A vendor at the junk market. Photos by Nicky Young.Three years ago, right around the time the Olympics landed in Vancouver, the Vancouver Police force decided to tackle a particularly inoffensive problem in the cityâs already low-income, rough downtown eastside neighbourhoodâstreet vendors selling random junkâwith a ticketing spree. In what many local activists described as âdiscriminatory policing,â people all over the city were pissed off that the cityâs most disadvantaged people were being fined and prevented from generating a meagre income.In response to what many people feel is unfair and shoddy policing, a weekly street market was launched. For the past three years, every Sunday, vendors in the eastside gather to sell old electronics, porn, and other random junk.I sat down with one of the main organizers, Roland, to understand why he felt it was necessary to start a junk market to protest the cityâs authoritative stance.Roland Clarke.VICE: So how did all of this start, Roland?
Roland: In the summer of 2010, the police in Vancouver launched a big crackdown on all the unregulated selling that that you see up and down Hastings Street. They were giving vending tickets to all these people that were on welfare, which is terrible because the bylaw is just for displaying goods, designed to prevent businesses from taking over the sidewalk without a permit, without anything to do with unregulated selling. The trouble is most of these people are homeless or donât have a fixed address, so a few months after the ticket is sent they get a court date, which they will miss due to not being able to receive mail, receive a failure to appear and go to jail. Itâs a horribly cruel and inhumane way of actually dealing with a street disorder.So this market started as a protest in 2010, as way of saying that thereâs all this selling out of desperation going on because welfare is so low, weâre going to create a safe zone here. Weâre going to monitor it and weâre going to make sure the police arenât going to come here and ticket, and it lasted for a long time without any permits or support from the city. Last September, we convinced the city to give us permits and support, so now weâre actually a permitted event. Itâs legal. Weâre here every Sunday, rain or shine.Binning [taking stuff out of the garbage to sell it] goods, recycling, and selling are socially beneficial and healthy. Itâs a micro-enterprise and if you run an organized market you can separate that from drug dealing and stolen goods, which is what weâre trying to do. Many police we are dealing with will insist that people donât go to jail for these vending tickets, but in fact they do. In the downtown lower east side half of all incarcerations are now for administrative crimes, which means that they are just failing to appear in court. Half of the people in jail right now really shouldnât be there. There should be a humane solution for them, but the police can hide the statistics, legitimately say that no one goes to jail for tickets because that is technically true, you donât go to jail for the ticket, you go to jail for the failure to appear.The junk market crowd on Sunday.How does the market function?
We have $30,000 and thatâs going to last us a year. So for 52 markets a year, thatâs a little over 500 bucks a market. Most of these volunteers work for $3.50 an hour. The people in charge work for seven bucks an hour. I work for seven bucks an hour. Iâm here for 12 hours so I make 84 bucks a day, but I make the same rate that the top level volunteers would make as a coordinator, and all the other coordinator jobs donât get any additional wage so we have to make that money stretch.In terms of the economic benefit, itâs incredible, because if you walk around the market on a good day we have 200 vendors. We try and poll how much they make and itâs a conservative estimate to say that 10,000 dollars of business is done at this market every day. So if you think about 10,000 dollars of commerce and you multiply that by 52, thatâs half a million dollars of direct economic injection into the poorest and most marginalized population of the downtown eastside. Thatâs a 20:1 multiplier on the city investment to run this market versus the money in the hands of the people.So if you have a food program and you buy food and you feed them that is 1:1 investment. If you have a make work employment program itâs 1:1. It costs the government five bucks to pay somebody five bucks. What youâre doing here is youâre creating an economic environment where people can make their own money. All you have to do is pay to create this zone where vending is allowed and there is a greater than 10:1 return on investment.The vast majority of vendors here would never sign up for a job. Theyâre so independent and they hate services so much that if you told them to show up and do this work for three hours, they would say screw you, but if you tell them that there is a space where they can do their own stuff, sell their own work and nobody is watching them, then they will show up. Itâs an incredibly low barrier environment that benefits the people that are effectively the hardest to reach with a service, so I think itâs an incredible thing.Crazy art is all over the place, flat screen TVs⊠we regularly get shipments of truck tires, there is stuff that comes down here and you just have no idea how it got here. When estates arenât dealt with properly, weird stuff end up in the trash, and weâre on the receiving end.Just a few of the items you can purchase at the junk market.Have there been any unexpected benefits?
There is the Greenest City initiative, and thereâs the Zero Waste initiative that Vancouver is fighting for. This street market alone, we believe, removes at least 20â30 tons of waste that would normally end up in landfills each year. That aspect and the social benefits is why the city should fund it. It should be a model for other cities.You harness the power of hardworking people who have multiple barriers, who suffer from mental health and/or addiction issues, which makes them very weary of interacting with any of the services and almost impossible to employ. Binners in Vancouver are incredibly hard working. I know some of them that will walk to Point Grey and back [11 miles]. Thatâs hard work.What kind of problems does one encounter when theyâre running a junk market?
There are a lot of problems with the street marketâitâs impossible to say everything is going smoothly. One of the problems is that itâs very hard to separate stolen goods from binned goods, but we are working closely with the VPD [Vancouver Police Department] on that and there are general guidelines.Anything with a price tag on it on it, anytime someone is selling three or more identical things in packages, [we wonât let it get sold]. Weâre fighting the prejudice of the downtown east side as well; insofar as a police officer will much more likely identify something as stolen here, versus if they found it in a garage sale in Strathcona. But to give the VPD credit they are working with us. They know weâre not the bad guys and weâre not trying to hide illegal activity, but itâs difficult.In this part of the city, for instance, I would venture to guess that hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug transactions are done every day, just in Pigeon Park alone. Yet in our market, if someone sells drugs, itâs our fault, and we need to regulate better and separate the drug trade; thatâs the hard part.There are people saying, âWell there are drugs being sold at the market.â Itâs the downtown east side, there are drugs being sold everywhere, how is it our fault? At the same time if you want a certain kind of customer to walk through, if you want tourists coming to Chinatown to stop and shop then you have to combat that. You basically have to put a veneer over the downtown east side long enough for vendors to get the benefit of what they sell so there are lots of challenges in that area. I think the smart vendors understand that and Iâve seen many vendors up their game in the last year. They prepare all week, cleaning up their stuff, they get a table and improve their presentation and then they get a higher price for less work.Thatâs exactly the kind of transformation you want to see in somebody whoâs doing this. There is a lot of social capital thatâs built. You see a lot of vendors working together in ways they wouldnât have before. A third of the vendors are women and a lot of those women are current or former sex trade workers. I know one woman who regularly says that this market helps her to work less, and she likes it much more.Another challenge is that a lot of these people are addicted to drugs, but if you consider the transition of somebody that might want to get off addiction but then still be unemployable, this is better for them. Itâs an opportunity and youâre still leaving open the personal choice. So there are a lot of challenges, but itâs governed organically, so if problems come up, they are solved democratically and we work our way through it.Baby formula and flip flops.It seems like thereâs a huge First Nations [native, aboriginal Canadian] influence in the market as well.
Half of the vendors are native. Five percent of the population in BC is native. In the downtown east side, itâs as high as ten percent, and the area around Main and Hastings is around fifty percent.There is a hugely disproportionate population of natives here, mostly associated with the trauma of being native in BC. Many of the vendors here are homeless, all they do is bin all the time and find places to sleep. Lots of them live in 10â by 10â single room occupancy rooms, so itâs an incredibly interesting population. What we hope is that more of the downtown east side agencies will start to engage with the market, because these are people who donât engage with the services at any other time. They donât wait in food lines because they make their own money, theyâre as independent as they possibly can be, and itâs an opportunity to reach out to a population who are still in trouble. They have addiction and mental health needs. They will never ask for help, but thereâs a possibility that if you have a booth here and they see it they might use it.This is Ken, one of the vendors, who told us about a woman who bought a Tiffany lamp at the junk market then flipped it for $8,000 in Gas Town.What are your plans for the future?
The future plans are just to expand. Last Sunday it was packed, and if we had twice the space we would fill it. Thereâs no question that there is demand for more space and more days of the week. The question is how we do it, how we get the money, and how we convince funding bodies that we wonât become a market for thieves and drug dealing. We have to combat and regulate that and we have to make it become something that can be more easily fundable. I think weâre starting to turn that corner.OK so level with me, whatâs the weirdest thing thatâs showed up here?
The weirdest thing I saw was an ultrasound machine. Now, all this stuff is supposedly binned items right out of the trash, right? Where did they get it? And how much did it sell for, because it was gone at the end of the day. Who would have bought that? I have pictures.Well I guess I know where to go if I want a cheap ultrasound machine! Thanks Roland.For more on garbage:Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of PlasticThe Things They Throw Out on the Side of the RoadThe Future of New York City's Trash Sucks
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Roland: In the summer of 2010, the police in Vancouver launched a big crackdown on all the unregulated selling that that you see up and down Hastings Street. They were giving vending tickets to all these people that were on welfare, which is terrible because the bylaw is just for displaying goods, designed to prevent businesses from taking over the sidewalk without a permit, without anything to do with unregulated selling. The trouble is most of these people are homeless or donât have a fixed address, so a few months after the ticket is sent they get a court date, which they will miss due to not being able to receive mail, receive a failure to appear and go to jail. Itâs a horribly cruel and inhumane way of actually dealing with a street disorder.So this market started as a protest in 2010, as way of saying that thereâs all this selling out of desperation going on because welfare is so low, weâre going to create a safe zone here. Weâre going to monitor it and weâre going to make sure the police arenât going to come here and ticket, and it lasted for a long time without any permits or support from the city. Last September, we convinced the city to give us permits and support, so now weâre actually a permitted event. Itâs legal. Weâre here every Sunday, rain or shine.
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We have $30,000 and thatâs going to last us a year. So for 52 markets a year, thatâs a little over 500 bucks a market. Most of these volunteers work for $3.50 an hour. The people in charge work for seven bucks an hour. I work for seven bucks an hour. Iâm here for 12 hours so I make 84 bucks a day, but I make the same rate that the top level volunteers would make as a coordinator, and all the other coordinator jobs donât get any additional wage so we have to make that money stretch.
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There is the Greenest City initiative, and thereâs the Zero Waste initiative that Vancouver is fighting for. This street market alone, we believe, removes at least 20â30 tons of waste that would normally end up in landfills each year. That aspect and the social benefits is why the city should fund it. It should be a model for other cities.You harness the power of hardworking people who have multiple barriers, who suffer from mental health and/or addiction issues, which makes them very weary of interacting with any of the services and almost impossible to employ. Binners in Vancouver are incredibly hard working. I know some of them that will walk to Point Grey and back [11 miles]. Thatâs hard work.What kind of problems does one encounter when theyâre running a junk market?
There are a lot of problems with the street marketâitâs impossible to say everything is going smoothly. One of the problems is that itâs very hard to separate stolen goods from binned goods, but we are working closely with the VPD [Vancouver Police Department] on that and there are general guidelines.
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Half of the vendors are native. Five percent of the population in BC is native. In the downtown east side, itâs as high as ten percent, and the area around Main and Hastings is around fifty percent.There is a hugely disproportionate population of natives here, mostly associated with the trauma of being native in BC. Many of the vendors here are homeless, all they do is bin all the time and find places to sleep. Lots of them live in 10â by 10â single room occupancy rooms, so itâs an incredibly interesting population. What we hope is that more of the downtown east side agencies will start to engage with the market, because these are people who donât engage with the services at any other time. They donât wait in food lines because they make their own money, theyâre as independent as they possibly can be, and itâs an opportunity to reach out to a population who are still in trouble. They have addiction and mental health needs. They will never ask for help, but thereâs a possibility that if you have a booth here and they see it they might use it.
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The future plans are just to expand. Last Sunday it was packed, and if we had twice the space we would fill it. Thereâs no question that there is demand for more space and more days of the week. The question is how we do it, how we get the money, and how we convince funding bodies that we wonât become a market for thieves and drug dealing. We have to combat and regulate that and we have to make it become something that can be more easily fundable. I think weâre starting to turn that corner.OK so level with me, whatâs the weirdest thing thatâs showed up here?
The weirdest thing I saw was an ultrasound machine. Now, all this stuff is supposedly binned items right out of the trash, right? Where did they get it? And how much did it sell for, because it was gone at the end of the day. Who would have bought that? I have pictures.Well I guess I know where to go if I want a cheap ultrasound machine! Thanks Roland.For more on garbage:Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of PlasticThe Things They Throw Out on the Side of the RoadThe Future of New York City's Trash Sucks