PETE NAILS IT
Housing activists stalk a 'gentrifier' at his West Van home
By Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun
On
the premise that a man's home is his castle, a group of "housing
activists" - whatever that means - swarmed out of the Downtown Eastside
Monday night, crossed the other side of the tracks and invaded West
Vancouver, where a man's castle is his home.
They then laid siege to developer Steven Lippman. They picketed his place and, according to The Sun's story, were "brandishing signs and pitching tents nearby."
Pitched tents? In West Vancouver? Canada's toniest municipality hadn't seen such civil disobedience since 2006, when angry residents railed against the construction of the Eagleridge Bluffs bypass, while lunching on brie and lattes.
Lippman's crime? He buys rundown properties in the Downtown Eastside and fixes them up. He does this with the intent of making a profit. Imagine. Most recently, this includes the expected purchase of the single-room occupancy Wonder and Palace hotels, the court-ordered sales of which are scheduled in B.C. Supreme Court today.
Fighting this sale is an organization called the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council. The council, the storied history of which goes all the way back to, oh, 2010, branded Lippman as "a notorious gentrifier," and believes the 72 rooms of the Wonder and Palace hotels will be renovated, and then have their rents raised beyond the means of welfare recipients and senior citizens on government pension. Thus, the Council's following call to action:
"Come embarrass Lippman on his own turf," the council's website urged, "and call for him to cancel his plans to buy the Wonder and Palace hotels with a family friendly picket line in front of his swanky West Van home. Tell him that these hotels are 72 peoples [sic] homes, not investment properties!"
Aside from the hilarious detail of a "family friendly picket line" (kids get arrested free!) and the use of the word "swanky," which I believe was last uttered in a Bowery Boys movie, I was most struck by the assumption that these hotels, by virtue of their hyper-politicized location, were exempt from the usual rules of capitalism. They're not investment properties! They're Downtown Eastside homes! And Downtown Eastside homes are never for sale, unless, of course, the government buys them for social housing. And then it's okay.
But it's not okay any more. Decades of social experimentation have only perpetuated the Downtown Eastside's problems, not solved them. Its concentration of social housing has created a ghetto, not a neighbourhood.
And there are signs that the people who live there and want it to be a true neighbourhood have had it up to here.
Last year, the Strathcona Business Improvement Association, the Ray-Cam Community Association and the Inner City Safety Society compiled a report entitled Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: A Com-munity in Need of Balance. In essence, it suggests that the hundreds of millions of tax dollars the social welfare system pumps into their neighbour-hood is not only not the solution, it may be the problem.
"Maintaining the Downtown Eastside as a high or special needs social housing enclave," it states, "will not help to stabilize either the community or the city as a whole. The term 'vulnerability' now describes not only a majority of community residents but also the neighbourhood itself. Continued expansion or concentration of vulnerable individuals into already adverse social conditions will lead to neither their safety and health nor that of the neighbourhood.
"The vast majority of social housing units - both those newly built and renovated - have been targeted to the highest risk, street-involved individuals and have deliberately excluded others within the low-income population who face fewer obvious challenges, seriously unbalancing what was a stable albeit poor neighbourhood."
In other words, enough already. The Downtown East-side has its problems, yes, but efforts to solve those problems have been targeted overwhelmingly at high-risk individuals. And when government does that, it doesn't result in fewer high-risk individuals, it results in more. Government policies in the Downtown Eastside have been a magnet for them, to the point where they have over-whelmed the neighbourhood's ability to deal with them.
"Area families, seniors, working people, schools, community centres and business argue that no neighbourhood can remain healthy when populated by an over-abundance of high-risk or high-impact individuals. These individuals also fail to receive the support they need in a community where capacity is already compromised and over-whelmed by existing needs."
There needs to be more private investment in the Down-town Eastside, not less. There needs to be less social housing in the Downtown Eastside, not more. And if there is a growing need for social housing in the future, the rest of Metro Vancouver should do its duty and shoulder its fair share.
May I suggest West Vancouver might be a good place to start?
pmcmartin@vancouversun.com
They then laid siege to developer Steven Lippman. They picketed his place and, according to The Sun's story, were "brandishing signs and pitching tents nearby."
Pitched tents? In West Vancouver? Canada's toniest municipality hadn't seen such civil disobedience since 2006, when angry residents railed against the construction of the Eagleridge Bluffs bypass, while lunching on brie and lattes.
Lippman's crime? He buys rundown properties in the Downtown Eastside and fixes them up. He does this with the intent of making a profit. Imagine. Most recently, this includes the expected purchase of the single-room occupancy Wonder and Palace hotels, the court-ordered sales of which are scheduled in B.C. Supreme Court today.
Fighting this sale is an organization called the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council. The council, the storied history of which goes all the way back to, oh, 2010, branded Lippman as "a notorious gentrifier," and believes the 72 rooms of the Wonder and Palace hotels will be renovated, and then have their rents raised beyond the means of welfare recipients and senior citizens on government pension. Thus, the Council's following call to action:
"Come embarrass Lippman on his own turf," the council's website urged, "and call for him to cancel his plans to buy the Wonder and Palace hotels with a family friendly picket line in front of his swanky West Van home. Tell him that these hotels are 72 peoples [sic] homes, not investment properties!"
Aside from the hilarious detail of a "family friendly picket line" (kids get arrested free!) and the use of the word "swanky," which I believe was last uttered in a Bowery Boys movie, I was most struck by the assumption that these hotels, by virtue of their hyper-politicized location, were exempt from the usual rules of capitalism. They're not investment properties! They're Downtown Eastside homes! And Downtown Eastside homes are never for sale, unless, of course, the government buys them for social housing. And then it's okay.
But it's not okay any more. Decades of social experimentation have only perpetuated the Downtown Eastside's problems, not solved them. Its concentration of social housing has created a ghetto, not a neighbourhood.
And there are signs that the people who live there and want it to be a true neighbourhood have had it up to here.
Last year, the Strathcona Business Improvement Association, the Ray-Cam Community Association and the Inner City Safety Society compiled a report entitled Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: A Com-munity in Need of Balance. In essence, it suggests that the hundreds of millions of tax dollars the social welfare system pumps into their neighbour-hood is not only not the solution, it may be the problem.
"Maintaining the Downtown Eastside as a high or special needs social housing enclave," it states, "will not help to stabilize either the community or the city as a whole. The term 'vulnerability' now describes not only a majority of community residents but also the neighbourhood itself. Continued expansion or concentration of vulnerable individuals into already adverse social conditions will lead to neither their safety and health nor that of the neighbourhood.
"The vast majority of social housing units - both those newly built and renovated - have been targeted to the highest risk, street-involved individuals and have deliberately excluded others within the low-income population who face fewer obvious challenges, seriously unbalancing what was a stable albeit poor neighbourhood."
In other words, enough already. The Downtown East-side has its problems, yes, but efforts to solve those problems have been targeted overwhelmingly at high-risk individuals. And when government does that, it doesn't result in fewer high-risk individuals, it results in more. Government policies in the Downtown Eastside have been a magnet for them, to the point where they have over-whelmed the neighbourhood's ability to deal with them.
"Area families, seniors, working people, schools, community centres and business argue that no neighbourhood can remain healthy when populated by an over-abundance of high-risk or high-impact individuals. These individuals also fail to receive the support they need in a community where capacity is already compromised and over-whelmed by existing needs."
There needs to be more private investment in the Down-town Eastside, not less. There needs to be less social housing in the Downtown Eastside, not more. And if there is a growing need for social housing in the future, the rest of Metro Vancouver should do its duty and shoulder its fair share.
May I suggest West Vancouver might be a good place to start?
pmcmartin@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
4 comments:
Excellent, Mr. Berner.
I've heard all about the evil "gentrification" for years now and have never been able to make sense of it. Can anyone really prefer a stinking, rotten mess over a nice neighbourhood?
In the case of the DTES, I don't understand why so many insist it should always remain a ghetto.
In 8 years of ministry on the DTES I've developed this crazy idea about "gentrification": that the "good folk" moving into the area would mix with the DTES residents and would gradually come to know what I've grown to know myself -- that these people are not to be feared, loathed and shunned (I tend to refer to the DTES as "Samaria" for that reason), but people in need of love and encouragement -- as opposed to handouts. Even now, I see the young and hip strolling past Gospel Mission/The Lord's Rain at Pigeon Park and I think that, while they may try to ignore the "urban blight" *now*, that can change over time. In the mean time, I talk to some of the DTES people who have moved into places like Woodward's and another new development further south on Main, and they're actually starting to see that the world outside the ghetto ain't so bad after all. Christopher's remark about wondering why anyone would want to keep the DTES as a ghetto is really a rhetorical question: you have to wonder why people would want to hold others in a state of poverty and despair. I sure don't.
I rather wish, though, that Pete hadn't practically negated a great column with that last sentence. Not all West Vancouverites are insular, self-centered and out-of-touch. Rather a bigoted remark, I'd say.
Interesting article. The Bank of Nova Scotia at Columbia and Hastings left because of demographic changes in that area. The accounts in the bank fell roughly into three categories; Business, Chinese and Personal. Each sector was profitable and customer satisfaction was on the whole wonderful. Staff knew who was who. Then the off street walk-in problems started. Everything from drug dealing to you name it in the lobby.
The bank had a many many seasonal loggers accounts from up coast which were closed out as the hotels no longer were fit to live in when the forests closed down. The Chinese accounts transfered over to Pender Street banks. Businesses just couldn't make a go of it. The area became a ghetto to keep the riff-raff contained in East Hastings. Without major investment in the area the NPA folks at city hall (at that time) were quite content to let the area rot. And it did rot. What an entrance to Vancouver that part of Hasting Street is today. And what happened today? Two seedy unbelievably filthy hotels have lost an investment upgrade possibility.
The idea that all social housing needs to be located in the DTES is absurd.Affordable housing should be citywide. If every neighbourhood had some social housing we would not see the ghetto that exists in Vancouver.
Mind you if you had to choose between living at an address on Gore St. in Vancouver or 132 St in Surrey which would you choose? Gore St offers the opportunity to see improvement. 132 St offers daily gunfire and mayhem.
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