Today the government of British Columbia announced that it’s spending $23.7 million dollars on purchasing six more hotels on the Downtown Lower Eastside that will be converted into affordable housing. In total, the Province has purchased 16 such hotels.

Dave Eby weighed in on the government’s purchases in a recent Vancouver Sun article.

Of course, it sounds fantastic in theory until you delve into how much property in comparison is being snatched up for private development purposes.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Navy has announced that it will be spending $19,316,550 dollars of taxpayers’ money for its security role during the 2010 Olympics. The Navy’s primary role will to be to patrol the waters near waterfront venues, with the majority of their focus being placed on the Olympic Village at False Creek, the cost of which, for a mere two weeks, is $190 million dollars – which is also a cost being incurred by taxpayers.

The entire security budget for the games is currently set at $175 million dollars, though that total is expected to increase. Last year, the RCMP released documents that indicated that the budget would not be enough to provide ample security.

An Aside

With regards to the Olympics and real estate, I thought that the following might interest some of you…

“When Jack Poole addressed a room full of real estate developers this spring it erased any doubts of what the 2010 Winter Olympics bid for Vancouver-Whistler is really all about.

At the risk of sounding naive, we had understood the bid was aimed at getting the games, raising Vancouver’s international profile and welcoming elite athletes to one of the world’s best skiing locations.

Wrong. The real purpose of the 2010 Olympics bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long suffering taxpayers into footing a billion dollar bill to pave the path for future real estate sales. Whether the bid is successful or not is actually immaterial.

“If the Olympic bid wasn’t happening we would have to invent something.” Poole, chair of the 2010 Vancouver Bid Corp. and noted real estate developer, said in a most telling understatement.

It is hard to imagine any fantasy that fits better than the Olympics bid if you are into real estate development.”

I came across the following comment left in response to an article on the Tyee regarding homelessness in British Columbia, particularly Vancouver…

“An avalanche of stories on the homeless and the left is bankrupt of any practical ideas. The left calls for housing and treating them in Vancouver, perpetuating the slum we know as the DTES. We in the real world know that Vancouver real estate is far too expensive to justify the economic cost of housing them. Don’t even talk about the NIMBY’s who’ll kill any zoning proposal.

Yet the real solution is housing, rehab, treatment and for those who cannot fend for themselves permanent institutionalization.

So the best solution is to find the cheapest land- maybe out past Fort St. John, way up north, and house them up there. Any objections?

I mean, giving them free housing in Vancouver is an insult to all the working people who struggle to pay for their own places isn’t it?”

Matthewgood.org contributor, Pivot Legal Society’s David Eby, makes some excellent points in the piece, but I want to focus on the sentiment of the comment quoted above.

You might not think that sort of ignorance prevalent in the Lower Mainland, but you’d be surprised. People’s understanding of the Lower Eastside in general is, for the most part, rather ignorant. In fact, much of that ignorance is based on the perception of a problem that has, in truth, remained largely out of sight and out of mind for decades. Only now, when the value of real estate is at an all time high, is the ‘problem’ being delved into by those that hadn’t considered it prior.

For most, their exposure to the Downtown Eastside is limited to driving down East Hastings on their way into the city and little else. They get held up at the lights at Main and Hastings and from the few minutes that they observe their surroundings come to harsh conclusions about those that inhabit this neighbourhood

We do not want to hear their stories. We do not want to delve into the fact that over the last twenty years the Downtown Eastside has become the number one destination of those turned out of mental institutions. We do not want to hear horrific tales of childhood sexual abuse, rape, violence, and Aboriginal disparity. Such things humanize the problem, and that is the last thing in the world that anyone wants to do. Because it is far easier on the conscience to simply categorize everyone down here as a druggy or a drunk who are solely responsible for where they have ended up.

Not all Vancouverites suffer from this phenomenon, but many do, including many who live in other parts of the downtown core who aren’t comfortable with the fact that their urban paradise is only minutes away from the country’s poorest urban neighbourhood. Many of them are, of course, transplants that have come to Vancouver to live the urban West Coast dream and have never been exposed to a neighbourhood like the Lower Eastside or the problems that it presents. Were there a solution that could, in a matter of weeks, transform it into the new Yaletown, many of this city’s residents would be all for it. In truth, that process has already begun.

The homelessness that is prevalent in this neighbourhood has become front-page news not because it was only a matter of time, but for three very specific reasons.

The first is that Vancouver has seen an influx of wealth over the last decade, both foreign and domestic, which has driven property prices through the roof. Given that the downtown core is situated on a peninsula, and developing Stanley Park is out of the question, the Lower Eastside remains the last truly exploitable section of the downtown core.

The second is that Vancouver has seen immense growth in the tourism sector, and many view the Lower Eastside as an embarrassment. Given that every cruise ship that docks in Vancouver is anchored at Canada Place, those that venture off the ships and decide to take a hard left and venture East find themselves confronted with something that certainly does not reflect what they’ve no doubt heard about the city. It is not uncommon to come across tourists down here in the summer that are simply aghast, many of them asking locals that don’t seem too ‘dangerous’ where the park is located or how to get uptown. It is such a concern, in fact, that the Gastown Business Association employs private security personnel to patrol the streets, pushing the homeless and dispossessed out of sight, commonly harassing them even though they possess absolutely no legal authority to do so.

The third is, of course, the 2010 games. Not only have the Olympics contributed to the increase in property prices throughout Vancouver, but have forced both local and Provincial government to address the issue of what to do about the Lower Eastside when the world shows up. Despite the fact that the World Exposition in 1986 lasted for months, laying new carpet and slapping a new coat of paint on walls in hotels on the Lower Eastside was good enough. But in the case of the Olympics, Vancouver is destined to see far more people cram the downtown core, making the problem of the Lower Eastside all the more worrisome. Therefore, the real issue isn’t so much how to actually, and realistically, address the problems that need to be address, but rather how to dislodge them and have them moved elsewhere while throwing advocates a bone.

One of the goals is to obviously see the neighbourhood gentrified like Yaletown was, which has ultimately led to the gentrification of everything from Granville Street to the banks of False Creek. Sure, there are a few rough patches here and there, but nothing to compare with East Hastings. The more that this neighbourhood can be gentrified and attract a new class of resident, the easier it will be to push the dispossessed further down the Hastings corridor.

The truth is, those problems that need solving cannot be realistically overcome in two years while still placating the concerns of those that view the Lower Eastside as a blemish on an otherwise picturesque city. Sure, housing initiatives can be discussed, hotels can be transformed, but they will not meet the needs of all those that require help. Thus, where will those who aren’t lucky enough to qualify go? Because if anti-terror maneuvers are already taking place in the skies over the city, you can bet your life that the mandate of private security firms will be extended well beyond Gastown in 2010.

Yesterday, Vancouver Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby made an entry on his blog that, in truth, should be published on the front of every daily in this city. Better yet, it should be handed out in print on every street corner…

“The City of Vancouver staff are advancing a report that suggests sufficient social housing is under construction in the City to consider demolition and conversion of the last remaining Single Room Occupancy hotels in Vancouver.

Single Room Occupancy hotels and lodging houses are the last privately owned housing in the Vancouver affordable to people on welfare, and are currently somewhat protected by City bylaws.

One would think that with homelessness increasing at a rate that city staff disagree on, but is anywhere from between 800 to 1,000 more homeless than we had just 2 years ago, the City would be scrambling to preserve the housing we have, as well as build more housing.

Hardly.

The administrative report, coming before council on December 12, 2007, reads as follows:

The SRA By-law has been effective in limiting conversions and demolitions, and the stock of housing in the downtown that is affordable to low income singles has been holding steady at approximately 14,000 units.

I have to take a break here to expose this first whopper. The City ignores the fact that SROs have steadily been converting to higher income renters like international students and low wage workers, and people on welfare are ending up on the street. The City also conveniently ignores the fact that we know of hundreds of rooms that have closed or are closing in the next few months, including the Carl Rooms, The Picadilly, the Dominion, the Phoenix Apartments, 336 Carrall Street, and Marie Gomez Place.

That willful blindness sets up the following, which should rapidly accelerate already out of control real estate speculation on these low-cost rental buildings in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood:

The proposed partnership should result in social housing completions exceeding SRO losses, and, when the replacement housing is completed, the controlled conversion or demolition of SROs should be considered. Staff are to report back on the status of the SRA By-law in 2008 and in that report will consider the issues related to the controlled conversion or demolition of SROs including timing, relocation of tenants, etc.

There isn’t even funding in place to build the 1,200 units that the Province supposedly is going to build, and already City staff are writing reports on how to demolish the last remaining privately held low-cost rental housing in Vancouver. If you think we’ve got a lot of homelessness right now, you haven’t seen anything yet.

I’m going to have to go with Jeffery Simpson’s assessment over at Vancouver Metblogs…

“In the spirit of the Mayor’s survey we’ve got one of our own:

Mayor Sam Sullivan is: (Check all that apply)

- Vancouver’s worst mayor

- Canada’s worst mayor”

Hopefully Rod reads this after he gets home. I would hate to be the one that caused him to punch every wall between his place of work and his front door. At least if he’s at home he can punch his sofa.

I came across something interesting in the Globe & Mail today. It seems Dan Rather was in my neighbourhood doing a piece about it recently. The author had this to say about it…

“Nor for this story is he the first on the scene, which is something he always likes to be. In fact, he might be the one zillionth television reporter to stand at the apocalyptic vortex of the Downtown Eastside – the corner of Main and Hastings – to chronicle the miserable history of one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere.”

The true hypocrisy of Vancouver is that not ten minutes away are the city’s two trendiest and most expensive neighbourhoods – Yaletown and Coal Harbour. In truth, even the area that Mr. Rather was covering is being transformed into a mirror image of Yaletown in many ways, though there are no signs of its beleaguered inhabitants reaping any of the benefits. Either the gentrification of the area will fail or they’ll be forced further east down the Hastings corridor – out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps just in time for the Winter Olympics.

After all, we can’t have ‘one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere’ within spitting distance of both GM Place and Yaletown in 2010. Hell, spitting distance from anywhere in the downtown core. That, and it’s important to remember that property values are so high that the neighbourhood itself is far too lucrative to be considered for low income, subsidized housing. City council isn’t stupid, there’s a reason why they defer the issue - because the longer they do, the more the neighbourhood can be developed and gentrified, attracting a class of people that are deemed far more ‘acceptable’ than those that currently call it home.

If anything, it’s the shame of Vancouver. It’s the shame of those that drive through it with their windows rolled up, or that act as if those they pass on the street are going to beat them to death without provocation. It’s as if most of those that venture into the neighbourhood to go to new restaurants and nightspots think that the people down there have the plague. Hell, even the local business association hires rent-a-cops to keep them off of Water Street so as not to offend the tourists pouring off the cruise ships. That is, of course, in direct violation of their Charter rights, but it happens nonetheless, and no one says a thing.

The Lower Eastside is Vancouver’s shame because Vancouverites continue to allow it to be. The city is so arrogant, so full of itself, so in love with its own new reflection that it can’t be bothered to confront one of the most serious issues that has plagued it for years.

When the world comes in 2010, let them see it. Let them walk the streets and see the dispossessed that call them home. Let them look upon the disheveled bodies in the doorways and the huddled figures clinging to wet blankets on the freezing concrete. Let them see us for what we are, because Yaletown, Coal Harbour, and the rest of it, is not what we are.

We may convince ourselves that that isn’t the case, but just venture down to the Lower Eastside and your perspective will change in a heartbeat. That is, if you bother to get out of your car.

What separates someone in Yaletown snorting coke in a bathroom and someone smoking crack in a back alley in Gastown? One is a fucking moron. The other has probably been shuffled out of our mental welfare system and has nowhere to go and no other way to fight their demons. You spend some time and try and figure out which is which.

Some years ago I asked a rather inebriated crowd at a large festival in Edmonton to go and rip down one of those giant inflatable beer cans. No less than five minutes later I saw it, off in the distance, topple over.

Five minutes after that I was electrocuted, and I am by no means joking – I got the heart monitor and the whole nine yards.

Karma’s tricky like that.

I received an email this morning that was extremely troubling, so I decided soon after reading it that it was best to remove my recent entry about the destruction of the Olympic clock in front of the Art Gallery. Let’s just say that I don’t want anything that I’ve written to be used to incite others to violent action that could result in the harm of others. The destruction of a symbol without harming anyone is one thing, but I’ll not be a point of influence for others lean on to justify violence.

I also want to clarify the impetus for yesterday’s entry. A few of us were sitting here discussing the gentrification of Gastown in Vancouver’s Lower East Side and began comparing the impact that the Olympics will surely have on this neighbourhood to the transformation that was seen during Expo 86 – yes I am that old.

During Expo, Vancouver’s homeless were pushed east down the Hastings corridor, local slum lords transforming their piss-stained hovels into passable ‘hostel’ type hotels to house foreign tourists. The staff at those hotels were suddenly wearing shirts and ties standing behind new front desks in freshly carpeted lobbies. Vancouver’s Lower East Side was transformed, for a time, into a lie. Even local residents who had rented in the downtown core for years found themselves facing drastic rent increases, forcing many to move.

At the end of the day, this city belongs to the people who live here. One of the most popular investment tricks in this city at present is to purchase a condo and then rent it out to pay it off. Rent increases over the last few years have been drastic because of it, rendering Vancouver the most expensive place to live in the entire country. Rent for a 600 sq ft apartment in the downtown core run from anywhere between $1000 to $2,000 dollars a month depending on the neighborhood. Compare that with Winnipeg, Calgary, or even Toronto.

The reality of Vancouver is that there is a massive gulf between the affluent and the poor. While the city has grown and become far more cosmopolitan in my 15 years of living downtown, it has also become extremely arrogant and utterly forgetful of those that do not fit into its expanding bourgeois niche. And the sad truth is that most Vancouverites could care less about what happens in neighbourhoods like the Lower East Side, where First Nations individuals such as Frank Paul are dumped in back allies by the police only to freeze to death. So why even be outraged at the massive waste of money that’s going to spend the next three years counting down to the 2010 Winter Olympics? The truth is, for the most part, the majority of you reading this that are here in town won’t feel any significantly negative impact from the games. In fact, many of you will probably take the brand new highway that they’ve expanded all the way up the coast’s fragile wilderness to watch events at Whistler, or spend enormous amounts of money trying to get tickets to see Team Canada play hockey.

A few blocks away from GM Place, in the neighbourhood in which I live, which is even now being transformed into the next Yaletown, visitors from all over the world will gleefully spend their money on trinkets and smoked salmon and native art, many of them returning to rooms at hotels and apartment buildings that have been transformed specifically for the games, their rates raised through the roof. And just as in 1986, the mentally ill, the downtrodden and homeless, be they drug addicts or not, will be swept under the rug for a few weeks, only to emerge to the usual fist full of pennies spent on programs to help them.

Meanwhile, across town, a group of assholes will be sitting on some patio in Vancouver’s epicenter of jackassdom lighting cigars with twenty dollar bills and claiming the entire thing a massive success.

Vancouver, showcased and broadcast to the world, will attract further investment and new arrivals and slip further and further away from being the place that I knew as a boy. Some might call that the inevitability of progress. To that I would point to those unfortunates that even now find themselves displaced in these streets and alleys, and ask them - what good is progress without actual social progression?

Leave the clock alone. Truth is, we’ve all been bought and paid for already anyway.

Follow Up

As an aside, do some checking into how much the new transportation line between the airport and Yaletown is costing. And if you do, realize that that is not a part of the official Olympic budget.

One of the most satisfying aspects of inhabiting a nation that belongs to a class of nations that look down their noses at the rest of the world is that contradiction, hypocrisy, and even stupidity are entirely excusable, even praised in some circles. If the Pope makes untoward comments about Islam, the backlash against those comments only furthers popularly distorted views of that religion while the responsibility that the Pope bears in initially making them dissipates beneath it. The same goes for the Prime Minister’s recent comments that the deaths of four more Canadian soldiers, and the wounding of numerous others, is proof that the Canadian military’s roll in Afghanistan is justified. Mr. Harper claimed that we are fighting an evil in Afghanistan, which is, of course, the most common justification given in human history for undertaking a military action, be it true or not. I am not suggesting that the Taliban isn’t a repressive group that, prior to late 2001, ruled parts of Afghanistan with little regard for the human rights of the citizenry. But that is also not to say that there aren’t those that would claim the protection of such rights sacred and yet, through calculated collusion, cause their reduction not only on domestic levels, but also on an international scale.

Take, for example, the recent vindication of Maher Arar, who was rendered to Syria in 2002, where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year because the RCMP forwarded information to US authorities that he was on a suspected terrorist watch list. There is no questioning that what happened to Arar was highly illegal, but in the case of the RCMP it demonstrates not only unethical and unprofessional behavior, but the fact that racial profiling most probably occurred following September 11th, and that the Canadian intelligence community was bending over backwards for what we now know was an immensely confused American intelligence apparatus, most of which was engaged in unprecedented levels of infighting. Our role in Afghanistan, like that of the Canadian intelligence community post 9/11, has more to do with conciliatory issues regarding the United States than anything else.

Canadian military leadership has recently boasted that were the enemy to come out into the open, and confront our troops like men, then their demise would be assured. I find such statements incredibly troubling given the fact that we’ve known full well the entire time we’ve been in Afghanistan that we’re basically facing steadily growing and reforming guerilla resistance, and that that obviously implies the use of unorthodox tactics to achieve results. Were the Afghans to have fought the Soviets in the 80’s like men, Afghanistan would have remained a Soviet satellite state. Instead, they implemented combat techniques that provided them advantages and a way to effectively combat the Soviet’s superior firepower and technologies. And, as we’re all now aware, they succeeded.

The same song was sung during the Vietnam war by Westmorland’s command, whose inability to comprehend that the extreme level of personal dedication that common NVA and Vietcong foot soldiers possessed was not merely significantly greater than that of his own men, but beyond American understanding, led to a policy of inflated body counts and wildly inaccurate statements of achievement. Like the Taliban, the Vietnamese also employed suicide bombers at times, especially during the Tết Offensive, which was actually, on paper, a disaster for the North. But the psychological effects that it had on both US military morale, and the American public, was considerable. The same holds true for the use of suicide attacks against Western troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the fact that such attacks are claiming the lives of innocent civilians besides should be something of considerable concern to our military leadership. Populist movements can usually only succeed with the support of the lower classes, but in the case of Afghanistan, tribal factionalism overrides this concern, allowing a convolution of intent to exist that is, in my opinion, almost impossible to combat without casting off the restrains of moral warfare and indiscriminately eradicating not only enemy combatants, but their civilian support infrastructures.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan is a nation that has been perpetually at war for a considerable amount of time. To have ever thought that by holding show elections and propping up a government that has absolutely no effective control over the country was done for anything besides US domestic political uses is obviously naïve. Unfortunately, Canadians are paying for such uses with their lives, and it’s simply not something that the people of this country should tolerate.

The 2010 Winter Games

In 1970, Denver won the bid to host the winter Olympics. In 1972, because of financial and environmental concerns, the city voted against hosting them, and handed them back to the IOC.

Vancouver should do the same.

Whether the people of Vancouver like it or not, it is simply not capable of hosting the 2010 games without acquiring an enormous debt. And while those who could seemingly care less about the actual ramifications that the Olympics will have on those in lower and middle income brackets after the fact (maybe even before, given how money seems to be evaporating), the inevitable results will most certainly be felt at every level in this city when all is said and done.

Forbes’ Tom Van Riper put it best when he wrote from Torino earlier this year…

“Does it pay to host the world’s biggest party? It depends on whether your house is already big enough, or if you need to scramble and spend to add on.

When it comes to the Olympics, host cities around the world typically spend billions on venues, infrastructure, security and other assorted necessities for the privilege of bringing in tens of thousands of guests for 17 days.�?

If you’ve lived in this city for more than a week you know that it’s a transportation nightmare – and that’s just for the people who currently live here. Geography has a lot to do with it, as does the speed at which Vancouver has grown over the last decade. But to think that these problems can all be solved in the next four years without it creating a legacy of debt and doing considerable damage to the environment is simply ludicrous. It’s currently estimated that the 2010 games will cost taxpayers 3-4 billion dollars, and that doesn’t even include transportation expansions, such as the widening of the Sea To Sky Highway and the RAV. Then there are the enormous security costs to consider, not to mention the fact that the city will most assuredly undergo a mass gentrification, which does not mean that those with nothing will suddenly be provided decent jobs and new homes or apartments. It means that, as occurred in 1986 during Expo, the embarrassing elements of our fair city will be pushed East down the Hastings corridor as if by a gigantic, magic broom.

Now, maybe you’re one of those Vancouverites that view only specific parts of Vancouver acceptable, including the class of people that inhabits them. Perhaps you could care less what happens to those less fortunate than yourself, or enjoy pretending that you do in between shooing panhandlers away from your table on some trendy patio whilst employing pseudo intellectualisms in an attempt to disguise the fact that you’re actually from the Valley (or some impossibly small town in Ontario) and not a full blooded member of the Spelling family. Maybe you could care less what sort of damage the Olympics will ultimately do to this city and its residents. And to that I have no real position other to say that it’s shame that we can’t vote to give you back to the IOC.

Must I actually mention what an infusion of 3 to 4 billion dollars would do to, for example, the social welfare system? How about healthcare? How about affordable housing for low income families who, given the current real estate climate in this town, basically only have a choice of what colour car their going to live in?

This year, thirty years after the fact, the city of Montreal is expected to finally pay off its Olympic debt. It’s a big relief to know that I might still be paying for the Sea To Sky expansion when I’m 65. Maybe by then, in 2036, we can all get together and bust out our Olympic memorabilia and have a little party at, well, one of the hundreds of decaying glass towers that will, no doubt, still be polluting the Vancouver skyline.