Community paints Pantages to protest condo development

This week, Downtown Eastside residents rallied at the abandoned Pantages Theatre on the 100 block of East Hastings, and painted its facade with slogans like “100% social housing here.”

The Pantages Theatre and adjacent properties (158, 138, 134, 132, 130 East Hastings) have been bought up by developer Marc Williams, of Worthington Properties (for the company’s *interesting* history, read this and this). Last month, the City granted Williams’ request to begin demolition of the heritage building. Development permits have been issued, and Williams will be presenting his plans for a condominium complex to the Development Permit Board on August 22nd 2011.

Downtown Eastside housing advocate Wendy Pederson says a condo development next to the Carnegie Centre would be “like a bomb in the middle of the low-income community.” The Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council has identified the Pantages as one of ten sites to be bought by the City for social housing before the 2011 municipal elections.

It should never have come to this. Williams and the City failed twice to come to an agreement on saving the Pantages Theatre and to bring in other partners to create social housing in the surrounding abandoned buildings.

In 2008, Williams, the City, and the Province devised a plan to save the theatre and build social housing. But the deal fell through at the last minute on Sept 30 2008, shortly before the municipal election.

The preservation project languished under Vision Vancouver’s leadership. In Dec 2009, a disillusioned Heritage Vancouver, which had identified the Pantages as the city’s most important threatened heritage site, announced it would abandon its campaign to save the building.

On Mar 22 2010, City Council met in camera, to discuss purchasing the site. City staff recommended not purchasing the site, and Vision caucus supported this decision.

The “strategic” rationale for another Vision-COPE slate

Last week Sean Antrim outlined how the past three years of a Vision government has been anything but progressive. For reasons of principle and policy, he argued, COPE should not enter into another coalition with Vision. In addition to principles and policy, there are also strategic questions to consider.

What, then, are some of the strategic reasons COPE’s executive has negotiated a proposal with Vision to run a joint slate in the upcoming municipal elections? There are several possible strategic reasons, all of which don’t hold up under analysis.

1. At least COPE will have a “voice” on Council.

In the 2008 election, COPE and Vision made a coalition agreement. Vision ran 8 and COPE ran 2 candidates for City Council. Both of COPE’s candidates won seats, and yet have wielded no decision making power on Council. Vision holds a majority of seats, and all decisions are made in private by Vision’s caucus, without consulting COPE.

Although powerless in terms of voting, COPE Councillors could theoretically use their position to voice opposition. NPA Councilor Suzanne Anton has used her position to criticize from the reactionary right. But COPE has been an ineffective opposition voice. COPE often votes against Vision, but quietly. You have to follow the live audio-visual feed of Council meetings to hear about it.

COPE’s role has been as “conscience” of Council. Unfortunately, COPE’s alliance with Vision only makes them the fig leaf for Vision’s aggressive pro-developer, anti-resident agenda. There is nothing noble in propping up that status quo.

2. If COPE and Vision run separate slates, they will split the progressive vote, allowing the NPA to come up the middle.

As discussed, Vision is not a progressive party. Although Vision ran on a progressive platform in 2008, its actions have proven otherwise. Lack of consultation has alienated community after community; pro-gentrification policies are undermining affordability; and instead of implementing the homeless action plan, Vision has resorted to evicting the homeless from shelters. Even apparently positive positions, such as Vision’s pseudo-opposition to the Casino expansion, turned out to be all spin. There is no excuse for being fooled this time around.

Should COPE publicly criticize Vision’s policies, and clearly distinguish itself from Vision, there is no reason it wouldn’t be capable of securing the loyalty of progressive voters throughout the City, especially East Van. Criticism from the left would help properly characterize Vision as anti-progressive, forcing vote-splitting on the right, not the left.

3. Vision is identified strongly with its popular leader Gregor Robertson. It is too difficult to defeat Robertson, but after a leadership change, COPE can then run a Mayoral candidate and a slate.

Gregor Robertson’s favourability ratings have continued to decline since his election. The main reason his approval rating are not even lower is precisely that COPE has not criticized Vision strongly enough (if at all) from a progressive perspective. Vancouver is a progressive city, so without criticism from the left, Robertson’s approval ratings are artificially buoyed. People fear criticizing Robertson on account of his popularity, when in reality his popularity derives from a lack of progressive opposition from the people most familiar with the policies of Vision: COPE.

Suzanne Anton of the NPA has been a consistent critic of Robertson, creating the false impression that Vision is not a pro-developer, pro-corporate party (when in fact it is). The effect of this is that right-wing and centre-right voters will line up behind the horrible NPA this fall, giving hope to the NPA’s Rob Ford-ist dreams.

4. COPE will get wiped out if they run a slate and a Mayoral candidate.

It is important to understand that there are very few coalition scenarios whereby COPE might wield any power on Council. Vision has shown that it will not willingly work with other parties, so COPE would have influence only if Vision won a minority of seats and COPE held a balance of power. But it should be noted that if COPE holds the balance (for example, if COPE has two seats and Vision has four), the likely outcome will not be greater power for COPE so much as a new alliance between NPA and Vision, who already vote together on all major decisions. NPA and Vision are natural allies on all major issues.

In this ‘tight race’ scenario, COPE is in fact more likely to be wiped-out than to win the balance of power. On the other hand, with a full slate of strong candidates, there is no telling how many seats they might win (it all depends on the strength of the candidates). This election season, Vision has recognized the power of Vancouver’s only progressive party (COPE) by pre-empting their possible surge and giving them three candidates for Council. It is up to COPE’s membership to now agree with Vision’s analysis (but not their offer) and take the point all the way to its logical end: COPE can run independently and join the momentum of a progressive Vancouver.

Assessing the China Factor

It is two months since The Mainlander hosted a story on new Chinese housing policy that is exporting real estate investment pressures — especially to favored locations like Vancouver.
Vancouver Real Estate Frenzy

Aspects of the situation have taken interesting turns, beginning with a big story on Chinese surge that appeared the very next day in the Vancouver Sun. That article found irony in the fuel that Chinese “crackdown” on real estate speculation is pouring on Vancouver’s price fire. According to entrepreneur Cam Good, “There are literally planeloads of Chinese coming here to buy real estate.”

Over a month later, Vancouver business publisher and former municipal politician Peter Ladner called for action “to discourage overseas property speculators” — and mentioned “spreading high single-family lot land costs over two or three homes on the same property [to] drive down the unit price of the new (smaller) homes and discourage the trophy homes on large lots beloved by so many overseas investors.”

The April 5 Ladner article sparked an immediate response from Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs: a tout of Vision Vancouver’s controversial STIR giveaways to incentivize developers.

A week later Ethan Baron reacted with a weird equation: that Canadian purchase of Chinese goods (cheap here because of offshored worker exploitation) somehow means that Vancouver then owes a wide-open real estate market to the fortunes made by the overlords of those workers!

A few days after that, developer mouthpiece Bob Ransford pushed back at Ladner with what amounted to a call to develop as much as possible as fast as possible: “We need to focus on removing all the barriers that stand in the way of supplying the housing stock that is required to meet the demand.” In other words, whatever the degree of speculation, it must be sated, and attendant profits realized, regardless of any consequence to anything else. (Ransford also digressed to claim that the 1988 giveaway of the huge Expo 86 site to Li Ka-shing has been so good for Vancouver.)

Within a week, Cam Good — protagonist marketer in the February Vancouver Sun story — weighed in with a head-on assault against the Ladner protectionism that might impair the profits he is realizing from his Beijing office and his planeloads of buyers. After all, “in meccas like Richmond, 98 per cent of the hundreds of homes we’ve sold are to buyers who are Chinese.” Toward the end of his piece, this promoter went on to promise, “real estate is the best investment you’ll ever make.”

That promoter also cited a March 29 Wall Street Journal article, digging through cautionary freight to latch onto this sentence: “Chinese buyers have stampeded in to Vancouver and to Toronto, two of Canada’s hottest markets.” The unmentioned sobering part of that same article tots up these three factors: “the now-inflated ratio of house prices to income [which means] Canadian housing prices could be in for a 25% drop in the next three years,” a “debt-to-disposable-income ratio for Canadian households [that] rose to 148.9% last fall … surpassing U.S. borrowing for the first time since 1998,” and “Canadian recourse law [that] makes it harder for buyers to walk away from bad debt.”

Following in the footsteps of the Wall Street Journal, Gord Goble responded to Cam Good by highlighting a Vancouver unaffordability ratio of ten times income, a figure that points to the mania that precedes a broken bubble.

Near the end of April, David Ebner quantified the situation in broad and simple terms:

There are nearly 600,000 high-net people worth at least $1.5-million in China this year, according to the consultancy Bain & Co. About 10 per cent of them have already left, another 10 per cent are planning to apply for immigration, and about 30 per cent are considering it.

It remains to be seen whether China will continue to permit this flight of entrepreneurs and capital.

On May 2 Jay Bryan waved red flags about general real estate overvaluation in Canada and attributed the exceptionalism of “the rocket-propelled Vancouver market” — current annual increase of 13.4% — to “a flood of wealthy Asian buyers [that] continues to support sky-high prices.” He concludes with the obvious: “Few seem confident that the Vancouver market is stable.”

Three Telling Sidelights

One. Weeks after hitting the panic button on January 20 to abort the agenda set for city council, Vision Vancouver eventually handed Chinatown over to developer interests after five nights of hearing from the public why they should not. Who can resist the offshore money that stands poised to dehistoricize the core of Vancouver through “revitalization” with condos — especially after massive parking structures failed to do the job? (See Vancouver approves Chinatown condo for an overview.)

Two. In an April 19th marathon, all morning and all evening at Council, Vision Vancouver cobbled together some trailblazing last-minute repression into a bylaw that requires permits for protest structures and threatens to levy thousands of dollars in fines for infraction. In the lead-up to this decision — a decision deplored by the BC Civil Liberties Association — city officials admitted to direct involvement with the Chinese consulate.

8 arrested at Fraser & Broadway homeless shelter sit-in

By deciding to arrest the group of eight, Mayor Robertson made a clear choice, sending a clear message. Robertson is no longer the “End Homelessness” Mayor. Robertson created almost no new social housing during his first term. His one and only significant initiative was opening these emergency shelters, which concluded in this “week of shame” of 200 evictions and eight arrests.

The Broadway and Fraser St shelter was the fourth shelter this week slated for closure by the City and Province. The shelter is the largest of the four, and is widely understood to be the safest for women. The City-owned space will now sit empty for at least the next six months.

A rally was held outside the shelter Friday morning, attended by over 50 shelter supporters. There were speeches by shelter residents and housing advocates. “Some of my friends here are probably going to die if we are forced back to Downtown Eastside SROs,” said one shelter resident.

The evictions were to be complete by 11am, but several dozen residents and advocates occupied the large building. Throughout the day, activists helped residents negotiate with BC housing for better “alternative arrangements.” Activists promised to leave the building only once each shelter resident had secured appropriate alternative arrangements.

Meanwhile a delegation went to Christy Clark’s campaign office, refusing to leave until they met with Premier Clark (see CBC article). Clark sent the Housing Minister Rich Coleman to meet with the delegation. The meeting was sometimes heated, but the feeling of the dozen attendees was that Coleman’s arguments in favour of shelter closures fell apart upon discussion, but he remained extremely stubborn and arrogant. Afterwards, Coleman made nonsensical and rambling comments to the press, as reported by CKNW:

Coleman says everyone has been offered housing, but not everyone has taken it,”Instead of working with us and understanding what the long term plan is, and just working with us on a long term plan, it’s just never enough…And so it’s never enough for them so they want to find something they can hang their hat on every once in awhile to be activists about, and I don’t know why.”

Activist Wendy Pedersen says low barrier shelters are critical to giving people a place to land if housing options don’t work out, “We have a goal and that’s to end homelessness. Until people are not homeless, we’re not going to be happy, and somebody has to keep up the pressure, and that’s our role.”

At 8pm, back at Fraser & Broadway, there remained several dozen people in the shelter, including residents who were committed to keeping the shelter open. The shelter remained filled with the belongings of evicted residents. Police, under orders from City Deputy General Manager Brenda Prosken, told everyone to leave under threat of arrest. The squatters decided that a core group of eight would take a stand to keep the shelter open for all who need it. The group of eight sat in a circle in the middle of the shelter, putting the decision clearly to the City General Manager and Mayor: if you want to shut down this homeless shelter, the fourth in one week, you will have to arrest eight peaceful demonstrators to do so.

The eight were arrested and held in jail overnight in holding cells Main and Cordova. Upon release at 1pm on Saturday, they were greeted by cheering supporters who had set up a jail-solidarity camp

And where was Robertson himself throughout the week? Announcing his New Deal with developers to drive through massive, but unspecified, re-development of the central business district. I don’t remember that being a key Vision priority. Maybe they can build a condo tower on the site of the Howe St shelter.