generation Health Strategy Plan, the services provided at the gallery were no longer deemed to fall within VCH’s primary mandate of providing “core health services.”
Although VCH argues that Gachet’s resources will be reallocated to services targeting mental health and addictions more directly, the decision shifts resources away from a grassroots peer-run community organization that has been successful and effective for 21 years. Gallery Gachet is a platform for artists to speak their truths about their experiences with mental health and social marginalization. The gallery is a place for educating the public and promoting social and economic justice, while at the same time providing necessary support – such as housing advocacy, studio space, and economic security – to those who experience marginalization.
The cuts will impact the Gachet community most directly but the decision also has broader ramifications, reflecting a trend within VCH towards an increasingly limited definition of health care. They also come in the context of the continuous loss of affordable housing, increased policing, and accelerating gentrification in the wake of the City’s two year old Local Area Plan for the Downtown Eastside. Together these decisions and policies are contributing to the systematic displacement of people with disabilities in the DTES.[1]