Eat the rich: picketers promise to shut down Pidgin

Gentrification is by no means whiter, the desired cultural outcome of the revitalization is to impose financial power over the “weak” in question. The real problem is that the media are utilized by the power brokers to divert the public’s attention away from the causes, getting lost in a smoke screen of red herrings. Some might salt in the wound, bad news for some great news for others . . .

There is a racialized component to power though. Those with monetary might are certainly not universally “white” (or more specifically of Anglo-Saxon European descent, or whatever other ethnic groups are now considered honorary members of “Club Whiteness”), however it certainly isn’t happen-chance that the DTES holds the largest population of First Nations. The same can’t be said for Shaughnessy, or the British Properties. Race and class position do not always correlate, but in the context of Vancouver, or even Canada? Power often comes in shades of pale.

It’s true that the DTES is being gentrified by working class bodies, but don’t let that cover up its bourgeois design.

The truth is that “buying” (or renting from the bank) cheap condos built on land with (until recently) depressed price will not solve the housing crisis that affects all working class and low-income communities. It will, however, make a lot of money for otherwise idle developers.

Additionally, and this is our principle complaint, these condos sold to working people WILL displace low-income peoples’ homes and communities.

“don’t let that cover up its bourgeois design”

The problem here, Ivan, is that outside of your little poorkids streetgang/clique, such a criticism is garishly ridiculous. I have no doubt that you gain immense self-congratulatory pleasure sitting around talking about how your precious sewer is being refit with a “bourgeois design,” but I want to let you in on a little secret: most people prefer bourgeois design to sewers! I know, talk about lack of solidarity with low income people, but that’s a fact: people prefer communities designed intentionally by shop-keepers to communities “designed” by the inability of their inhabitants to exercise any independent agency—even the Carrall street “market” requires the city to look the other way and to, effectively, damage/injure licensed businesses in the area by allowing unfair, unlicensed competition. Gosh, if only we could all use the taxpayer-funded streets as our place of business, without paying for the upkeep of those streets! Great business model! Let other people pay for your infrastructure!

The housing situation is unfortunate—but it’s unfortunate all over, even for people who can afford mortgage debt. Want to talk unfair privilege, unearned privilege? How about the unearned privilege that the poor expect, whereby their “problems” are regarded as more authentic than the problems of those who need to service debt? Having no home is a problem; having to slave 40-60+ hours a week to afford one’s home is another sort of problem. Why do the poor expect their problems to be privileged?

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the difference between scientists and romantics. A scientist acknowledges that some problems are insoluble due to finite constraints. A romantic refuses to acknowledge this, and I think that may be a key difference between the two world-views. So, on the housing crisis, as you put it, it is quite apparent that the finite constraints render the problem insoluble. This brings us to a very, very interesting question: how are resource allocations to be performed if it is accepted that there’s not enough for everyone.

Presume that Government simply cannot build enough welfare units—I’ve seen the figure 5000 bandied about, which is pie in the sky. So Government can only build a fraction of what would be “necessary” to solve the problem. How is that fair to those who are left out? How is there possibly any rationality involved in deciding who’s in, who’s out? There can’t be, except by creating hierarchies of privilege. If Government cannot be a total solution, is it fair to have it act as part of the solution at all? Honestly, how is creating social housing that won’t house everyone any different than creating an Aristocracy, a privileged class that has done nothing to earn its privilege? It’s one thing to help everyone equally—it’s quite another to argue for “help” knowing full well that it cannot be distributed to everyone.

“condos sold to working people WILL displace low-income peoples’ homes and communities”

Yes, OK. If someone cannot afford to live somewhere, he must move. I guess these grim meathook realities aren’t supposed to be part of life in a modern nation-state? Why? Because you find it inconvenient? Freeholds cost money. If you haven’t paid for a freehold in land (or airspace, as the case may be), why should you be entitled to the benefits only obtainable in law by possession of a freehold estate? Because your romantic worldview says so?

“How many are people who have come to our fair city to make trouble for us natives?”

I dunno, we should ask some of the Natives who live in the DTES about that. I think some of ’em have been around these parts for about 500 generations now, yeah?

You have to be pretty blind not to realize how tasteless it is it to open a restaurant like Pidgin on E. Hastings. I thought it was tasteless enough when the art kids started throwing parties at Funky Winkerbeans with $8 covers. ‘sorry, this used to be your hangout, but not anymore on Sat. night’ The situation is completely asymmetrical. What kind of power do local residents have in comparison to that of big developers or the owners of Artitzia? You have a community of people who’ve spent most of their lives on the wrong end of the stick, and the best business owners like Grosutti can really offer them is to say ‘trust me, I’ll try and include you in your neighbourhood.’ Calls for dialogue, or ‘responsible behaviour’ on the part of protesters ignore that power differential. Whatever the rhetorical flaws of the article it’s completely correct that the only reason developers and their accompanying businesses are moving is because of the profit to be made and that their actions are constrained by that purpose. This isn’t a social project to ‘fix’ a neighbourhood.

I lived around Main St. Mt. Pleasant for ten years from the late nineties on thru the 2000’s and even from my privileged middle-class position I can testify to how alienating it is to watch your rather comfy neighbourhood with an established social life be transformed into some kind of faux-Williamsburg carnival of banal restaurant design where each storefront window feels like a little money blackhole trying to suck at you wallet except that you don’t have enough money to try any of the food so you never go in. I couldn’t live there the way I like to (working a landscaping job 30hrs a week and paying cheap rent) so I left town. That’s obviously not so easy for many people down on Hastings. Imagine how it feels now for someone who’s been living down there for fifteen years. I doubt they feel welcome anymore. The ways that they get by probably feel less and less tenable with each down-market business that goes yuppie.

The new businesses down on Hastings have an awful lot of capital behind them. Whatever the personal intentions of their managers/owners they’re constrained by the needs of that capital. Local residents won’t get be well treated by these new businesses unless they meet force with force, unless they produce their own power to counter that of the money that’s moved in. I don’t see why they should be sanctioned for doing that, it’s the only way anyone ever gets a fair shake.

If people want more low cost housing provided by the city why aren’t they protesting at city hall — the decision makers?

“I don’t understand how you can’t see that creating housing for our own people should be a top priority”

Well, by “our own people”, do you mean Canadians? Why should City of Vancouver foot the costs for housing all sorts of Canadians who like our mild climate—where is Canada going to kick in some cash to house these Canadians who find their way here?

And if you mean British Columbia, same deal—why should CoV foot the bill for so much of BC’s addict/down and out population? I guess that the province does kick in some cash, but nowhere near enough to be effective—and then there are the increased policing costs. Another way to look at the “all those tickets written in the DTES” stat is to say “oh, wow, we wouldn’t need as many cops to write vending tickets if the people down there didn’t violate bylaws!”

I don’t completely disagree with you, but I am also not going to create a “hierarchy of suffering” such that the homeless suffer “more” than the poor bastards working for the weekend, servicing debt. Their sufferings are both objectionable, both different, and I cannot see how to rank one over the other except on fundamentally aesthetic grounds—one finds it less beautiful for the homeless to be homeless than for the middle class to be debt slaves.

The concept of unearned privilege must be applied to all domains—the poor have had a “free ride” for far too long, premised of the aesthetic notion that their suffering is “more real” than that of corporate debt-slaves.

Low cost housing is a city wide problem not a DTES problem. Yes I agree, developers have taken over our city and are driving people out of neighborhoods but that has happened all over the city (hey Waldorf). I believe that a civilization should be judged by how it treats it’s weakest citizens, so I support needle exchanges, shelters, food programs, addiction counselors etc. But it frustrates me to no end that the community of the DTES has taken some of the most beautiful buildings in the downtown core and said ‘give them to me for free just because I want them’. I pay through the nose and need to work 2 jobs to afford living in Kitsilano (I don’t have a car…need to live closer to work)…I don’t expect some of the nicest property for free just because I like being there. There needs to be lower income housing yes, but this needs to be city wide. We are a highly unaffordable city for everyone..not just the DTES. Yelling and screaming at restaurants that are just wanting to make an honest living isn’t addressing any of these issues. To be honest these picketers have made me so mad at their ignorance and misplaced anger, I got to that restaurant just to support it.

And where are all these indignant protesters for what’s happening in Chinatown? This historical cultural part of town is being ruined (take a long look at all the closed stores and empty buildings) because the East Hastings crowd has decided that they would like take over Chinatown. It’s depressing to see these businesses that pay rent and taxes get slowly ruined by the begging, urinating, open drug taking, screaming, defecating etc., that happens on their door step every day. How can their businesses thrive in that atmosphere? Where is the rage, and people marching on city hall for the poor honest store owners in Chinatown.

I’ll take these commenters a little more seriously when they don’t just stand up for the DTES but all the little guys out there.

Oh and one of the employees of Pidgin lives in the same SRO I do. And he got jobs for several of the people who live on the street. Brandon also hands out free food every weekend and has taken an active role in helping out the ladies at the Rainier. What do you actually do to improve the life of DTES residents?

Again a persons issues were ignored and rhetoric employed. I’ll explain because you folks obviously need a teacher.

Ed brought up specific points related to product pricing and sourcing funding for social housing. Those two issues were never addressed in a the response. Instead Kim brought up the same rhetoric previously employed. That’s how you alienate people who might be swayed to your side with a reasoned argument. Nice job undermining your movement.

I’ll point out that like international trade, it’s important for areas which are low income with few resources to bring in those from wealthy areas to spend money so as to import financial resources into the region. Without it you simply have an increasingly impoverished region, which due to the nature of the market continues to spend money outside it’s borders and thus creating a negative economy. Though this is usually viewed on a macroeconomics level, it has some relevance on the smaller scale such as inner city communities.

Learn about more than just one topic, because these issues are multifaceted and require a review of the many issues at play, not just the one that slaps you in the face, because typically the issue you see is a symptom, not a cause.

You said “Local residents won’t get be well treated by these new businesses unless they meet force with force, unless they produce their own power to counter that of the money that’s moved in.”

Brandon, the primary owner of Pidgin, hands out free food every week, supports the Rainier, and employs about 20% of his workforce from within a 10 block radius. Sounds like you have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about once you start looking at the actual facts.

I am new to the DTES but not to the issue of poverty and gentrification. I’ve been poor since I was a child and life certainly tried to keep me that way (severe injuries, on multiple occasions, I never sought financial damages, because I just wasn’t like that). Gentrification occurs in all cities and has occurred for centuries. The issues require concrete plans not the vitriol being spewed by the protest group.

I personally find the picketing of this restaurant to be the most ill considered, ham-headed, foolhardy and useless action I’ve seen to date. You’ll get no sympathy from the ordinary working stiffs who put in their time and pay their taxes to pay for the (admittedly meager) social safety net that many people on the DTES are using. Such actions just undermine the entire message about what’s needed for greater social equality and create narratives of “low-income entitlement” that do nothing but harm those who would benefit the most from more inclusive and affordable communities.

Instead of picketing a business that has every right to be in the neighborhood and is working within it’s own context to be a good neighbour, how about talking about ways that Vancouver/B.C. could become more affordable? Why not talk about taxing empty condos and using the proceeds to pay for subsidized housing in areas across the city? Why not talk about bringing in legislation making it illegal for stratas to ban the rental of condos?

I fail to see how driving a business out of a neighborhood improves anything. This business didn’t displace housing, as some commenters seem to be suggesting – it replaced an empty storefront with a full storefront. To make the protesters look even more ridiculous, the restaurant has gotten 50 times the attention it would have gotten without the protests. If they were, indeed, trying to sell poverty tourism, the protests are the best advertising campaign they could possibly get.

Rorshach, to say “the poor have had a ‘free ride’ for far too long”, completely undermines the countless systemic determinants that have made them poor in the first place. and it makes you sound bigoted and ignorant.

I’m pretty certain they were speaking aesthetically. The current retail landscape is of predominantly white interiors.

Charity? WTF are you on? I never said give away a bunch of money. I said use that to begin acquiring the capital to make your desires reality. Social change isn’t effected by begging, but by action. Instead of fighting people and organizations and the system in general, how about doing it for yourself, by using the system. A self sustaining housing cooperative which uses excess revenue to produce additional housing units while maintaining reasonable market rate and low-income subsidized housing.
My point was that in just the protest action alone, a possible $20000 in capital was tossed aside in favour of getting attention while attacking a business (owner) who had so little to do with the issue that the protesters would respond to the question of “why him?” with “It has to be someone.” I’m at the point where I hope you fail just because people should not be encouraged to be quite so wilfully ignorant.

Rorschach and anyone else on this site arguing “Taxes are collected not by free consent but by totalitarian diktat. Pay or be robbed” are trolls plain and simple. Not part of the struggle for social justice and not useful contributors to the ML discourse. Just my opinion but I got no time for this anonymous jerk.

I can’t to reply to allister, no button below his post, but one above so I’ll use that.
I think you’re thinking a little big for what I suggested as a possible path.
You can use $20000 to purchase individual unit at the lower end of the local market. You operate it at as close to net zero as possible without risking it. Since many (not all admittedly) low income earners are in receipt of social assistance in this area, they cannot purchase assets like residential property, you can rent to them at as close to net cost as possible, which should be relatively low. As equity is built, you can leverage it to obtain more properties, which you rent in the same fashion. You double the number of properties operated every purchase cycle. Operate as an NPO or something similar.
It would start small and grow over time. You’d get some extra overhead, so either you’d need subsidies or it would get stuck into rents, but there’s a long time to figure that out. Slow but steady. Yes there’s a need now, but it can’t all be done for the people, the people have to do it for themselves too. We’d have to wait for them to get built in the first place. Perhaps approach developers with this plan. Get them to build just for your needs, once you had adequate purchasing power.
I thought it was all fairly apparent.
If you don’t think it’s a workable concept (with the exception of needing approx 50% more capital, ill admit prob required ), then explain how. Start a proper dialogue to find a solution instead of being excessively aggressive and dismissive. Your behaviour serves no one but yourself.

“What kind of Marxist turns a blind eye to the predatory capitalism of drug dealers?”

The kind that doesn’t want to get beat down, I’d wager. If they did this sort of thing to the skeevy DTES drug dealers, they’d be risking their lives/bodies. But you make an excellent point: why don’t they pick on people whose stock and trade is promoting dependence and misery? I mean, they could just as easily stand in front of the Carnegie and call the police every time some skeevy lowlife says “rock? down?”