This paper situates a ten-year period of political upheaval in addressing the problem of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing in Vancouver, Canada, within an epistemic transformation of public health. Until 1970, the Vancouver Health Department exemplified a colonial history of public health in establishing the city’s skid road as a cordon sanitaire. But the 1970s saw a sudden fading of the Department’s authority just as a more collaborative approach to housing policy was emerging. The sunsetting of sanitary enforcement was driven in part by the arrival of a “new public health” that became primarily concerned with defining public health problems and solutions through the regulation of racialized bodies and behaviors—a cordon thérapeutique. By the 1980s, this shift constituted an epistemic and regulatory abandonment of SRO housing, leading to the accelerated deterioration of the entire housing stock and costing incalculable human suffering and the loss of lives.

本文将加拿大温哥华在解决单间房 (SRO) 住房问题方面经历了十年的政治动荡，置于公共卫生的认知转变之中。直到 1970 年，温哥华卫生部门将城市的防滑道路建立为卫生警戒线，体现了殖民时期公共卫生的历史。但 20 世纪 70 年代，随着更具协作性的住房政策方法的出现，该部门的权威突然减弱。卫生执法的取消在一定程度上是由于“新公共卫生”的到来所推动的，这种“新公共卫生”主要关注通过对种族化身体和行为的监管来定义公共卫生问题和解决方案——警戒线疗法。到了 20 世纪 80 年代，这种转变构成了对 SRO 住房的认知和监管放弃，导致整个住房存量加速恶化，并造成了无法估量的人类痛苦和生命损失。