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Gregor Robertson lays out his plans to turn Vancouver into San Francisco

P1060822

In a recent interview, Mayor Gregor Robertson joked about how cool it will be for tech startups to use former jail cells as offices. He was referring to an active Vision Vancouver project to overhaul the old police station at Main & Cordova, turning it into a publicly-funded “tech incubation accelerator.” This attempt to align City Hall with the interests of the “creative class” is part of Vision’s broader plan to use the city’s real estate holdings to subsidize businesses of their choosing. Or, as Gregor puts it, “to bring a business edge to government and recognize the importance of entrepreneurs to this city.”

<p dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><a href="https://themainlander.com/?attachment_id=7741" rel="attachment wp-att-7741"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7741" alt="P1060822" src="https://themainlander.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/P1060822-550x309.jpg" width="550" height="309" /></a><em></em></p> <p dir="ltr">In a recent <a href="http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/10/interview-with-mayor-gregor-robertson-jobs-tech-industry/">interview</a>, Mayor Gregor Robertson joked about how cool it will be for tech startups to use former jail cells as offices. He was referring to an active Vision Vancouver project to overhaul the old police station at Main & Cordova, turning it into a publicly-funded “<a href="https://themainlander.com/2013/04/09/downtown-eastside-tech-hub-city-commits-to-capital-incubation-at-the-expense-of-housing-and-jobs/">tech incubation accelerator</a>.” This attempt to align City Hall with the interests of the “creative class” is part of Vision’s broader plan to use the city’s real estate holdings to subsidize businesses of their choosing. Or, as Gregor puts it, “to bring a business edge to government and recognize the importance of entrepreneurs to this city.”</p>

P1060822Community paint-in at former police station, Main & Cordova, April 14, 2013

In a recent interview, Mayor Gregor Robertson joked about how cool it will be for tech startups to use former jail cells as offices. He was referring to an active Vision Vancouver project to overhaul the old police station at Main & Cordova, turning it into a publicly-funded “tech incubation accelerator.” This attempt to align City Hall with the interests of the “creative class” is part of Vision’s broader plan to use the city’s real estate holdings to subsidize businesses of their choosing. Or, as Gregor puts it, “to bring a business edge to government and recognize the importance of entrepreneurs to this city.”

With little to no public discussion, the Mayor’s business-bailout strategy is well underway, having already blessed tech-darling Hootsuite with an undisclosed, subsidized rent-to-own deal at their new office in Mount Pleasant. The terms of the deal remain mysterious, as FOI requests for details were denied or heavily redacted. What we do know is that the City allocated $4.55 million from the Capital Financing Fund to pay for building renovations, which included a yoga studio, nap rooms, and a bar. Similar taxpayer-funded renovation work is currently underway at Main and Cordova.

At the end of the interview, the Mayor turns to the cities of New York and San Francisco, describing his goal of transforming Vancouver into a world-class city. Just last week, the Tyee’s Jackie Wong published “Generation Rent,” an extensive 4-part comparison between Vancouver and San Francisco. Wong’s series highlights the inherent contradiction of the progressive global city, which aspires to be the best of the best while remaining inclusive to all. Reading through her observations it is clear that San Francisco’s long and troubled history with gentrification is ongoing, and as organizers like Richard Marquez have argued, it’s a history we should pay close attention to.

Vancouverites are understandably worried about what our changing city will mean for our pocketbooks: recent polling suggests our top concerns are housing affordability and the cost of living. If we are determined to make the transition to being a “world-class city,” the upward march of prices threatens to become just another fact of life. We need to prepare accordingly.

Hastening gentrification for private profit

Vision Vancouver’s scheme to court private employers with public gifts is lifted directly from the United States, where cities like San Francisco have given individual companies huge tax breaks to keep top talent from crossing municipal lines. Twitter’s office in San Francisco’s Mid-Market district, subsidized to the tune of over $22 million, has widely been credited with the gentrification of the surrounding neighbourhood. This gentrification is resulting in the widespread displacement of San Francisco’s citizens, and this overwhelmingly affects the elderly and people of colour. Despite this, Vancouver is eager to replicate San Francisco’s strategy in the Downtown Eastside, offering up the cop shop as a gentrification beachhead. This plan has been opposed by many DTES residents, thousands of whom signed a petition to turn the space over to the community. So far, the petition has been ignored.

The City’s pro-gentrifcation policies in the DTES require a consistent and systematic blindness to their negative effects falling almost entirely on the working-class, low-income, elderly and racialized. In the most startling exchange of the Vancity Buzz interview, Gregor Robertson is asked if the DTES is going to be safe for “women working in tech.” Robertson responds that the low-income community has been “stabilized with private investment” and that the Vancouver Police Department has created an “island of safety” in the DTES. Never mind that less than a year ago, the Missing Women Inquiry found the police guilty of “systemic bias” in ignoring the kidnapping and murder of 67 women from the neighbourhood, most of whom were First Nations. Gregor is conscious of the fact that, here, he is not being asked about those women; this question is about “women in tech.” Made explicit is a double standard for people in the city: one group is in need of police protection, while the other needs to be “stabilized”, treated, policed.

From that perspective, taxpayer-subsidized gentrification is a clever strategy to push out politically undesirable populations and replace them with wealthier, whiter citizens. It’s a strategy with a long and storied history in both cities, no strangers to race riots and neighbourhood cleansing initiatives. Vancouver and San Francisco share a parallel history as Pacific ports expanding to accommodate migrants from all over the globe. Both cities have been built atop many waves of colonial displacement, evictions, neighbourhood demolitions and crises of affordability. Both cities are at pains to think themselves progressive, environmentally-friendly, hip, inclusive. Both are currently hotspots of gentrification. These parallel histories of occupation, resistance, and struggle are lived and remembered by racialized and working class people, and despite this history of violence, they are still here.

Radical interventions for business, but no action on housing

Advocates of Vision Vancouver’s aggressive urbanism (most of whom pull a salary from the development industry in one way or another) argue that pro-market densification incentives are necessary to increase supply and thereby control costs. Developer millionaire and former NPA council candidate Michael Geller recently circulated a 6,000-word poor-bashing diatribe that insisted the city abolish all social housing requirements since they “stymie business growth.” From the growth of business, the story goes, our much-needed housing shall flow.

There is a simplicity to this logic of “more.” The fact is that what’s being built is not replacing what is being lost. Virtually all new apartments built in Vancouver are condominiums for sale, investment or rental: they are built to command a premium, not to house people affordably. Renovictions, conversions, and demolitions are destroying the city’s old housing stock to replace it with brand-new units. The new housing we’re seeing is only “affordable” according to Councillor Kerry Jang’s convenient tautology where “affordable housing is something somebody can afford.”

Unlike New York or San Francisco, Vancouver has no public housing authority filling the housing gap that developers’ won’t fill. Our city has no meaningful rent control, as Pivot Legal Society and the Carnegie Community Action Project have observed. But Vision Vancouver consistently refuses to act on this issue, instead preferring to “incentivize” affordable rental exclusively through tax breaks to private industry.

Amidst this development boom, the city has said they are doing all they can to deliver social housing; but then they confess that their multi-billion dollar real estate portfolio is tasked with hastening gentrification and making the affordability crisis worse. Across the city, activists blow the whistle on illegal apartments and mass evictions but the City rarely, if ever, lumbers into action. In response to the loss of over 2,000 units of SRO housing due to rent increases in the period 2007-2011, a SRO Task Force was set up in the summer of 2011. Over two years have passed, and it’s accomplished precisely nothing. (A “status update” is due sometime in 2014.)

Gentrification: Why are we paying for it?

The external costs of Vancouver’s taxpayer-subsidized gentrification are largely borne by neighbouring municipalities, who have to accommodate the displaced population. As Vancouver gentrifies, the homelessness crisis in Langley, Abbotsford, and other suburban municipalities is getting worse: the headlines show the cold reality of the situation. Nonprofits and charities south of the Fraser, generally less able to obtain funding than those in Vancouver, lack the capacity to support those in need. Yet as the Downtown Eastside sheds welfare-rate units by the thousands, and the City of Vancouver turns a blind eye to the problem, there’s nowhere else to go.

At some point we have to come to terms with the fact that our current government doesn’t particularly care about the fate of renters. And in a city where over half of us are renting, that’s a big problem. City policies, as they stand, will only make the affordability crisis worse. Our commutes will get steadily worse, and our rents will get steadily higher. This supposedly “liveable” city is splitting into a two-tier society: those who can afford to move into a brand new condo, and those who have to fight to stay in their old homes.

If we are going to collectively aspire as a city to become as expensive as San Francisco or New York, we need to have a serious conversation about how we’re going to preserve existing rentals, stop renovictions, and set up a housing authority (as any other “world-class city” has done). Amidst declining school enrollment, an exodus of young adults, and perpetually increasing rents and transit costs, we need to make some tough decisions. We don’t have much time left before the affordability crisis evicts what’s left of my generation from the city where we hoped to live out our days.

We need to stop and ask ourselves: do we believe that those who work in Vancouver deserve to live in Vancouver, too?

18 Comments

18 Comments

  1. Mark

    November 4, 2013 at 8:57 pm

  2. Fred

    November 4, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    San Fran is expensive (among other reasons) because they have prioritized heritage preservation over housing supply growth.

    A great way to keep prices down is to allow the evil, profit driven developers to develop housing. Even if what they build isn’t intended for low income people, it reduces pressure on the housing that IS intended for low income people.

    It’s not true that Vancouver subsidizes gentrification. We have high taxes on development and many restrictions on what developers can do with their land (which is an implicit cost to them). Community amenity contributions are usually high but they are reduced when developers contribute in some other way, like by building housing specifically for low income people.

    I sympathize with what the left wants to do – keep housing affordable for the poor – but I think they have misguided intentions. Restrictions on development will do nothing but raise prices. That goes against the good-vs-evil narrative many on the left want to tell, but it’s really an inconvenient truth.

    Oppressive zoning regulations redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich by prioritizing aesthetics over housing affordability. We should reduce the restrictions developers face.

    And please don’t say I’m a shill for anyone or I’ve been hired by moneyed interests. Believe it or not, this is what I think.

  3. Maria

    November 4, 2013 at 11:04 pm

    Yes, if you think that sheltering mining profits is a good idea. Not only does the rent bank create a tax exempt haven for mining profits (made from exploitation, destruction and dispossession) but it also allows mining giant Frank Guistra to make profit out of the interest of the loans. Finally, the rent bank does not in any way address the causes of the housing crises, it only fuels it by increasing household debt.

    https://themainlander.com/2012/10/16/financial-crisis-and-tax-evasion-unpacking-vancouvers-rent-bank/

  4. Maria

    November 4, 2013 at 11:17 pm

    The neoclassical mantra that more supply = lower prices only holds true if the market is competitive. However the competitive market is an ideal, not an actual reality. This is especially true of land markets, which are inherently monopolistic. The world’s most affordable housing is not found in cities where the market is “free.” On the contrary, actually-existing affordability is found only in cities where governments have stepped in to regulate the market and directly provide affordable housing. The city of Vienna is a great example.

  5. Nicholas Ellan

    November 4, 2013 at 11:53 pm

    The rent bank is a distraction. It has no impact whatsoever on renters – it exists solely to help a wealthy few supporters of the status quo believe they are doing more than nothing. It is a drop in the bucket.

    The rent bank is so far out of the experience of the renting majority as to be completely meaningless. That it came up here is funny. The rent bank subsidy is a tiny fraction of what these corporations are getting.

  6. kim hearty

    November 5, 2013 at 10:15 am

    Fred says developers are oppressed. He has a lot to teach us all.

  7. Tami Starlight

    November 5, 2013 at 11:38 am

    lol…..kim.

  8. eyeonnorquay

    November 5, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    Fred, what you need to say is that CAC (community amenity contribution) is a rotten scam that gives developers something to whine about, something that never produces anything for the community in any kind of proportion to what is taken out of the community. Find yourself some details at http://eyeonnorquay.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/gentrification/

  9. Maria

    November 5, 2013 at 2:40 pm

    I forgot to mention the other alternative. Affordability can also be a result of direct action, when people make take housing off the private market by occupation and squatting. The thousands of squats in Barcelona is one of many examples.

  10. Randy Chatterjee

    November 6, 2013 at 4:48 am

    Who is the Rent Bank for? Landowners get more assurance of rent payments, poor and distressed renters fall deeper into debt. All the Rent Bank does is to help boost and support high rents and further impoverish the most vulnerable in our society.

  11. Mark

    November 6, 2013 at 3:15 pm

    The rent bank is for low income people in danger of being evicted from their house. Run by the Network of Inner City Community Services Society, it’s actually doing good work and is being looked at for replication across the province.

    Details here: http://www.niccss.ca/VRB

    Since 2012 the rent bank has approved “137 interest-free loans, helping 228 people – including 39 children – avoid losing their homes due to eviction.”

    It’s a small project that actually helps people who need it.

  12. Mark

    November 6, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    The loans are interest free so no one is making money by supporting the rent bank.

  13. Mark

    November 6, 2013 at 3:31 pm

    The rent bank is a small project that has made a difference to the people that didn’t get evicted from their houses. Does it solve Vancouver’s affordability problem? Definitely not.

    To say the City of Vancouver doesn’t care about renters or addressing affordability and homelessness is simply untrue. Their has been progress made.

    http://www.mayorofvancouver.ca/housingcrunch

  14. Mark

    November 6, 2013 at 3:34 pm

    Good point Maria! How could this happen in Vancouver?

  15. Mark

    November 6, 2013 at 4:43 pm

    Oops, this was meant for your first comment about Vienna.

  16. Kenji

    November 12, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    Is it not time to consider rent control?

    The notion that affordability must be preserved by preserving old buildings is not illogical. Old and short buildings are cheap.

    Unfortunately, IMO, these old short buildings are smelly, not up to Code, retrofitted with electrical that it was never designed to take, and an inefficient use of limited land.

    I would like to see some way of getting new development without having to sacrifice affordability. I am not an expert on this, and I appreciate that rent control has its detractors as well, but it seems to me that public money has to be spent to develop affordable stock. A non profit housing society like Atria seems to be able to develop and manage buildings for women – can’t there be some more?

    If the progressive people want to have these amenities I think we have to put up some seed money, try to get grants (BC Housing and Richmond have gone in together on things) and actually do it.

    We have little credibility with the people who actually build things. Actually building things is a win win, seems to me.

  17. zpie

    December 5, 2013 at 12:07 pm

    Yes, the rent bank can help but in NO WAY addresses the issue. Why are people having to go to the rent bank? Because they cannot afford to pay rent. I guess that means the rent is not affrodable.

  18. p

    May 5, 2014 at 9:04 pm

    at least three tiers if you include those who still live at home

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