Condo project would fuel 'class hatred,' activists say

Fearing it would hurt the poor, demonstrators want proposed development quashed
WENDY STUECK
The Globe and Mail
June 24, 2008

VANCOUVER -- Housing activists made a last-ditch effort to derail a Downtown Eastside condominium project at a city hall hearing yesterday, claiming the development would fuel "class hatred" and make it more difficult for low-income people who live in the neighbourhood to obtain decent housing and services.

"We need some indication that there is a future for poor people in this neighbourhood - otherwise these condos are a slap in the face," Carnegie Community Action Project spokeswoman Wendy Pedersen said yesterday at a development permit board meeting.

Ms. Pedersen and other activists attended the meeting to register their objections to the 160-unit Greenwich condominium project, which developer Concord Pacific has proposed for a downtown site at 58 West Hastings St.

Read the rest here
See also Downtown Eastside condo plan needs social housing, opponents say

Letters Not Condos

Please join with us to oppose a significant proposal for condos covering 6 lots at 58 W. Hastings in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. We literally need hundreds of Vancouver residents to write a letter AND sign up to speak at the Development Permit Hearing to make an impact. The hearing is on June 23. It is essential that our letters are in by Friday, May 17 so the Planning Department can reference them in the report that will be submitted to the DP Board who will make the decision. Your letter does not have to be long or profound. A few sentences to object will do just fine. Elaborating is good too. Feel free to use the information below and use the information in CCAP's letter posted at: http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com.

Background:

The Concord Pacific development at 58 W. Hastings must be stopped. The rapid gentrification of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is overwhelming the low-income residents of this neighborhood, who make up 75% of its population. The current rate of development, in which new condos outstrip social housing 3 to 1, is a grave threat to the neighborhood. The feverish planning, approval and construction of market condos in the DTES is a destructive force setting off massive shocks in this community. Rising real estate prices are already resulting in increased rents, conversions and closures of residential hotels (SRO’s), creating a constant flow of displacement and evictions of low-income residents, and consequent homelessness. Condo construction will be accompanied by a flood of upscale amenities catering to the new residents of the area, which will further marginalize the low-income residents who have made this neighborhood home for many years.

Unlike people with significant resources, whose lives are marked by independence and mobility, people living in poverty form communities of interdependence, located in a specific geographical area, and embedded in neighborly networks of support and assistance. The community of low-income residents who currently call the DTES home should not be displaced from their neighborhood and relocated somewhere else for the sake of condo development. This is their home, and they should be able to live here. Poverty is not grounds for displacement.

Condo construction in the DTES must be halted until a community vision is formulated, planned and implemented. Like putting up a tent in a windstorm, rooting and securing housing for low-income people in a community experiencing the hurricane of condo development and massive gentrification is impossible. Residents need time to determine their own community vision and they need support for the implementation of that vision, before the green light is
given to condo developers. What is at stake is the existence of a vibrant, amazing community of people.

The cessation of condo development for the sake of this community can begin here and now, with the rejection of a development permit to Concord Pacific for the 58 West Hastings site.

We believe there is an opening at City Hall to support our position. On Thursday, May 1 at the Planning and Environment counil meeting, Cameron Gray, Director of the City's Housing Centre said the surge of condos in the DTES is “like a hurricane and is going twice as fast as predicted…[and] we need to address the rapidity of change in order to stay on track with the Downtown Eastside Housing Plan." He also said that a strong mechanism to control condo development “could signal to the Province that no market housing will be built and landowners/developers may be off to Victoria to get more housing here.” And he said: “its time to do a community visioning because groups are more united and able to do it and because of the rapidity of change.” At the same meeting, Councilor Anton of the NPA stated “we have the horrendous challenge of 4000 more units” in terms of securing replacement housing in the area and that “as long as the SRO’s are in private hands, they are in jeopardy.” Councilor Anton said she was “very encouraged by the [visioning] work in the DTES.”

Please write your letters by Friday, May 17 to:

Alison.higginson@vancouver.ca
The Chair, Development Permit Board
c/o Alison Higginson, Project Facilitator,
Development Services
453 West 12th Avenue
Vancouver BC
V5Y 1V4
Please bcc your email letter to: wpedersen@look.ca or send us a quick note to let us know that you wrote a letter.

To sign up to speak at the hearing on Monday June 23, call:

Lorna Harvey
Assistant to the Development Permit Board
Development Services
604. 873-7469

Sincerely,

Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP

Condo project targeted by activists

Concord Pacific building at Hastings and Carrall stalled by Carnegie Community Action Project
Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, April 24, 2008

VANCOUVER - A Concord Pacific project in the booming Downtown Eastside has become the first to be targeted by local activists who are gearing for an anti-condo war.

The 154-unit Greenwich condo project -- which is being built near Hastings and Carrall in the middle of what has been the city's drug market, scavenging centre and residential-hotel enclave -- has found itself temporarily stalled as area advocates protest a technical glitch in the approval process.

But those advocates say they're willing to try to make a test case out of the project to highlight concerns about the onslaught of condos in a neighbourhood that has been traditionally the home for the region's poorest.

Read the rest here

Activists take housing cause to UN

Government accused of not doing enough
Catherine Rolfsen, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, April 14, 2008

A group of students and Downtown Eastside advocates is today sending the United Nations a human rights complaint against the government of Canada, protesting the lack of adequate housing in the troubled community.

In the document, addressed to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, the complainants argue that the federal government has violated the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Canada is a signatory.

"The federal, provincial and municipal governments in Canada are not upholding basic human rights standards associated with the right to adequate housing in Vancouver, British Columbia, leading up to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games," reads the letter. It is signed by representatives from Pivot Legal Society, the Carnegie Community Action Project and the Impact on Communities Coalition.

"We're at our wits' end," said Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Community Action Project at a press conference Sunday. "With the Olympics coming, maybe if these levels of government are embarrassed enough, they'll do what everyone knows they need to do: build housing, buy the hotels, bring in rent control."

Two University of B.C. students -- Mike Powar and Gayle Stewart -- initiated the complaint after studying the issue of homelessness in Vancouver in a global politics class taught by Michael Byers.

"I hope that by filing this human rights complaint with regards to the SROs [single-room occupancy buildings] we can really make a difference," said Powar, a political science student.

The complaint is filed through a mechanism that allows human rights and victims' groups to petition the UN. It has been used to protest apartheid in South Africa and conditions in the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, said Byers, who holds a Canada research chair in global politics and international law.

It will be considered by the UN Human Rights Council over the next few years, Byers said. The council can't fine Canada, Byers said, but could call upon Canadian politicians to discuss homelessness and may eventually produce recommendations.

"Through this petition, these NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and my students are prompting the eyes of the world to turn to the Downtown Eastside," Byers said.

Vancouver city Coun. Kim Capri said in an interview that the Olympics will bring increased international attention to Vancouver's social ills, such as homelessness.

"The Olympics are a catalyst for action," Capri said. "We're hoping that they will be a catalyst for positive action."

She defended the city and the province's track record of tackling homelessness, pointing to recent purchases of Downtown Eastside hotels for low-income housing and to the planned development of social and supportive housing on 12 sites across Vancouver.

But she said the recent Metro Vancouver homeless count, which found there has been a 20-per-cent increase in the number of people living in shelters and on the streets since 2005, highlights the enormity of the challenge facing the region.

"Having anybody sleeping outside in the conditions that homeless people live in, in a country as wealthy as Canada, is very problematic and it's troubling," she said.

"As a country, and as a province, we need to do better."

Monte Solberg, the federal minister of Human Resources and Social Development, and Rich Coleman, the provincial Housing minister, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Link to article

For a contrary opinion see also Blaming B.C. Olympics for housing ills wrong

DEVELOPMENT TSUNAMI COULD SQUEEZE MORE INTO HOMELESSNESS

The situation is ominous in the Downtown Eastside. Real estate development is destroying the community, and will continue to generate homelessness and death. We need to get the word out to political and civic leaders, and to citizens in general: freeze the development of market housing in the DE; increase construction of non-market housing for those living in inadequate housing and those who are currently homeless!

Silence is not an option.

CARNEGIE ACTION ASKS FOR URGENT MEETING WITH VANCOUVER CITY COUNCILLORS

Read more on the Save Low Income Housing Coalition website.

Sullivan Counts Shelters as New Homes

Prepared by Jean Swanson, Carnegie Community Action Project, October 25, 2007

The provincial and city governments are always announcing that they're opening new housing units, or building them, or converting them. This is good because it means that they are feeling our pressure to actually build 3200 new units of social housing in the city before the Olympics.

But it's also bad because the announcements are designed more for public relations than for actually providing homes for people. And when people hear all these announcements, if they aren't homeless or don't live in the Downtown Eastside, they might believe that the government is doing enough.

For example, Sam Sullivan recently announced, "in the 11 months since project Civil City was established, we have...commitments for more than 1500 new supportive housing units...."

Let's just forget about the fact that you can't really get housing built in 11 months, so Sullivan really can't take credit for much of this. And let's not forget that even if 1500 units are "committed," that's still 1700 units short of the 3200 units that the City of Vancouver’s own policy calls for over the next 4 years.

And then let's take a close look at Sullivan's numbers. I want to thank Monte Paulsen of The Tyee for some of this analysis.

Sullivan claims that 57 new units have been opened in 2007. These units are in an assisted living building for seniors on E. 58th St. Until recently these kinds of units were paid for out of the health budget. Now the province is building assisted living units for seniors, which are needed, but have nothing to do with housing for low income and homeless people in general.

Sullivan says there are 651 new units under construction and 44 conversions (the Pennsylvania Hotel). Of these 651 units, the ones on Richards St. (87 units) and the 92 units at 65 E. Hastings would have been opened and providing homes three years ago if the provincial government hadn't cancelled them in 2001.

Three more buildings (Beulah Gardens, St. Vincents, and Icelandic Residence) in that group of 651 units are not in the Downtown Eastside and are assisted living buildings for seniors. That leaves 246 new units (Woodwards and the Passlin Hotel) for Downtown Eastsiders, not counting the ones cancelled in 2001, or 425 if you do count them. Remember, we need 800 per year.

Sullivan says 649 new units are funded and in development. Of these, 256 are in the Olympic Village. We don't know how many if any of these units will be affordable by people on welfare because Sullivan's council cut back the subsidy for this project. One educated guess is 25. Sullivan lists the Union Gospel Mission (UGM) project as "133 beds, rooms and units." Paulsen's article says it is really 43 shelter bunks, a relocation of an existing 37 bunk treatment centre, and 36 new units of abstinence based social housing, so let's call this one 36 instead of 133. Yes, it is official BC government policy to count shelter beds as housing "units" in case you were wondering. So that's a total of 321 new units (not shelters) funded and possibly available for Downtown Eastside residents sometime in the future (the UGM proposal hasn't even been approved by the city yet).

My grand total of housing units (not rooms or shelters) possibly available to low-income residents who aren't seniors is 746 (0 completed in 2007, 425 under construction, and 321 funded and in development). If it takes 4 years for all these units to be built, that's a massive 2454 units short of the 3200 units that the City of Vancouver’s own policy and the Inner City Inclusivity Housing table say we need by 2010.

In other words, don't be fooled by all those government announcements about how many housing units are being built. We still have to do a lot of work: pressuring the government to build more housing and exposing the real numbers of housing units that are getting built.

Download pdf file of the above here.