Renewed urgency to improve DTES housing conditions

Tomorrow, June 30th, Vancouver City Council will decide whether to seek legal injunctions to force repairs of the Palace and Wonder single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The living conditions in these buildings are intolerable. The City report mentions that the Wonder Rooms is in an utter state of disrepair on account of being neglected by its owner. The City found Wonder Rooms to be in violation of 141 Standards of Maintenance Bylaws and 24 Building Bylaws including, for example: “The entire basement and first floor are littered with rat feces and smell very strongly of rat urine.”

Unfortunately, these conditions are representative of many residential tenements in the Downtown Eastside, where landlords increase profits by avoiding maintenance costs. Despite the poor state of repair, owners get away with charging unusually high rents because there is nowhere else in the city for low-income tenants, who are often subject to housing discrimination.

There are about 10,000 low-income housing units in the Downtown Eastside, and a full half of these are SRO hotel rooms. Of those 5,000 SRO units, 1,500 have been purchased in recent years by the Provincial government (although the majority of these still languish in terrible disrepair). Housing advocates have long argued that these 5,000 SRO units must ultimately be replaced with self-contained social housing as soon as possible. The Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) has calculated that, at the present snail pace, it will take governments over 50 years to replace the units! CCAP is calling for the units to be replaced with real homes in 10 years or less.

For housing conditions to improve for those in SRO hotels, several things should happen. First, pressure should be brought to bear on the owners. The City must enforce building bylaws as rigourously in the DTES as in Shaughnessy. In the case of the Wonder and Palace hotels, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council (DNC) is calling for maximum fines to be applied. The Wonder Rooms alone incurred so many violations that if maximum fines are sought, the owner could face $30,000,000 in fines since the Mar 31 2011 repair deadline! That is enough to incentivize construction of 7,000 affordable units throughout the city.

ON THE RADIO | The Mainlander vs. City Caucus on the Bill Good Show (Part 1 of 2)

The Mainlander’s Tristan Markle debated CityCaucus’ Daniel Fontaine from 9am-10am on CKNW’s The Bill Good Show, AM980, Tues June 28.

Topics included:

  • the social causes of the Stanley Cup riots;
  • unsafe conditions in SRO hotels;
  • municipal environmental initiatives;
  • decisions by COPE and the civic Greens on whether to run joint slates with Vision Vancouver.

To listen, click here and go to ‘Bill Good Show – Tues June 28 – Hour 1’.

The Mainlander vs. CityCaucus debate will continue next Tues July 5th on The BIll Good Show, AM980, 9am-10am.

Civic Greens reject Vision’s crumbs, a polarized COPE accepts them, just barely

Today was quite a day in the world of partisan Vancouver civic politics. The civic Green Party held a special general meeting at noon to discuss electoral cooperation with COPE and Vision Vancouver. Meanwhile, COPE also held a special general meeting at 3pm to debate and potentially ratify an agreement with Vision, proposing the following slate:

City Council: Vision 7 / COPE 3

Parks Board: Vision 5 / COPE 2 – (plus one position offered to civic Greens)

School Board: Vision 5 / COPE 4

Interestingly, the civic Green Party membership voted to reject the Vision-COPE offer of one seat on Parks Board. The Greens voted instead to work with COPE alone, should the COPE membership reject Vision’s terms later in the afternoon. The Greens also voted to reject any cooperation with Vision, and to hold their nomination meeting in mid-August 2011.

COPE’s special general meeting, with about 200 members in attendance, began with a member from the floor trying to get a motion on the agenda to negotiate with the Greens instead of Vision, but was defeated in a close vote.

The highly polarized membership then heard arguments for and against the proposed deal with Vision. Those against argued that the last three years have proven that Vision City Councilors do not vote progressively, that they won’t caucus with COPE, that they continue core NPA policies, and that COPE needs to distinguish itself more clearly from Vision in order to win and make real change. Those in favour of Vision’s offer argued that COPE and Vision share more commonalities than differences, that the NPA is much worse than Vision, and that it is desirable to avoid vote-splitting with Vision. The coalition vote passed, with more than one third present voting against.