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.

I came across this story by way of Sean Orr at Beyond Robson. It is, as an individual that suffers from mental illness and is a born and bred Vancouverite, one of the most disgusting things about residents of this city that I have ever read…

“Neighbours opposed to the establishment of the Motivation, Power and Achievement Society’s mental health drop-in centre at West Seventh and Fir say they will help the city find a different location for the social services agency.

But they don’t want it in their community. “We will fight the MPA going in there right to the end,” said Cheryl Clausen, a disability award officer for WorkSafeBC who has lived a block from the site for four-and-a-half years.
Clausen and her neighbours want a café or other businesses established on the lower floors of the development that would provide 70 units of social housing. They believe a drop-in centre proposed for the site would concentrate too many mentally ill people in one place. She said city-sponsored meetings in the spring about the proposed development focused on housing for seniors, single mothers and poor families. But a November city report on the development of up to 1,200 units of social housing at 12 city-owned sites stated the MPA drop-in could be established on the first two floors of the development. About 70 studios, 320 to 350 square feet in size, would be built on the upper floors, with one-third to half of the units designated for low-income people with mental illness. The remainder would be reserved for low-income singles, with priority given to Fairview and Kitsilano residents.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s gets even more outrageous…

“Janet Dennis, a business manager for Telus who’s lived at Seventh and Pine for three years, often sees shopping carts lined up outside the MPA’s drop-in on West Fourth at Pine. “At Virtu [condominiums on Seventh between Fir and Pine], they’ve spent anywhere from $750,000 to a million plus for their suites, and if I’m one of those people looking out at the shopping carts I’m disgusted. I’m thinking I’ve just lost my investment here, I’m never going to be able to recoup it, and it’s the noise of these shopping carts and it’s being harassed by them,” she said. “It’s a privilege to live here and we pay extra money to live here… Why put these homeless people here when a cup of coffee at Starbucks or whatever is four bucks.”

Although a new café could be pricey for the low-income tenants, Clausen believes a business such as a coffee shop would provide a “buffer” between the low-income and established residents.”

As we’re all aware, many of Vancouver’s mentally ill, who have been, over the last several decades, summarily removed from mental welfare facilities that have been closed because people, just like those complaining in this article, didn’t want to pony up and pay taxes to ensure that they remained open and staffed, have been left to their own devices.

I’ll tell you this, thank God Janet Dennis doesn’t know what it’s like to have to deal with the demons of mental illness and, on top of that, attempt to scratch out an existence in abject poverty at the same time. God forbid any of the people complaining about this issue actually delve into the reality of the utterly despicable state of mental welfare in this Province and how we, as a society, have betrayed and abandoned those that need our help.

It would seem, according to the article, that they are mental healthcare professionals as well, being that they told the Courier that on their three block walk to its offices they were harassed by a man pushing a shopping cart. As we’re all aware, pushing a shopping cart down a public street is an indication of mental illness. I mean; you have to be crazy to do that, don’t you? I would imagine, in the minds of those that are complaining about the security of property values, everyone that’s on the streets are bipolar, schizophrenic, psychopathic, sociopathic, and so forth.

I have lived in the downtown core of Vancouver for sixteen years. In that time I have been a resident of the West End, Coal Harbour, and the Lower Eastside. And in all of those years, do you know how many times I have been ‘hassled’ by individuals pushing shopping carts to a degree that I feared for my safety?

Not once.

In fact, beyond asking for spare change, I can’t recall an instance in all that time that an aggressive posture was taken by any street person beyond them muttering profanities under their breath because I literally had no change in my pocket to give them.

On the other hand, I can say with absolute conviction that I have been threatened by what would be deemed ‘sane’ individuals flexing their proverbial muscles and acting as if all of Vancouver were some gangland paradise. Added to that are a host of other instances in which drunken club goers have been violent and endangered others, and, when approached about their behaviour, became more violent.

And then there is this…

“Residents are concerned about safety and security and fear drug dealers would follow members of the drop-in to the new centre. “The people that live in the building would probably be a little more controlled and taken care of,” Clausen said. “That drop-in centre shouldn’t be in anyone’s neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter if it’s in an East Side area–it should not be in a residential neighbourhood of any kind.”

I always find it interesting how drug use is pinned to the lapels of the homeless and forlorn when in countless bathrooms in posh Vancouver clubs and high-end residences enough Cocaine is shoved up noses on a weekly basis as to resemble a bad episode of Miami Vice. Drugs are absolutely everywhere in this city, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the streets down here on the Lower Eastside or in Yaletown, West Vancouver, or Kits. The difference, of course, is that those that are dispossessed and suffer from mental illness often turn to the use of drugs primarily because they can’t get the help that they need. Even though Ativan is not considered a standard street drug, I myself became an addict because of my condition early last year and it almost resulted in my death – not because I loved the feeling, but because when you’re confronted with the dark disparity of rolling bouts of mania and depression, anything that will make it stop, even for just a little while, is looked upon as a savior at the time. Of course, in my case, I was lucky, and am still lucky. I can afford the medication required to deal with my illness, which is by no means inexpensive. The reality is that that cannot be said about a considerable number of others that do.

Property prices? Investment? What ever happened to compassion? Is it represented by trying to find a location that’s conveniently tucked away in some industrial park where no one has to be confronted with this city’s problems? Is that how utterly low we have sunk? Is that how uncaring and rigid we have become?

We’re not talking about the affordability of Starbucks coffee, nor are we talking about real estate. We’re talking about human beings, many of which are in desperate need of help. If we, as a society, are not willing to act in a manner that is reflective of the values that we so casually like to claim we possess, then one of two things needs to happen.

Either we willingly admit that we’re hypocrites and liars, or we get off our high horses and become human beings ourselves.

To be honest, I could probably go on for days about the betrayal of those in New Orleans that have been entirely screwed over by the government, be it local or federal, and the way in which they have been treated while simply attempting to enact their most basic of rights. But the truth is that it so sickens me that every time I attempt to address it I revert to employing expletives every other word. Thus, I will just quote Bill Quigley’s piece on Truthout from last Friday…

“In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4,500 public housing apartments. Some were tasered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arrested.

Outside the chambers, iron gates were chained and padlocked even before the scheduled start.

The scene looked like one of those countries on TV that is undergoing a people’s revolution - and the similarities were only beginning.

Dozens of uniformed police secured the gates and other entrances. Only developers and those with special permission from council members were allowed in - the rest were kept locked outside the gates. Despite dozens of open seats in the council chambers, pleas to be allowed in were ignored.

Chants of “Housing is a human right!” and “Let us in!” thundered through the concrete breezeway.

Public housing residents came and spoke out despite an intense campaign of intimidation. Residents were warned by phone that if they publicly opposed the demolitions they would lose all housing assistance. Residents opposed to the demolition had simple demands. If the authorities insisted on spending hundreds of millions to tear down hundreds of structurally sound buildings containing 4,500 public housing subsidized apartments, there should be a guarantee that every resident could return to a similarly subsidized apartment. Alternatively, the government should use the hundreds of millions to repair the apartments so people could come home. Neither alternative was acceptable to HUD. A plan of residents to partner with the AFL-CIO Housing Trust to save their homes was also ignored.

Outside, SWAT team members and police in riot gear and on horses began to arrive as rain started falling. Those locked out included public housing residents, a professor from Southern University, graduate students, the Episcopal bishop of Louisiana, ministers, lawyers, law students, homeless people who lived in tents across the street from City Hall, affordable housing allies from across the country and dozens of others.”

If that snippet wasn’t enough to enrage you, perhaps this will…

I don’t know about you, but the scenes in that video do not depict an event that one would attribute to a nation, or a portion thereof, that claims itself the foremost democracy on the planet. In fact, it looks more like the last ditch efforts of a few brave souls attempting to futilely counteract the beginnings of a neo-fascist trend that is becoming commonplace in the United States with regards to how the public is treated when it dares to represent itself in a dissenting fashion. And to think that the government of the United States feels it has the right to, by comparison to itself, condemn others.

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.

It’s been a deadly few days here in the Lower Mainland.

First, a pre-wedding party of 25 to 30 people in the valley was struck by a truck while walking down Lefeuvre Road in Abbotsford at around 11 PM, killing 6 people and injuring a further 17. The driver of the truck, a 71 year old male, was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs according to authorities. The group was walking along the shoulder of the road and was due to attend a Sikh wedding in Mission tomorrow.

In nearby Surrey, 2 people were killed and 11 others injured yesterday when a hot air balloon caught fire and crashed into an RV Park. Three of the injured people remain in serious condition in hospital.

Sympathies go out to all those affected by these tragedies.

In Other Local News

Sam Sullivan’s Yaletown condominium building was struck by poverty activists early Friday morning who dumped garbage in front of it in protest of the city’s ongoing civic strike. Sullivan, Vancouver’s Mayor, said that he wouldn’t be intimidated by the actions of poverty activists, something I find rather funny. It was just garbage, it’s not like they waiting for him to leave so that they could start hurling rocks at him.

Then again, perhaps is was Yaletown residents disguised as poverty activists pissed off at the fact that no one’s cut the grass at their local parks recently.

Personally, I think the action perfectly reasonable, especially given the impact that the strike is having on not only community services on the Lower East Side, but in Vancouver’s elderly community as well – though it should be mentioned that the city has tabled a deal for inside workers that would give them a 17.5% pay raise over a five year term, hopefully allowing community centres, children’s, and senior’s programs to be reopen by the end of the month.

Sullivan also needs to deal with the issue of the Vancouver City Police being understaffed. According to the CBC, the VPD says that it requires 100 new officers next year “just to break even”.

Vancouver’s Number 1, Or Is It?

According to Economist Magazine, Vancouver has, for the fifth year running, been ranked the best city in the world in which to live…

“Vancouver scored a livability index of 1.3 per cent, with zero indicating exceptional quality of living and 100 indicating life there is intolerable or severely restricted.”

You know, I’ll be honest, I find that completely shocking. Living where I do, I see tourists from cruise ships stroll down Water Street on a daily basis. As they wander further east, things dramatically change, transforming from a quaint little cobblestone street populated by tourist shops into one of the most poverty stricken urban areas in all of Canada. It’s sort of humourous, to be honest, seeing the expressions on the faces of those that stray a little off the beaten path and find themselves at, for example, the corner of Hastings and Carrall. You can spot them a mile away – they’re the ones heading back up Water as if the devil himself were after them, their folded maps clutched in their hands, their faces as white as paper, their kids gripped tightly.

They really should have built Canada Place somewhere else.

Of course, the gentrification of this neighbourhood is well underway, and it will most likely resemble Yaletown in the next five years, remembering, of course, that Yaletown used to be nothing more than a rundown warehouse district populated by the homeless not too long ago. In fact, I’m hypocritically sitting in an example of that sort of gentrification as I write this. And while I can’t speak for others who have moved down here into refurbished buildings, I will say that the problems in this part of Vancouver need to be addressed before places such as this, built to facilitate those who can afford Vancouver’s incredulous prices, become the norm. There are plenty of reasons for the city to look at low income housing options in this neighbourhood, something that doesn’t seem to be all that much of a priority (the old Woodwards building is a prime example). There are, of course, certainly no lack of people that would benefit from it, so one wonders why it isn’t more of a priority?

And then, like a blinding light, the image of the 2010 Olympic mascot appears, making it all too apparent why the gentrification of the Lower East Side is of import.

God forbid, given the proximity of GM Place, a neighbourhood such as this is still in the shape that it is when the world comes to visit. God forbid it’s streets are populated by the disenfranchised, the mentally ill, many of them having turned to drugs to deal with their problems. God forbid that the world should get a glimpse of that reality and the reputation of our fair city be tarnished.

Not ten blocks from where I am sitting, Vancouver’s playground of the rich is preparing for another Saturday night. Down here, on the wet pavement, in garbage infested alleys, and in condemned doorways, the poor have no clue as to the time, let alone the day of the week. No matter my living situation, it never ceases to blow my mind when I think on it. And when I do, I will admit to feeling utterly ashamed of myself.

Like many other Vancouverites, I donate to local charities and the food bank. Like some others, I have lived in both of Vancouver’s extremes. One wonders whether the people from Economist Magazine took the time to compare the two, especially given that they’re no more than a 5 minute cab ride apart.

Our Mayor, Mr. Sullivan, credited “the people living in Vancouver — and their strong social and environmental ethic” for the city’s ranking. It would seem Mr. Sullivan needs poverty activists to throw trash in front of his building more often than they have been.