The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users was founded in 1998 by community members in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A peer-led organization, they have played a pivotal role in advocating for affordable housing, the rights of people who use drugs, and for all who have faced “the tyrannosaurus rex of treachery and terror,” to quote Bud Osborn.

Dave Hamm, featured in Megaphone Magazine’s Hope in the Shadows 2026 Calendar. Dave is the chair of the board at VANDU and a longtime voice of resistance in the DTES.

From the VANDU community archives

A poster from the years of advocacy around Woodwards Department Store, which went bankrupt in 1993. Activists demanded for years that it be turned into social housing, and the city left it abandoned. In 2002, the Woodward Squat (or “Woodsquat”) was a prolonged demonstation advocating for social housing on site in the DTES. A short documentary from Sid Chow Tan preserves some of the story. Today only 20% of the land is used for social housing, and none of the community activists were consulted during the redevelopment process.

From the VANDU community archives

Overdose awareness poster (c. 2014). The poster confronts Bill C-2, which places severe restrictions on the management of and ability to open new safe consumption sites in BC, in the face of a toxic drug supply. The photograph on the poster comes from the 1997 action in Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park, where 1000 crosses were built and placed in the ground to represent those who had died as a result of the HIV/AIDS crisis (at that time Vancouver was the epicentre of the crisis). For a video of Bud Osborn reciting his poem, 1000 Crosses in Oppenheimer Park, filmed by Mark Townsend, scroll to the bottom of this page.

From the VANDU community archives

A poster sharing information about the memorial for Bud Osborn. Fittingly, the memorial would feature many voices sharing stories, music, and poetry. Osborn was often dubbed the poet laureate of the Downtown Eastside. He was pivotal in the founding of VANDU and also Insite, North America’s first legally operated safe injection site. His books include Lonesome Monsters (Anvil, 1995), Hundred Block Rock (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1999), and Raise Shit! (Fernwood, 2009).

“to raise shit is to actively resist
and we resist with our presence
with our words
with our love
with our courage”

From the VANDU community archives

A demonstration featuring members of Our Homes Can’t Wait, a coalition of organizers and community members who advocate for the rights of tenants and unhoused neighbours in the DTES. Initially led by members of VANDU and the Carnegie Community Action Project, they have hosted several townhall gatherings and established a broad housing coalition with three main demands:

1. Build 10 new sites of social housing in the DTES
2. Save and upgrade Single Room Occupancy housing (SROs)
3. Establish BC-wide rent control

From the VANDU community archives

In 2017, VANDU community members placed 2,224 wooden stakes in the ground in Oppenheimer Park, to symbolize the death toll in the DTES as a result of a toxic drug supply, a disappearing affordable housing supply, and a lack of detox and shelter beds. The stakes, containing names and artwork painted by community members, invoked the action of 1997 and emphasized the increasing numbers of preventable deaths. The stakes were later placed in a coffin and sent to Ottawa.

From the VANDU community archives

From the VANDU community archives

Housing JusticeArchive

Housing JusticeArchive

Housing
Justice
Archive

Housing
Justice
Archive