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.

It’s raining, dark; the streets empty and the doorways filled. On the streets you have to wait it out, try to stay dry, try to find somewhere sheltered from it so that maybe you can catch a few hours of sleep in the hopes that it will have stopped.

I needed laundry detergent yesterday. I went around corner to the store. In Blood Alley something was happening; three squad cars, two officers pulling shot guns out of their trunks. No idea what it was about, but there was a huge construction crane in the alley so maybe something had transpired between the alley’s usual inhabitants and the construction crew. Could have been a drug bust, there could have been an assault; it could have been about a few of the ill-tempered dogs that have been roaming around back there recently.

Things are obviously calmer down here in the winter. No summer tourists to be herded away from, to be pushed by security companies into back alleys so as to protect the illusion of old-world charm. It’s been unseasonably warm though, so at least that’s something. Even with the rain, it’s not as biting as it usually is this time of year. If there’s an upside to global warming in this neck of the woods it’s that if you live outdoors things aren’t as condemnable. At least that’s something.

Drugs and booze. Two steadfast allies of the dispossessed. They make you forget, time machines that offer unconscious passage into the future so that you can lose a day, or three, not having to deal with the reality of where you’ve ended up. Ten blocks uptown the city’s well-to-do scoff at it all while they hit the bars on the weekends and drink themselves silly, press lips to bongs, snort cocaine in the bathrooms of the city’s finer nightspots. The difference is that they have beds to break their falls at the end of the night. The difference is that they do it because it’s a socially accepted ritualistic endeavor. Escape is escape though, and ultimately everyone’s trying to escape something in the end. Admit it or not.

At the very least, if you’re waiting for the rain to stop, you’ve got something truly pressing to escape - the reality that when it does, very little will have changed besides the weather.

Irony For Friday, January 4th, 2008

Chinatown is two blocks over. It’s been there since the 1880’s. It’s filled with countless restaurants. None of them deliver.

I’m not kidding.

Toasters

When I was a kid we used to make toast on an electric heater in the basement. It was one of those long floor heaters, the sort with the metal grill on the front. We would put pieces of bread on it and wait a while, turn them over, and then butter them.

We used to not lock our doors at night as well though. Things change.

Covered In Blood

I was thinking last night on the career of William Tecumseh Sherman, his complexities and hypocrisies, his characterizations of warfare in its purest form, especially those penned during his campaign to take Atlanta and later his march to Savannah, and something that he wrote in his memoirs that I have always found extremely telling…

“I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”

For some reason that always reminds me of the words of Vassilis Epaminondou…

“If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.”

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.

DJ, his mom, and a few friends snuck into town for the weekend to hang out. It was a lot of fun. I hadn’t seen him in probably five years, so it was good to catch up, not to mention a nice get away for him before the season starts. We were at the grocery store yesterday and no one recognized him, something that produced some well deserved weightlessness. This morning they flew back to North Carolina and, being that I’m under the weather, he didn’t bother to wake me up before he left. Given the guy’s profile in his sport, let alone his country, the fact that he crashed on my couch instead of staying at a five star hotel speaks volumes about him. Good people are hard to come by these days, so it was entirely my pleasure to have some around this weekend.

I feel like a beanbag. It’s the drinking and the medication I think. My hands shake. When I hold a telephone it bounces all over my ear, near and far, beeps and whistles. I used to rush to the doctor because of things like that, but not so much anymore. Coughed this morning and something along the top, inside of my leg started to hurt. I stood there for a while and it went away. It’s come and gone a bit today, but.

The sun comes up, the sun goes down. Everyone sits around until 4am and talks art and Nadia sings country songs and we laugh at each other’s bad jokes and the dogs race around and the candles burn out. So everyone moves towards the door and things get hazy and I pop my pills and pull the fan out and turn off the lights and push Casey off my pillow and lay on my side wondering what to wonder. And before I come up with something I fall asleep and dream of murder and love and distances too immense to convey.

Someone emailed me the other day and asked where all the Dear San Diego stuff went. That’s a good question. If anyone out there has it, send it to me and I’ll post it.

I meant to write something today, something about Chavez and the 18 months of rule by decree he was just granted by Venezuela’s national assembly. Something about how Latin American leaders have to exist in permanent states of paranoia thanks to the unending transgressions of Johnny Apple Seed. I’ll get around to it, just not tonight. Tonight an old friend that I did a video with once is coming to town to sleep on my couch.

I don’t think that any of us are in a position to argue otherwise.

That-a-boy Kofi.

Suddenly there’s an overwhelming need for an RCMP security watchdog. Wow, fires seem to be popping up everywhere in Ottawa to put out in the name of human rights.

60,000 people who prospered under Pinochet’s dictatorship showed up to attend his funeral, which the Chilean government refused to allow to be held at the State level. The reason? Perhaps because Chile’s current President, Michelle Bachelet, who did not attend the funeral, was tortured during his dictatorship.