Category Archive: Downtown Eastside

Public forum on new towers: residents concerned with planning and consultation process

At a forum held last night at the VPL, residents questioned the way the City of Vancouver conducts public consultations. The event’s organizers, a group called cityhallwatch, admitted that the forum had been, out of necessity, organized on short notice.

Nevertheless, the forum was well attended, including a member from each of the city’s three sitting municipal parties, real-estate developers, city planners, and grassroots community organizers. There was urgency in the air, as the policies under discussion go to City Council next week.

Randy Helten, cityhallwatch founder, argued that lack of notification and community involvement are only part of a systemic problem in municipal politics in Vancouver. Staff reports and public hearing agendas are often released with very short notice to the public.

Jean Swanson, of the Carnegie Community Action Project, explained how building 7 condo towers in the Downtown Eastside, as proposed, would displace the community’s current residents and community assets by pricing them out and attracting a new class of condo buyers and boutique stores catering to them.

After the evening’s planned presentations, the audience was invited to speak on any particular issues they had. There was significant criticism of Vision Vancouver’s planning policies, and their general attitude towards the community.

The only Vision councillor in attendance, Geoff Meggs, stood up to represent Vision and defend his party, arguing that consultations had been made and that views of the mountains would be saved. Many attendees emphasized that even they (who tended to be relatively engaged in municipal politics) hadn’t been included in consultations, nevermind notified of them.

Concerns were also raised about who exactly would benefit from rezoning for towers. Helten emphasized the increasingly influential role of developers in city planning, and brought up the recent radio interview where former Director of City Planning Ray Spaxman (former consultant on the Historic Area Height Review, who recently spoke with The Mainlander) warned of their influence.

Weekly Roundup

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM |

Legislation that would make Vancouver municipal parties disclose their donors and would cap corporate donations and overall campaign spending, might be in jeopardy. While the legislation has the support of the municipalities themselves, including Vancouver, several BC Liberal candidates have said the legislation is no longer a priority.

Campaign finance reform is increasingly important in Vancouver, where wealth disparity is growing. And with real-estate developers, often anonymously, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into civic campaigns to influence planning decisions, campaign finance reform cannot come too soon. The legislation was to be enacted before Vancouver’s upcoming November election. Are the Liberals stalling to help their wealthy associates?

HEIGHT |

A public forum will be held tonight at 6:30 at the Vancouver Public Library discussing the future of height in Vancouver. Details on a live stream of the forum will be available here. This forum is just a part of the community convergence that has occurred around this issue.

In an interview last week, City Director of Planning reiterated that the city planning department “believe[s] strongly in the value of engagement and consultation.”

The Mainlander recently reported on the negative impact the proposed height increases would have on the Downtown Eastside (DTES). This past Saturday, Jan 8, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council (DNC) general membership voted overwhelmingly to oppose this DTES condo tower plan.

When there is a rezoning, the City negotiates with the developer to extract contributions that will “benefit” the community (e.g. parks, social housing units, jobs, etc); on Saturday the DNC also voted to oppose the current method whereby residents are shut out of these negotiations.

Council is set to vote on the proposal for 7 condo towers in the DTES at 2:30 on Jan 20 2011. The public is welcome to speak on the rezoning policy, which can be found here.

TOP STORIES OF 2010 | Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Image by Murray Bush / Vancouver Media Coop

This is the second of five installments of our “Top Stories of 2010″ countdown. Here we tell the story of how the announcement of the “BC Missing Women Commission of Inquiry” and of “Project Sister Watch” were made possible only by the constant advocacy of aboriginal women.

None of these stories would have unfolded or seen the light of day in the absence of community organizing and grassroots activism. The take-home-message of 2010, it seems, is that activism can be effective while defining who we are.

On September 27 2010, the BC Provincial government finally announced an official commission charged with investigating the failure of the police to respond meaningfully to reports of missing women in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside between 1997 and 2002.

The commission has come far too late, is too small in scope, and is chaired by the wrong person. But it is important to recognize that its existence is owed to the persistent advocacy of community activists. The Women’s Memorial March, for example, has continued to be held in the Downtown Eastside on Valentine’s Day annually since 1991.

Community activist Gladys Radek maintains that at least 3,000 indigenous women have gone missing in Canada since the 1970s. Over the years, her organization Walk4Justice has organized several treks to raise awareness of the fact that the Pickton murders are only the tip of the iceberg.

Author of ‘Height Study’ comes out against City’s DTES condo plan

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We previously reported that on Jan 20 2011, Vancouver City Council will consider a proposal to build seven condo towers in the Downtown Eastside, and that there is significant community opposition to the plan. The City calls the plan the “Historic Area/Precinct Height Review/Study,” while critics call it a “gentrification package” for the Downtown Eastside.

This week, Ray Spaxman spoke out about the plan. On Dec 13, he told The Mainlander that he was more amenable “to getting an area plan going before we do this rezoning.”

Then on Dec 15 Spaxman was interviewed by CKNW’s Phillip Till about the Height Study, where he reiterated the problems of developing a rezoning plan without a community plan: “there seems to be a lack of attention to the impact of that density on all the facilities and services that are needed in the city as a consequence of those extra heights.”

The comments are significant because not only was Spaxman Vancouver’s Director of Planning from 1973 to 1989, but he was also hired by the City in 2007/8 as main researcher and author of the original Sept 2008 Historic Precinct Height Study.

Spaxman told The Mainlander that his contract with the city “was defined to focus on the question of height.” However, he noted his team’s concern that “by talking only about height instead of density and people, the City risks overlooking the social implications of development.”