The Right to Remain Research Collective

The Right to Remain is a research collective that supports tenant organizing for improved safety, habitability, affordability, and sustainability in Single Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). Inspired by the long and storied tradition of grassroots community organizing in the DTES, cross-community solidarity, and our own histories, we seek to uncover the story of Vancouver’s SROs while amplifying the voices and fighting for the rights of the tenants who live within them. Between 2017 and 2023, our project was graciously hosted by, and located within the DTES SRO Collaborative.

The R2R team, October 2021. Photo credit: Eliot Galán

Follow us on Facebook.

Front page photo credit: Middleton, W.E. Knowles. Powell Street fire escape, 1971.  City of Vancouver Archives, AM1668-: CVA 293-87.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the living peoples and ancestors who have inhabited the area now known as the Downtown Eastside from time immemorial. The Downtown Eastside remains a part of the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueum), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ ( Tsleil–Waututh) First Nations.

Copyright Jeff Masuda © 2017 – 2021. All rights reserved.