Thanks for your article. Wow, you have been busy since your returned from your vacation.

I went to the open house yesterday and there was an impressive amount of material that staff presented. One idea that I was really impressed with was the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) which is described as ” a tool used to understand, monitor and evaluate social impact resulting from development”. This would give the city another way to evaluated development other than just the economics of a project. In a development like the Pantages Theatre this could have been a very useful lens to evaluate the benefits of the project.

All the panels from the open house are available online at: http://vancouver.ca/files/cov/downtown-eastside-local-area-plan-open-house-boards-07182013.pdf

There is also an online survey where one can give feedback to the city on the ideas in the document.

My study of the same neighbourhoods here, with input from as wide a cross-section of folks as we could muster:

http://sunnvancouver.wordpress.com

The BIG question is going to be this: is this old paradigm planning of towers and trades? Or is it ‘good’ urbanism with a heavy focus on re-building neighbourhood functioning and social capital?

Omens and dark portents that we may not be there:

– rental-only district around Oppenheimer Park and down Hastings to what looks like Carrall. Sixty per cent of that to be low-cost.

– buildings up to 150 feet in a few key spots, in exchange for social housing

– buildings 100 to 120 feet around Main and Hastings

Human-scale urbanism not towers; tax increment financing and a Municipal Housing Authority not CACs; historic building preservation as residential co-ops not SROs.

Foghorn, we get the Fraser Institute perspective daily in the Sun and the Province. Now here as well.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. There are grocers and convenience stores in the DTES who supply local needs but who, as gentrification occurs, get driven out by ever higher rents. Protecting current rent would allow them to stay and allow them to serve a population that can’t afford more.
As for a way out, I guess they would be welcome in youir Kitsilano neighbourhood even if mentally ill, drug addicted oroften both. I am certainly aware how welcoming Dunbar was to the social housing at 16th and Dunbar for mentally ill residents and I see those residents shopping for organic imported items at Stong’s all the time. Yeah, right.
Our beloved premier is so determined to have a “balanced budget” that even increasing allowances for disabled people is not on the table. They’ll just have to wait until those LNG plants come on line.

Fl, a lot of those purple have been down there since they were kids. I agree about training andassistance but it has to be the right fit to motivate people from the escapism of drugs.. remembering abuse is the common ground most of these people share.. a cesspool of a nation’s suffering and abuse. Wish the feds would acknowledged that. If they could receive training that would net them employment that provided a living it would be so much more of an incentive than getting clean to make minimum wage and not be able to afford food, yet not qualify for assistance.

That is, Waltyss, sounds like a Walmart is exactly what is needed.right?

On the other end of the spectrum, what about the long-term breaks the City gave to London Drugs, TD Bank etc. in the Woodwards building, in order to serve the vastly outnumbered 500 new condo owners, and give the whole project a false aura of success and respectability? I highly doubt these TSX businesses would have survived this long in this location without City support.

But I guess that would be akin to blaming rich people for keeping us down, eh, Foghorn?

It will be interesting to see in 5-8 years, when these deals run out, if the City’s “new direction” stimulates enough market housing in the area to sustain these types of service businesses without subsidies.

The direction smells a little like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, with more of the same “Let’s make a CAC deal” to justify over-heights and density in place of preserving historic scale and streetwalls.

Once upon a time in the not so distant past, rezonings and density bonuses were also used to fund heritage preservation. Yet, perpexingly, during the massive construction boom leading up to the Olympics, the Heritage Density Transfer Program was run into the ground by the old DoP and a moratorium was finally placed on the program in 2010.

It’s a big leap of faith to believe that funding social housing with another tower-based, “special sites” CAC scheme will prove any more successful than Density Bonusing, or STIR for that matter. More likely, all we’ll have to show for it a decade from now is a bunch of bland, out-of-scale towers dominating our historic district. And much, much higher rents throughout all these neighbourhoods…

In my experience the DTES residents keep themselves down without any help (with the exception of the monthly cheque) from the rich.
Government subsidies or tax breaks are foolish. In the first place they never work and never end. They encourage corrupt practices in which certain favoured businesses receive special treatment at the expense of all the others.
If the banks won’t touch it there’s usually a good reason.
Again we see top-down policies imposed by well-paid bureaucrats who don’t live there to continue and expand the failed policies of the last 30 years, policies imposed by the same or similar people. Problems in the DTES? Solution: more of the same only much more expensive and pointless. Guaranteed to fail from the start.

I disagree with growing more areas of ‘social’ or low income housing in the area as it will only keep the existing problems of the DTES in check.

Social housing should be splattered throughout the city.

The idea that people can only exisit in the one area because that is where they feel comfrotable is crap. What it does do is feed the poverty industry – keeps their dollars rolling in. But servicing the people that need the help – not so much.

A terrible thing, but a Metro reporter in Montreal is attempting live on only food sold in a dollar store, Dollarama.
In French and a five-day series starting 23 July. Early advice from a nutrionist.
http://journalmetro.com/plus/bouffe/347556/sept-jours-de-diete-dollarama/

Bring back the Blackburn Market downtown!

“Anybody have anything more to say on topic about the emerging directions plan for the DTES?”

I’m wondering just how many re-zonings (ie. towers) it would actually take to provide enough CACs support the plan for developing the low-rent district and to build/reno/protect the mix of social housing outlined in the directions? Do you have any ballpark estimate on this, Frank? It doesn’t appear that the City has done the math on this, or at least hasn’t made that information public. Would it take 20 towers in the Historic Area? 50? 75?

Ie. Woodwards development is about 2/3 of a city block, with 550 condos, yielding 200 subsidized units. The Rize is a similarly huge development, yielding $5-6 million in CACs. How many of these types of huge developments would it take to achieve the plan? Would our Historic Area not be transformed beyond recognition? If the towers are much smaller than Woodwards (100 to 150 ft), wouldn’t it take that much more of them?

I’m not just skeptical that this plan can be achieved by this funding model, I think it is shortsighted and foolish to denude our heritage/historic assets in this way. People like to bring up Paris, well, why not develop a New Quarter tower district further east around Clark, and try to protect the cultural/historic area? In the long run it would be worth much more to the City in tact than as a hodge-podge of out-scaled, drab towers dominating its main streets, would it not?

This was an interesting comment with regard to an op ed piece in Van. 24 hours, on the DTES titled:
‘Willie Pickton chose the DTES for a reason’.

tomservua 1 comment :

As long as those who enable drug dealing, drug addiction and prostitution have influence in the DTES, the situation will not change. It cannot change. Too many people make too much money defending the status quo.

Women are abused and exploited by pimps and drug enforcers. These women are the permanent victims of the status quo in the DTES.

Part of the mess is driven by ideology: pseudo-Marxists want to “prove” that the only answer is 100% social housing. They openly defend the ghetto, and refuse to consider anything else. No one is more NIMBY than a Pidgin picketer.

Part of the mess is driven by laziness. Those who “demand” 5000 units of free public housing refuse to lift a finger to build them. They refuse to organize housing co-ops. They refuse to do anything but “demand” the government give them everything they want.

And part is driven by the politics of entitlement. The DTES is a nest of faction, competing for turf and government grants. As long as the ghetto endures, some will prosper defending it.

According to the Globe & Mail [February 13, 2009], we spent $1.4 BILLION in the DTES from 2000 – 2009. What will more of the same achieve? It’s time for a change. The status quo has failed.

****

And again, I assert that creating more social housing in that area is a mistake – it needs to be spread out.

Let’s talk ‘good’ urbanism, rather than anti-this and anti-that. What I admire most about Vancouver’s Historic Quartiers is the consistency of the build out, the quality of the urbanism, and the tenacity of the people hanging on for almost a century against mounting, insurmountable odds.

Some key points not always understood…

1. The freeway fight of the 1960s stopped the freeway, but it didn’t stop the cars from coming. The traffic was put on local streets including Powell & Cordoba (30,000 vehicles per day); Hastings (35,000 vpd); and Prior & Venables (30,000 vpd). The Freeway traffic also arrived on arterials further south (First Avenue, Broadway, 12th Avenue), however these are outside the historic neighbourhoods footprint.

2. A greater fate was dealt the area with the Bartholomew Report at the time of amalgamation of Point Grey and South Vancouver (1929). The entire area was rezoned as either light or heavy industrial. The policy was extended into the 1960s and 1980s.

3. During the world war two years (1940s) the resident Japanese population was removed to imprisonment camps, their property confiscated, and never given back.

4. The construction of the Georgia Viaducts displaced entire city blocks (1960s). Notably among them, Hogan’s Alley was home to an African population many of whom were employed on trains at the CN station walking distance away.

5. In the 1960s the historic neighbourhoods became the focus of the urban renewal craze. The two residential towers in Starthcona date to this period. Both disrupt the neighbourhood fabric and periodically suffer from the kinds of problems that confront social housing in towers.

6. Sometime in the 1970s the policy of creating a zone for the at-risk population that was left on the streets when the mental health wards were closed was inaugurated.

The results are well documented. 15,000 vpd was shown to be the threshold for livability on a city street (Appleyard, 1980). Streets with higher vehicular counts should be considered to be ‘unlivable’. Rezoning to industrial uses vacated the neighbourhood of bonafide, neighbourhood-oriented businesses. Residents who chose to stay and fight for their homes often had trouble qualifying for home mortgages. Planning had “red-lined” the historic neighbourhoods and the banks wouldn’t touch them. Warehouse construction in the post war era chopped up the fabric of the neighbourhood breaking its continuity. Dislocated residents in many instances just never came back. As much as a third of the population is indigenous, yet due in part to their cultural tradition of not holding land, there is no place or footprint in the area that is identified or occupied by them. Finally, the on-going practice of identifying sufferers of mental illness as “homeless” is symbolic of a set of policies long overdue for change.

For my part, I believe the change should come from the grass-roots empowered by the best neighbourhood planning methodologies available today (but nowhere in use at City Hall). I do not agree that “The Ray Spaxman-led higher buildings” gives any “credible urban design basis” for new directions in the neighbourhoods. I include in the “neighbourhoods” designation all the land outside the Central Business District.

It’s time for a change. We need a new planning paradigm in our city. It is not just about density. We need ‘good’ urbanism, or human-scale urbanism designed to support social functioning at the level of the neighbourhood, the quartier and the district. This is now long overdue. Our summary essay concluding a two year working process is here:

http://wp.me/p1mj4z-A2

In the historic neighbourhoods, home to a diverse and tenacious population over 20,000 strong, a special recognition is warranted of the efforts of the Carnagie Community Action Project, their commitment and their tireless work; and of all the volunteers that make a difference every day.

@23 “I do not agree that “The Ray Spaxman-led higher buildings” [study] gives any “credible urban design basis” for new directions in the neighbourhoods.”

Will someone please tell me how a purported professional can state something like this and expect any respect in return?

“Yes, anti-height advocates may feel that 150′/15 storey buildings are out of scale with the historic fabric and built form of the area, but it is likely to become the “new normal”in selected locations.”

Frank, rather than being an “anti-height” advocate (uggh), I would consider the more positive label: (amateur) heritage preservation advocate. I also love Vancouver and learning about our history. OK?

The Historic Area Height Review (initiated under Sullivan) may have been somewhat tempered by Spaxman’s report, but both are, in my opinion, soulless renderings of an historic, heritage district. There is no attempt whatsoever in either plan to ascribe value to heritage buildings, historic streetscapes, or the long-term civic benefits (economic, social, or environmental) that may be derived through a strong policy of protection and preservation. No attempt is ever made to develop such a policy, or even identify existing assets and opportunities (other than market development opportunities).

And as Lewis notes, both plans propose to take a walkable, high-density, human-scaled district (which most would agree is very good urban design) and attempt unnecessarily to make it ultra-dense and non-human scaled. Some of the neighbourhood streets (ie. the Powell – Cordova coupling) have been made into psuedo-arterials, and with the removal of the viaduct, will become virtually unlivable overnight. For most, the DTES is simply a throughfare.

Much like Trish French’s comment re. the Pt. Grey Rd. proposal, these plans never even consider — and the HAHR never presented the option to the public for comment — the possibility of simply keeping the height and scale the same as it has been zoned since the 1970s. The options were higher, really high, and ultra high. The conspicuous absence of an option for keeping the heights the same occurred despite the City’s former DoP stating publicly that, within the Historic Area alone, there already was the potential for 5,500 new residents if build-out were to occur at the pre-existing 1970s zoning heights in the HA. This didn’t even include Strathcona and DTES/Oppenheimer.

These two reports/plans are based solely on the default assumption and primary goal of finding new opportunities for market real-estate development in the area. Period.

As I mentioned in my first comment above, I believe this “new direction” is more of the same: a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The proof, either way, would be some transparent calculation of just how many market tower re-zonings would have to occur in the Historic Area in order to achieve the “new direction’s” lofty goals for low income housing.

My sense is that this new plan, however well-intentioned, will render the Historic Area virtually unrecognizable in very short order, while only a fraction of the results that are being promised to the existing low income community will ever be realized. But I’m still waiting for some proof that this plan is anything more than another smoke and mirrors show to mollify the activists while the speculators swoop in… again.

The quote in comment 28 was directed at Frank Ducote @ 25, not Dave @ 24, who must have been waiting in the comment approval queue for a while, which changed the order of the comments when it finally got approved…

@ Lewis Villegas

If your critique can provoke such a cheap ad hominen attack from a former city planner, you are probably on to something. Vancouver’s old boy’s network sure doesn’t like it when people question their authority!

I can’t agree with Fred#2s urbanism. Fred#2s perceptions don’t match the facts. Let’s have a closer look…

The land base of the DTE is far too valuable

Sure. If re-zoned to tower height and density, then land values will sky-rocket like they have everywhere else in our city. Developers are counting on a beat-up community to put up weak resistance.

Once again they show a lack of understanding of this neighbourhood’s history. Under current zoning we can double neighbourhood density and build nothing greater than 3.5 storeys.

… to have its use dictated by a tiny, loud minority…

I disagree. Neighbours are the experts of place and should be relied upon to steer the direction of the place they call home. However, they should be guided in the process by cutting-edge urban design principles. These are nowhere to be seen at City Hall today.

… who believe they have the right to demand that the rest of the city subsidize the lifestyle they believe they are entitled to.

Don’t agree. A small minority in the DTES want it turned into a free-drug use zone. That’s just not going to happen.

However, the rest just want to live in peace in walkable districts and livable streets. Towers will not give them that and the planners don’t have any other tools in their kit to offer.

On “drugs” and “homelessness” issues—I see a health issue instead. Analysis shows that every so-called “homeless person” suffers from mental health issues. Could the real problem be that this is still taboo in our society? Is its easer for Fred#2 to dismiss people suffering health issues as something less than citizens?

They current group of DTE activists have no pity for the families they drive out of the area from the 1970′s on.

There has been monumental displacement in this neighbourhood. From the moment of the arrival of the CPR to today we can identify moments in time when entire districts in the neighbourhood were cleared out, people driven out of their homes without much notice or explanation, folks who didn’t always come back.

Families and businesses have been driven out. Don’t agree that it was local activism; most of the time it was done under the rule of law.

What local activism did was preserve the Strathcona we have today as one of the highest socially functioning districts in our city. However, local activists have not been given access to cutting-edge urban design tools to help them formulate a consensus vision of change. They are fighting towers and gentrification just as hard as any other neighbourhood in our city with just their wits and their bare hands!

What used to be a nice area for families was hijacked by the druggies, criminals and itinerant drifters who occupy the land now.

Disagree. On the one hand, I do not believe that “an open drug scene” is good for any neighbourhood in Canada. On the other, we should give credit where credit is due. The greatest share of what has destroyed neighbourhood functioning the ‘nice area’ in my opinion was ‘destroyed’ by City planning and engineering.

The DTES has become a giant magnet sucking in drifters and losers from around the province and across the country. It is perfect terrain for the bottom end of our society to go feral. Everything needed is provided – free food , free clothes, free healthcare, free vet service so their pity-pets can look good when they are begging on the streets.

Fred is articulating the ‘poverty pimps’ argument. The last time I saw figures for the “out of province” population in the DTES it was 10%. That puts it in line with my neighbourhood.

The critical element missing from the list is housing with supports and ‘good’ urbanism.

Fred’s “drifters and losers” are in fact people with mental illness presenting with other issues, like: head trauma, graduation from the corrections or adoptions systems, one-third are members of indigenous communities, etc. There appears to be a great deal of need for fine-tuning what we are providing.

Federal and provincial incarceration costs more on an annual basis than housing with supports. Dealing with the street-involved with shelters and emergency care also costs more on an annual basis than providing housing with supports.

The land area of the DTE will, in the end, respond to market forces not cheap political pressures.

Land can be kept off-market as co-op housing; social housing; lease-hold with special contracts with non-profits and non-goverment organizations. Historic conservation agreements and other mechanisms can be used to preserve historic values in the cradle of our city; return balance to the social mix without triggering gentrification; and add jobs and a functioning economy within walking distance of neighbourhood front doors.

What has not worked has been the policy to use zoning incentives to try to force the private market to deliver affordable and social housing. That is just not happening, and it is not likely to happen in time and sufficient numbers to deal with the issue. Besides, why should we privatize the delivery of social housing when every other part of the system is publicly run?

We are a wealthy and caring society that has somehow turned a back to members in our community suffering mental health issues.

The social mix notwithstanding, warehouse districts and high volumes of traffic on local streets break up the continuity of the neighbourhood, exceeding the levels for personal safety and social functioning.

These are physical realities that have been introduced into the cradle of our city over decades by successive government actions. But, they are also concrete and measurable facts that have been shown to destroy neighbourhood life independent of social spectrum.

The 16,000 or so residents in our historic districts have been hanging on to neighbourhood life against untenable conditions and insurmountable odds. Let’s give the neighbours the best possible urban planning tools and help them turn the place around.

We’ll count our savings all the way to the bank.