Tuesday Morning Paragraph – Does social housing “enable” bad behavior?

Carnegie Community Action Project

401 Main Street, Vancouver, V6A 2T7

(604) 839-0379

Tuesday, June 22, 2009

Dear Mayor & Council,

Does social housing “enable” bad behavior?

Here’s what some people in CCAP’s mapping sessions said about the social housing they live in:

“Housing like the Jim Green Residence makes us feel good about ourselves, not bathrooms that are plugged or with blood all over the wall or … [bathrooms where] you have to put [sandals] on to keep away from the germs.”

“I like [the Jim Green Residence]. I have been living in hospitals like St. Paul’s most of my life. This feels like home. It’s safe. People are nice and friendly here. I have help from a lot of people which I didn’t have before.”

“Four Sisters: It’s my home. It’s where I feel free and I feel safe. The DTES is the place where I’ve drank most of my life and lived in rooming houses….Here it’s like I have a real family. What do they say? Mom and apple pie. It’s my family and my home.”

“Four Sisters or Lore Krill: You can take pride living there. Lore Krill has a water fountain. The roof top garden is beautiful. It’s a sanctuary home. Four Sisters has lots of kids. I like the wine and cheese, the barbeques there, the green space in the middle. Getting a nice home changes your way of thinking.”

Here’s what two mappers said about living in SROs:

“I could have a whole other life if I could just be in affordable housing. Living in an SRO limits my capability of being a grandmother.”

“None of the places I’ve been in are adequate that you can invite your family….”

In short, social housing “enables” people to be secure, helps provide a community, and gives people a base from which to seek their full potential.

Archive of previous paragraphs:

Social Innovation

Sharing

We care about each other

To stop social exclusion

This area is like a stronghold

Acceptance

DTES problems will not change by throwing richer people into the mix

Build On Current Assets

Study shows Downtown Eastside housing situation is getting worse

Still Losing Hotel Rooms: CCAP’s 2009 Hotel Survey and Report

A new Carnegie Community Action Project report says rents in hotel rooms are escalating beyond what low-income Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents can afford. Still Losing Hotel Rooms: CCAP’s 2009 Hotel Survey and Report says at least 694 more rooms are now renting at over $425 per month, $50 above the welfare shelter rate. Last year CCAP found 889 rooms renting at over $425 so this brings the total to 1583 hotel rooms, the last resort before homelessness, that are not affordable to people on welfare, disability or basic seniors pension.

CCAP’s second annual report is based on a door to door survey of privately owned hotels in the DTES by volunteers posing as prospective tenants. CCAP checked out 88 hotels with 3605 rooms and got information from 63 hotels with about 91% of the rooms.

“Even though about 344 previously closed hotel rooms have opened up under non profit management and nearly 338 new units for low income people are expected to open up this year, the number of units for low-income people will be slightly less than last year because of rent increases in privately owned hotels,” explained CCAP organizer and report co-author Wendy Pedersen.

“With the Olympics coming to Vancouver and SFU students coming to the new Woodwards, competition for hotel rooms could push up prices even more and drive more people into homelessness,” said co-author Jean Swanson.

The report also found 12 more hotels charging exorbitant double bunking rents since last year, and illegal guest fees in at least 5 to 8 buildings. CCAP found several hotels renting on a daily/weekly basis and fears they may evict permanent residents during the Olympics so they can get more money.

CCAP also reports on the number of hotels slated to open up thanks to the purchase and lease of rooms by the provincial government and non-profits. Although necessary, these rooms are still a form of temporary housing and will not solve the housing crisis. They are not real permanent homes where tenants can unpack, put down roots and be equal members in the community. The report also found that the city’s goal of replacing about 5000 hotel rooms with new self-contained homes for DTES residents will take 53 years at the current rate.

CCAP’s recommendations include building more social housing, making rent control effective, ending the law that allows owners to rent 10% of their rooms on a daily/weekly basis, and raising welfare and minimum wage.

Media Advisory For Immediate Release June 17, 2009

Press conference

Is the housing situation getting better for low-income DTES residents? Come and find out. The Carnegie Community Action Project will release the results of its 2nd annual hotel survey.

Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009

Time: 10:00 a.m.

Place: Balmoral Hotel – 159 Hastings Street East, Vancouver

Contact: Jean Swanson (604-729-2380) Wendy Pedersen (604-839-0379)

Tuesday Morning Paragraph – Build on Current Assets

Carnegie Community Action Project

401 Main Street, Vancouver, V6A 2T7

(604) 839-0379

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Dear Mayor & Council,

How should we preserve the Downtown Eastside as a low-income community?

Reason #8: Build on the current assets

The city has imposed a theory of “revitalization without displacement” on low income residents of the Downtown Eastside. This “involves introducing middle income households and workers who bring disposable incomes that support retail and a normalization of social behaviour and expectation” (see source below). The 75% of residents who are low-income had no say in this plan.

“Revitalization” has already begun, but it’s condo owners who are coming, not middle income and working households. Displacement is happening because land speculation in the DTES, and high rents in other parts of the city are enabling hotel owners to increase their rents to beyond what low-income people can pay.

Introducing richer people to “normalize social behavior and expectation” is a poor bashing concept with no place in a city that respects diversity. It can’t work, anyway, because people on the street don’t have the resources, like toilets, money, and homes, that condo owners have.

Some condo owners are organizing to get rid of low-income residents and the services they depend on. Gastown has become a dysfunctional community where the 70% of residents who are low-income walk by businesses they could never hope to shop in and get harassed by security guards in their own neighbourhood.

There’s a better way to make a neighbourhood healthy. You ask the people who live there what the strengths and assets of the community are. You stabilize what’s there and enhance the good things that are already working. This is the process that the Carnegie Community Action Project is working on. Stay tuned.

Source: Cameron Gray, City of Vancouver Housing Centre, April 7, 2006 “The Downtown Eastside: Who Lives There and It’s Role in the City and Region (yesterday, today, tomorrow, the day after, and making it through the night)

Archive of previous paragraphs:

Social Innovation

Sharing

We care about each other

To stop social exclusion

This area is like a stronghold

Acceptance

DTES problems will not change by throwing richer people into the mix

Tuesday Morning Paragraph – Gentrification Does Not Fix Social Problems

Carnegie Community Action Project

401 Main Street, Vancouver, V6A 2T7

(604) 839-0379

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Dear Mayor & Council,

Why should we preserve the Downtown Eastside as a low-income community?

Reason #7: Contrary to some what some people think, mixing low-income people with higher income people does not, by itself, create a better situation for the low income people.

In 2006 the City’s Housing Centre Director, Cameron Gray, wrote that “revitalization” of the DTES “involves introducing middle-income households and workers who bring disposable incomes that support retail and a normalization of social behaviour and expectation.” This idea that middle-income people will provide an uplifting example to poor people is not based on real evidence.

Much of the research done on this is in the US where the benefit of mixing incomes is thought to be that the low income people get to use the better schools and parks that middle-income neighbourhoods have.

In BC, schools and parks aren’t funded by neighbourhood. Services for poor people are not better in richer neighbourhoods because they are almost all services that require money and are not appropriate to the needs of low-income people. Even community centres in middle-income areas in Vancouver charge fees that poor people don’t have.

DTES problems, like drug dealers congregating in several areas, people peeing on the streets, open drug use, and the general appearance of poverty cannot be counteracted by throwing richer people into the mix. To be solved, these problems require decent affordable housing, adequate income and probably the end of drug prohibition. Only in a place like the DTES, with its strong history of community activism, can the real solutions to problems like this take hold.

Archive of previous paragraphs:

Social Innovation

Sharing

We care about each other

To stop social exclusion

This area is like a stronghold

Acceptance

June 5, 2009

To Councilor Jang and Councilor Meggs,

We understand you are meeting with some business owners in Gastown to discuss the behavior of the tenants of the Dominion Hotel. We hear from tenants and management of the Dominion that business owners have been aggressive and rude to the Dominion tenants. One of our organizers, Wendy Pedersen, spoke to the Mandula business owner and her friends two days ago. This is what Wendy said:

Tenants have a historical right to be here and make up 70% of the population of Gastown.

“Gentleness and acceptance” is needed to help those who have been marginalized

We can show we care by asking questions and getting involved to get more supports in place if needed as this can reduce conflict and make life better for everyone.

The business owners got very angry and aggressive and said “How dare you come here on your bike without a business card and setting up an appointment. These people should not be allowed to live here. They are on the slow track. All they care about their drugs. They are ruining our businesses. They should get a job.”

The whole issue is a good example of why the city should re-examine the DTES Housing Plan’s goal of “revitalizing” the DTES by encouraging more market housing. The theory is that richer residents will have more purchasing power and enable businesses to have more customers. This theory seems to be mixed in with a leftover 19th Century poor-bashing one that if you mix the rich with the poor, it somehow uplifts the poor or teaches them better behavior.

In fact, what happens is not a social mix but social exclusion. Even though 70% of the people who live in Gastown have low incomes, they are not considered part of the power structure or community there. At CCAP’s mapping sessions we asked folks what the most uncomfortable and unsafe places in the DTES were. Gastown was listed often in this category because (quotes from Downtown Eastside residents follow):

“They are not really a neighbourhood. They are from the suburbs who don’t live here – and then drive away.”

“They are mainly a commercial centre that is for tourists and not for people in the neighbourhood. High end stores that cater to tourists. I don’t think the business owners are sympathetic to the DTES or our interests.”

“Gastown. Sinister night crowds and swarms of people waiting to get inebriated; their perception of the environment breeds contempt and legitimizes violence against the people here.”

“If you try to walk and look into stores, you are trailed by a rent-a-cop and asked to move along.”

To be fair, the DTES Housing Plan calls for the housing to be affordable and rental which wouldn’t be creating such a large divide in the community. But this is not happening. The vast majority of the new housing in the DTES are condos, which attract a more upper class owner and exaggerate the income divide in the DTES. For several years the city has been talking about creating a rate of change mechanism to control condo development, but no action has been taken.

The kafuffle at the Dominion is not the only example of better off people in the DTES trying to get rid of long time residents who are poor. It happened when Van Horne residents wanted to get rid of the line-ups at the Dugout; when some Strathcona residents opposed having the proposed new library serve the street population on the North side of Hastings; when some objected to arts and crafts store for low-income women at the Rice Block; when the WISH drop in was opposed and now a new site for United We Can on Alexander Street is being opposed by some residents at The Edge.

To us this means that the situation of current DTES residents needs to be stabilized before new condos are allowed to come in. We will be releasing our 2009 hotel survey soon. This survey will show that at least 694 more SRO rooms have increased their rents to over $425 a month in one year! Even though the city has provided shelters, the province has bought hotels, and this year some new social housing is opening up, gentrification is pushing up rents in cheap hotels, the last resort before homelessness.

Gentrification includes more than simply replacing cheap with more expensive housing. It also creates a different power structure in neighbourhoods (diminishing the voice of low income people), changes the businesses and services that low income people need for survival, and creates rising property values which increase rents and gradually push poorer people out. Gentrification changes the whole feel and comfort level in a neighbourhood. People with health and addiction issues who feel acceptance in the DTES now (the first step for recovery) could feel discriminated against and stereotyped by the new residents.

CCAP thinks that the city can solve this problem. In the fall we will present you with a report, based on input from over 1200 low income DTES residents. It will be a roadmap to stabilize the existing DTES community, nurture businesses that are not in a bubble and that genuinely serve everyone and go on to develop it into an amazing low income neighbourhood that is affordable, safe and healthy for its residents, which Vancouver can be proud of and many people will visit. We hope you will consider these points in your future decisions about the DTES.

Sincerely,

Jean Swanson and Wendy Pedersen
Carnegie Community Action Project Organizers

Tuesday Morning Paragraph – Acceptance and Uniqueness

Carnegie Community Action Project

401 Main Street, Vancouver, V6A 2T7

(604) 839-0379

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Dear Mayor and Council,

Why should we preserve the Downtown Eastside as a low-income community?

What about the “feel” of the DTES? If condos overwhelm low-income housing in the DTES, how will current residents “feel” about their community? Here are some quotes from the Carnegie Action Projects mapping sessions:

Re: condo owners: “These people are gonna look down on us…they think they are so much better than us.”

Re: Gastown: “All the cobblestones and the shops I could never shop at…”

Re: richer neighbourhoods: “You don’t get the same acceptance from those communities. We’re on no levels here and I don’t know anywhere else where that happens.”

“I’ve only been here for a year but it feels like home. No one judges you here. The people who live here are welcoming. A lot of good people here. Talented people. It’s nicer to be here than on the streets of North Vancouver.”

“What I like about living here is I’m not discriminated by the way I look and my disabilities.”

“Carnegie kitchen was my first volunteer position. It was the first time in my life that I was open and honest about my drug addiction. When I told them in the kitchen, they didn’t judge me and accepted me. It was a big step towards my recovery. It’s been 4 years.”

“It’s the first place I’ve ever found with people who are comfortable with who I am. People don’t question who you are. A lot of acceptance here.”

(These Tuesday morning paragraphs are brought to you by the Carnegie Community Action Project to help you understand why the DTES should continue to be a low-income community and not be overwhelmed with condos.)

Club W: Social Mix or Social Exclusion

The city and others claim that the new Woodward’s complex is a great example of “social mix” because it has condos (over 500 units) and social housing (about 200 units but only about 150 for low income people).

Check out this blurb on the Woodward’s website. It’s a description of the common space for the condo owners on the top of the building. See if you think the new Woodward’s will be about social mix or social exclusion:

“Escape”

“Club W”

“Your parents’ rumpus room never looked like this. Remarkably, the penthouse level Club W is all yours. Owners will have full access to an amazing array of rooftop views and amenities including a glass-flanked gym, stacked media room and glamorous lounge. Live large in the soaring double-height space. Read. Flirt. Meditate. Invite your friends to a movie or barbeque. Dine outside on the deck. Get steamy or wet. There’s even a giant hot tub (yes-in the shape of a W).”

“Plus, Club W is rumoured to have the sexiest restrooms on the continent.”

And hey, not to worry that nearly 900 SRO residents in Gastown don’t even have their own washroom and about 700 Downtown Eastsiders don’t have a home. You’ll need binoculars to see these folks from your elegant perch.~JS

We can’t show you pictures of Club W because we can’t copy them from the website, but if you can get on a computer you can see what it looks like for yourself by clicking on the amenities at: www.woodwardsdistrict.com

Hotel loophole could spell trouble during the Olympics

This is a copy of Jean’s speech from a recent city council meeting. At that meeting, council allowed the CN Backpackers to change its designation from a monthly hotel to a daily/weekly hotel without any penalties. Most of her speech is about the Ivanhoe Hotel that is next door and operated by the same management.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about the dangers of daily/weekly rentals and their potential for squeezing even more low income SRO residents onto the streets or into the shelters you’ve been creating. You probably know that the SRA bylaw allows hotels to rent 10% of their rooms on a daily/weekly basis. The problem is, we don’t know how many are doing this so we don’t know if hotels are exceeding their 10%.

I went into the CN Backpackers last month as part of CCAP’s hotel survey. The desk clerk told me he had several people renting monthly but that would stop in the summer. So I guess that’s what this application is about.

The CN Backpackers and the Ivanhoe across the street have a very close relationship. They are in the same pamphlet. We don’t like the CN Backpackers being daily/weekly. If the Ivanhoe goes daily/weekly, that will be even worse. From what we can tell the Ivanhoe has 10 dorms with 4 to 6 people in each. They are supposed to have 94 rooms so 10% would be 9 rooms. But evidently some rooms are bigger than others. The desk clerk told me last month that he was expecting 65 people in on one weekend and that he had single people waiting in the dorms, paying $375 each, for single rooms to be vacant. If you google Vancouver Hostels, you get a website that advertises the Ivanhoe as “across the street from the future Olympic village….”

Can you see bunks on every floor? The Ivanhoe may be renting more than 10% daily/weekly which would be illegal.

We are petrified that hotels will use the 10% rule to rent out rooms during the Olympics and evict longer term tenants. We have seen in the past, with the Columbia Hotel, for example, where hotels simply start renting daily weekly in violation of the bylaw and get away with it.

If you have to exempt the CN Backpackers, then do what you have to do, but: we urge you to amend the SRA bylaw to eliminate the 10% provision for other hotels in the area. If you don’t do that, at least eliminate it starting now until after the Olympics. And staff must be instructed to keep a very careful eye, at least monthly, and weekly by December, we would say, on all hotels to ensure that they are not renting more than 10% of their rooms daily/weekly. The hotels that we think need to be watched carefully include the Astoria, Balmoral, Cobalt, Creekside, Grand Trunk, Ivanhoe and New Columbia which are all renting daily/weekly now. In addition, Danny’s Inn, has a sign outside saying Daily Weekly, $45 a day. And there is a hostel website that lists the Pender Lodge, Shamrock Hotel, Grand Trunk and Ivanhoe.

At CCAP we believe it is urgent that council take action on this 10% rule before the Olympics if you don’t want more homeless people.

Mayor comes to Carnegie to meet with CCAP volunteers

Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) volunteers met with Mayor Gregor Robertson and Councilors Andrea Reimer and George Chow at Carnegie on May 22. The themes of the meeting were the need for more social housing and the need to end police brutality.

Sandra Pronteau told the city councilors that we need more social housing, not condos, and that “it’s not acceptable for anyone to have to live in the poor conditions of the SROs.”

Rolf Auer asked the mayor explicitly if he would go on record that the Downtown Eastside (DTES) should be a low-income neighbourhood. He also asked him if the city could overturn the hundreds of bylaw tickets that had been handed out in December and January for minor offenses like jaywalking and vending.

Omar Barahona told the councilors, “We are here and we plan to stay.” He called for more social programs and housing.

Phoenix Winter told the folks from City Hall, “This neighbourhood means a lot to me. We’re all family here. We look out for each other.” She asked if there was a way of dealing with police officers who take out their anger on people who are vulnerable.

Sarah Good said that she had been homeless off and on for four years and told the sad and moving story of recent deaths in her family, mostly due to our society tolerating and creating poverty.

Aiysha Faruk said that she came from a “Third World” country to a rich country and she was homeless and this was not right.

At the end of the presentations, the Mayor and Councilors responded. Robertson said that he and the rest of the Vision and COPE council would work to open up City Hall and make it more responsive to us. He said it was hard to build the social housing we need when the federal and provincial governments won’t provide the money.

The Mayor didn’t answer Rolf’s question about going on record that the DTES should be a low-income neighbourhood. Instead he said, “More people want to live here and people want to build and sell stuff. It’s hard to turn off the tap and say we’re gonna stop.” He also said that we had to ensure that our vision also worked with Chinatown and Gastown. At this point Jean Swanson interrupted him to point out that a majority of people in the whole DTES, including Gastown and Chinatown are low income people, and that associations did not represent low income people.

The Mayor didn’t answer the question about overturning the tickets either but Councilor Reimer said later that she would look into it.

The Mayor did say that the City’s Height Review (the plan to put up to 16 15 to 30 story towers in the DTES) won’t be done until November or into winter.

On the issue of police brutality, Robertson said the challenge was to
respect the police and change the direction inside and try to get the culture to change.

Councilor Reimer then said she and Kerry Jang, another councilor, would be willing to meet with CCAP regularly.

Councilor Chow said, “We need a community for low income people and this is where it’s gonna be. We are really in a third world situation here because there’s not a low of co-operation from provincial and federal governments. ~JS