Social Housing Levy Comes Up Short

On February 15th, Vancouver City Council voted in a condo development levy that will require developers to pay a $15,000 fee for each unit of social housing lost to redevelopment.

All of this comes as developers scramble to buy up land in advance of the 2010 Olympics.

These units of social housing typically exist within single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, many of which are in the Downtown Eastside. The hotels, although by any estimation a substandard housing option (many are infested with bedbugs and offer one bathroom for up to a dozen residents, I’ve been told by former inhabitants), are the only thing shielding most residents from life on the streets.

In a Globe and Mail article from February 17th, the levy sounds like a positive development. But when you dig a little deeper, some problems become glaringly evident.

The levy falls under the Single Room Accommodation Bylaw, which, up until now, has required developers to pay $5,000 per unit (read: room) of social housing lost. This money is earmarked for a fund used to rebuild social housing elsewhere in the downtown core.

According to Kim Kerr, director of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) the levy, whether $5,000 or $15,000, is a drop in the bucket.

Kerr tells me it costs upwards of $100,000 to build one unit of social housing.

In San Francisco, a city where land is similarly precious, developers are charged $80,000 US for a room, says Kerr.

The Single Room Accommodation bylaw also stipulates that developers secure equivalent alternative housing for displaced residents.

This stipulation all too often falls by the wayside, argue Kerr and other Downtown Eastside activists.

In a recent CBC article, Linda Coady, vice president of sustainability for the Olympic organizing committee, claims the city is on track in building new social housing units.

“Since the bylaw was passed in 2003, the fee has generated $440,000 for the city’s replacement housing fund plus $60,000 in voluntary contributions,” Coady is quoted as saying.

The problem seems to be that the fund is sitting idle for some unknown reason.

In the last year, seventeen SRO hotels in the Downtown Eastside have been sold to developers.

While hundreds have been displaced, little has been tabled to deal with the increasing need for viable social housing.

Wi...Fi-nally or Not

Looks like fears of a terrorist plot carried out using a free city-wide WiFi network during the 2010 Games could lead the city to scuttle plans to launch the service that’s been in the planning stages for years.

In a recent Canwest news story, Vancouver Police detective Mark Fenton warns that city-wide mobile Internet access could allow hackers to tap into city services like hydro, traffic and transit during the Games.

“If you have an open wireless system across the city, as a bad guy I could sit on a bus with a laptop and do global crime. It would be virtually impossible to find me,” says Fenton.

The wireless plan that’s been on the books since the last election calls for much of the city’s infrastructure to share the same wireless platform. I’m no expert on the matter, but does this really make any sense? And why is it just striking the city now that this could be a problem?

It seems to me there’s an agenda at work here.

In the last election, the notion of making Vancouver a wireless oasis became a hot button issue. Vancouver needed to be on the cutting edge of wireless technology, politicians argued, like San Francisco, Philadelphia…and Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Vision Vancouver’s platform called for a wireless network in time for the Olympics.

The question of access was key. Would the service be offered by the city or would it be private? If public funds were spent on wireless, would all Vancouverites have unfettered access?

In the motion that was eventually approved for the WiFi system, city councillors agreed the system should be made available to everyone—with a particular emphasis placed on connecting non-profits and individuals who might not otherwise have ready access to the Internet.

Yet these days, activist groups, including the British Columbia Wireless Network Society, are concerned the city may be planning on building a piece of showcase technology that will be too expensive for regular users and may be dismantled after the Games.

The city has estimated it could cost up to $10 million to implement the WiFi system by the Olympics. How much of this will be public money? If the service is to be financed by the public, will everyone have access? Or will the city decide to go private after all of these promises, all the while distracting us with terror rhetoric?

Interestingly, over the last few months, the wireless issue has seemingly disappeared off city council’s radar only to reemerge this week under the guise of a perceived terrorist threat.

Groups like BCWN, the Vancouver Community Network and the Homeless Nation are keeping the issue on the agenda, on their own terms. All three groups promote and catalogue the growth of free hotspots around the city with an eye to community organizing. Homeless Nation in particular focuses on putting wireless technology in the hands of those for whom access is traditionally denied.

Check out Wigle and Wifimug (a site devoted to wireless coffee shops) for maps of free access hotspots around the city.

The Great Unveiling

Reading about the Olympic clock unveiling in The Globe and Mail and on the CBC sports page has led me to wonder if I attended the same event as the journalists who penned these stories.

Rick Mickleburgh's Globe story has all the good cheer of a press release-cum-video news release.

Unlike the CBC story which claims the protesters were disrupting the celebration, I was struck by how physically segregated the protesters were from the 'revelers', let's call them. The police did a tremendous job bracketing off any dissent from the crowd of suits and tourists and curiosity seekers out enjoying their lunch breaks with a heady dose of international sporting event boosterism.

As I walked around the perimeter of the gathering, I was amazed that even a sonic barrier seemed to have been erected. Standing with the suits, I could no longer hear the raging granny singing a medley of 60s protest songs in front of the Anti-Poverty Committee's own countdown clock which bore the sign "Vancouver's Countdown to Triple Homelessness."

I missed the incident in which the master of ceremonies, VANOC spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade, was pushed aside by a man with a bandanna over his face but I saw the aftermath. Just as I was arriving on the scene, I saw him being dragged over to a waiting paddy wagon. Two police officers on horseback managed to surround him and the other officer, creating a visual shield that even the wiliest photojournalist wouldn't have been able to pierce.

Unlike the author of the CBC story, I saw no egg-throwing nor evidence of paint-filled balloons nor rocks wrapped in papier mache. Alex Burnip with the Anti-Poverty Committee told me that several of his APC colleagues were arrested while trying to release balloons that read "Homes not Games." Seems innocent enough, no?

Many protesters raised concerns about the need for low-income housing in the city. Wendy Peterson, also of the APC, criticized city council's plan to spend $500,000 on emergency shelters during the Games, suggesting this was an attempt to hide homeless people. She responded really thoughtfully and intelligently to Mayor Sam Sullivan's Civil City Project, what she called "a law and order approach to homeless."

You can read about the Civil City Project here.

What I was really struck with during the unveiling of the clock was just how upset the protesters were and how swiftly and silently the police were carting them away into waiting paddy wagons. Let's fast-forward three years to the Games; is this how we'll be treating dissent and even, gentle disagreement?

And will journalists be on board with this?

That said, I like Chris Brown's CBC TV piece on the protest. It takes a more nuanced approach to conflict and the Games. You can also see me in it if you look closely. I'm the one on the sidewalk behind a woman being subdued by a police officer.

I should also mention that I took a lot of photos yesterday with my Pentax K1000. As soon as they're developed, I'll be posting them here.

No Time for the Olympics?

On Monday, February 12th, there will be exactly 1,095 days (three years) remaining until the 2010 Olympics. To mark the occasion, a Vancouver 2010 "countdown clock" will be publicly unveiled in front of the art gallery (Hornby and Georgia) at noon. This looks to be the event of the month.

There's a countdown clock press conference to be held at 11:15 at the Fairmont Hotel. Slated to speak are Stephen Urquhart, president of Omega Clocks ("the official Olympic clockmaker"), Peter Huerzeler of Swiss Timing and John Furlong, a Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) CEO. Apparently, they will be speaking about how thrilling this new clock is. According to a press release, the clock will be emblazoned with "Canadian and West Coast themes." Cringe.

Media accreditation is required to record and/or film the "event," and I've already missed the deadline. Although an hour-long propaganda-filled press conference about a clock doesn't sound like the most thrilling way to spend lunch hour, I'm going to go to this. Something interesting has to happen. The journalists forced to cover this have to amuse themselves somehow, right?

Also of note: A group calling themselves the Anti-Olympic Coalition have promised to protest the clock unveiling. The group is comprised of members of No One is Illegal, the Anti-Poverty Committee and the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association (DERA) among others. It's a little hard to read their poster in the photo above, but their main beefs (?) appear to be how the city is dealing with homelessness and poverty in the lead up to the Games, environmental destruction as a result of pre-Games construction and something about Squamish that is illegible as the poster wraps around a pole. This image comes courtesy of Sillygwailo and was found on a Vancouver Olympics Protest flickr page.

My curiosity is piqued. I want to see what else the Anti-Olympic Coalition is up to.

Oh, I should also mention that the Honourable David Emerson, the Honourable Gordon Campbell and Sam Sullivan will be speaking in reverent tones about the clock at the unveiling. A number of Olympic athletes will be traveling in tow, including skeleton Silver Medalist Jeff Pain. If I had to participate in an Olympic Games, I think I would choose skeleton as my sport of choice too.

2010 Aboriginal Business Summit

I am naturally inclined to feel a little wary when I hear of ‘partnerships’ between the First Nations and the B.C. provincial government.

However, I was just reading about the 2010 Aboriginal Business Summit that took place this week and it looks as if some genuine dialogue is happening between the four host First Nations, the provincial government and the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC).

According to Summit organizers:

“For the first time in Olympic history, Aboriginal participation will be a specific function of an Olympic and Paralympic Games. Whether it’s doing business with VANOC, becoming a supplier, networking, developing partnerships, or leveraging the potential of tourism, the Summit takes a practical hands-on and how-to approach that will be of interest and value to Aboriginal businesses across the country.”

The focus of the summit was on identifying and pursuing economic opportunities for the First Nations in advance of, throughout and after the 2010 Games.

To add a little context here: the government is required to work with the First Nations in planning and implementing the Olympics because the land on which the Games will take place is the subject of land claims by the Lil’wat and Squamish First Nations.

Aboriginal law, an expanding wing of Canadian law, requires Aboriginal groups be consulted by the provincial government regarding initiatives held on disputed lands (One such piece of disputed land is the Sea-to-Sky Highway corridor, pictured above. The image is courtesy of Charchen.)

The relationship the provincial government and the First Nations are to uphold, where the Olympics are concerned, is mapped out here under "Shared Legacy Agreement".

Much of the ink on his document deals with land use. In recent years, it seems the government has been expanding upon its commitments by agreeing to build a multi-million dollar Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations cultural centre and laying the groundwork for a Tourism Management diploma program at Capilano College.

But just when I started feeling that something good might come out of the Games, I read this in yesterday’s Province.

The link only works if you’re a Province subscriber. For all you non-subscribers, I’ve pasted the article for your viewing pleasure.

Grab the gold rings, First Nations urged
2010 Olympics: Seize opportunity of Games, premier tells native leaders
by Damian Inwood, Staff Reporter

There are no guarantees that First Nations will win business gold at the 2010 Olympics, says Premier Gordon Campbell.

“There are, clearly, economic opportunities—there are not economic guarantees,” Campbell said yesterday.

Campbell struck a cautionary note while addressing a lunchtime crowd at the 2010 Aboriginal Business Summit, attended by more than 550 delegates.

“Just as we say to our athletes, ‘Go and set your goals and take advantage of those opportunities and move forward,’ so we have to say to our businesses, ‘Set your goals, think of what you’re going to do, dedicate yourself to it, make a commitment and, hopefully—and I’ll underline that—hopefully you will succeed,” added Campbell.

He compared winning a 2010 business opportunity with performing as an Olympic athlete.

“For every athlete that stands and receives a gold medal there are thousands that tried to get there,” he stressed.

Campbell said the Olympics are a “springboard for First Nations.”

Lil’wat First Nations Chief Leonard Andrew said 2010 has meant jobs for at least 30 of the 200-strong workforce on the reserve.

“We’ve formed our own company in concrete and supplying all the barriers of the Sea-to-Sky Highway,” he said. “Unemployment is down. It really reflects in the community with the pride that goes along with people saying, ‘I’m going to be working on these projects.’”

He agreed with Campbell that there are no guarantees of a pot of gold at the end of the Olympic rainbow.

“We say to our communities, ‘There is no guarantee but if we train you and you’re willing, you’ll have that great opportunity,’” he said.

Tsleil-Waututh Chief Leah George-Wilson said that so far, her Burrard Inlet community doesn’t have a signed legacy agreement with either the Canadian or B.C. government.

“It’s something we’re working on,” she said. “We’re working on economic development opportunities and working with the Vancouver 2010 Olympic organizing committee.”

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Could Campbell have come out sounding any more patronizing? And why is there still no legacy agreement between the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation and the provincial government?