by Sean Orr | The Downtown Eastside needs to be destroyed. Ooh! So controversial! Except that they’ve been saying the same thing ever since they abandoned 100 Block W. Hastings for Project 200, a plan that would have actually destroyed the DTES. Yes, long before crack cocaine and the closing of Woodwards, The Province and the banks just up and left. And now they want back in. Now, the speculators who have been sitting on dilapidated lots or who bought all the air above Gastown are set to have a field day and they’ve enlisted your paper (not to mention an American reporter) for backup. After all, who pays for most of the ads? Yup, the real estate market. So as long as the huddled masses are hanging on to the rotten husk of a housing strategy that are the SROs, your pals aren’t making the next Coal Harbour. Pick up a copy of Stan Douglas’ Every Building on 100 W Hastings Street and former real estate agent Howard Rotberg’s Exploring Vancouverism to see how the media have been the industry’s biggest supporters. Or, take a little trip down memory lane to see that it was real estate speculation that made the East-West divide so glaringly apparent in the first place. But that won’t fly with the readership you’ve nursed like squealing pigs with the purest of misinformed vitriol. No, they want tough-guy pragmatism; shock tactics that do nothing to move the debate further; fiery rhetoric holding this supposed “massive government social experiment” accountable; American-style, hard-nosed, hack journalism that rankles them bleedin’ heart liberals. Sensationalist and sophomoric, that’s your daily rag, The Province.
PS. Their brethren at The Vancouver Sun think that Wal-Mart is a saint. At least their other sister paper can still ask a tough question: Are they lowballing an assessment on a prime piece of Concord Pacific real estate?
We stand alone, because of cheese. And who better to tell us than the cheesiest of them all, The National Post!
The Western Front: Michael Turner’s “Three Readings” text available for download.
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For the sake of debate, what might happen if new social housing projects were in fact decentralized from the DTES? A few in Kits, a few in Mount Pleasant, a few on Fraser; would it help to move vulnerable folk away from the drug trade that obviously exists in the DTES?
Honest question. Thoughts?
Well they’ve been trying for years, that’s where NIABY comes in. Look at what happened when they opened the HEAT shelters. Meanwhile, all the condos that they have been building could have been contributing to a housing trust this entire time, but now there’s no more land. These towers aren’t for families, they are for investments. There are a lot of support centres in Mount Pleasant as well. They aren’t all in the DTES as The Province would have you believe.
The DTES is a cesspool, and the bleeding heart leftists that think social housing projects are a necessary part of healthy city living are usually the ones that want someone else to subsidize their desire to live a hipster urban lifestyle on a less than hip budget.
As a taxpayer, I want some help supporting all this civic high mindedness, and the property taxes from some nice developments in that great real estate would sure help. I can’t see the democracy of having the middle class hard, hard working families having to commute from PoCo because the destitute and drug addled need to have a spot close to their dealer to crash.
Burn it down, That place is ripe for a cleanse, if only anyone had the stones to do the right thing we might become the kind of city where politicians aren’t constantly using the DTES as their political football and nothing ever changes.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrew Morrison and sean orr, Jessica Douzenis. Jessica Douzenis said: RT @scoutmagazine: Tea & Two Slices: On A Local Newspaper That Profits From Being Ridiculously Silly – http://tinyurl.com/4ppgojv […]
@james digby
It’s like you’re a caricature of the person I was describing. Thanks for proving that people like you actually exist. It’s like you went through a checklist: hipster, taxes, cesspool, hard working families… BECAUSE EVERYONE LIVING IN THE DTES CHOSE TO LIVE THERE. Because they chose to have addictions. Because they chose to get raped by a Catholic priest at a Residential School. Because they chose to be destitute. And furthermore, the hard working families actually DID choose to move to the suburbs. Remember white flight? Well, it happened here too and with the exact same mindset that you currently possess. Now you want back in. The DTES is very much a product of the automobile – and thus suburb – culture. I mean, did you click on any of the links i gave you? One of them tells the story of a freeway plan through Gastown. The only building constructed from that plan is the building that now houses the Province and Sun. If you fail to see any importance in this, the relevance to the current height issues, the sense of history, the stakeholders, then you’re just ignorant.
Sean, check out this book as well. Long out of print and very rare but there is a copy of it down at the VPL central branch.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=tchhd4FUS98C&pg=PA83&dq=Vancouver+Inc.&hl=en&ei=BDU6TbekLYS8sAPXtdTWAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Vancouver%20Inc.&f=false
But so many in the DTES did choose to live there. How many people in the DTES were born there, grew up there and still live there? Very few. Maybe none. It’s a magnet for people from all over…not a magnet, a black hole. It’s pulls you in and gravitational magnitude keeps you there. No one gets over the traumas of abuse, sexual assault or addiction by being surrounded by people still wrapped up in them. You need to get out. You need people who think differently to support you thinking and feeling differently. It’s not something to be preserved. It used to be a proud, functional, working-class neighbourhood. You can’t undo white flight. It happened. Whatever. If there’s a solution, it’s a return to proud, functional and working-class. But, now it’s just a sad place, full of sad people ghettoized by a conscious choice to centralize social services and say, “See, we’re helping.” Bullshit, I say. Bullshit.
The reason you see it is sad is because of editorials like this. When I see it, I see friendly locals, great restaurants (I mean look at Sean Heather’s new place, or Acme Cafe, Au Petit Chavignol), art galleries (Gaf, Gam, Gachet, Artspeak, Or Gallery, Interurban, Centre A, Helen Pitt, The Rennie Collection), pubs (Pub 340, Cambie, Pat’s, Astoria, Irish Heather, Funky’s), social housing (New Portland, Woodwards, Laurie Krill, The Lux), Festivals (Powell Street, Music Waste, Olio, cultural Crawl, Cheaper Show, Chilli Cookoff, Show and Shine), secret spots (Red Gates, Weed Door, Goody) church groups, thrift stores, bottle depots, harm reduction, back alleys, cruise shippers, cigar shops, rug shops, fancy furniture shops, tourists, street art, street vendors- all mixed in with private developments like Paris Block, Koret Lofts, The Taylor Building, Woodwards, Tinseltown).
Blaming the people of an entire geographic area for its own demise is irresponsible and negligent of history, the narrative of development, and economics. It also reeks of insecurity. I’d guess you don’t spend much time down here.
The people aren’t responsible for the area’s demise. But the clustering of social services that doesn’t serve those who need them well at all is. It’s a triage approach that was necessary as things took a serious turn for the worse in the 80s and 90s. It needs to be unwound to support the further growth of the real neighbourhood your comprehensive list shows is developing.
golem red a book that confirmed his idealesstick angst now if golem red a book that challenges it that wood b knews. Golem share your wisdom of the magic kingdom where the social justice league have model this ideal of yours so we share tobelorne size lines of moronic yeayoo that fuels your angst
@porkypie, @JamesDigby
Are you insane?! You are proposing that a neighbourhood of almost 30,000 people should be kicked out and their homes demolished because they are poor? There are about a hundred or so people out on the streets looking poor and that’s too much for you?
This attitude blows my mind. We live in the most unaffordable city in the world with the lowest corporate taxes in the world. People are going to be poor. There are services but they are not enough. They stopped building low-income housing in the 1990s and homelessness really got out of hand. If you are going to screw poor people, they are going to move to a place where they can hopefully find basic human needs like food and shelter. Building social housing stops them from being out on the street and gives them a chance to get away from drug-dealers and police beatings.
The culture thing is a whole other story. The condo developers already built a neighbourhood: soul-sucking Yaletown. It’s a bunch of franchises that make money off culture-less yuppies. The DTES is a place where artists who aren’t sponsored by banks can afford to hold shows and people can afford to go to them. Have you noticed that? That ART SHOWS IN YALETOWN ARE SPONSORED BY BANKS? That’s pretty smart.
The clustering of services happens because of bigotry throughout the rest of the city.
I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts most of the readers of this blog will never be able to own property in this city and will also likely be gentrified out when “the world” shows up and wants to live in its “world class city”.
Poor bashing is primitive and disgusting. Bigots should be locked up.
Also, the link the the Terry Fox memorial is broken. But about that, why are they getting rid of that awesome arch… It’s only been around for like 30 years. You can’t just pave over an arch. Especially not one that is the first example of modern architecture in the whole city.
^Sorry I’ll get to that link.
I also just want to say that Ethan Baron replied via email: “Very well expressed, Sean, but totally wrong. My opinions in my columns are my own – I have no one telling me what to write, what not to write, how to write… and my views are generally contrary to those of my editors and management. I have no love for developers, and would happily see all condo developments subjected to a requirement that the developers give the city land for social housing – anywhere but the DTES”
I replied: “Of course your opinions are your own, but the editorial was billed as controversial and it’s just not when you look at the paper’s history. Also, look at the history of the area. It is a product of real estate speculation and economy, not some secret cabal of poverty groups. You’re blaming the bandage not the wound. I agree that there needs to be a decentralization but your overblown rhetoric obfuscates your point. The changes to height regulation only serves to legitimize the practice of letting buildings and whole areas rot to the ground until value goes up or until they can start making shiny green glass towers.”
His reply: “Can’t disagree with most of that…”
get your facts straight hyperbole is about the only thing that you seem to grasp. Vancouver is far from the most unaffordable city in the world (ever heard of Moscow, London or Sydney) the lowest corporate tax rate, get a grasp of the corporate component of EI-CPP-Workers Comp-Universal Health Care then do the math righteous idiot. Like Virgil asked where is this magical place where you imagine as to compare the draconian oppressive taxpayers of Vancouver to. Doesn’t exist that is why Vancouver is a magnet for every sponge and handout leech in the country and the bureaucracy of social justice workers that saddle the economy with an annual 300 million dollar burden that is the DTES.
I apologize for getting super angry about this. A headline that reads “Downtown Eastside should be destroyed” is meant to be instigating.
First, there’s definitely no study that can infallibly say “most unaffordable city” or “lowest corporate taxes” I don’t think these statements are far off. The “most unaffordable city” story was huge last year. This was one article. there dozens of others: http://www.news1130.com/radio/news1130/article/20419–report-vancouver-most-unaffordable-housing-market-in-the-world
You can look at that article and say “well that’s just home prices”, but there has been almost no rental built and lots of rental demolished for condos. Rent in Vancouver is astronomical compared to anywhere. Even London. I don’t know about Moscow or Sydney, and maybe they’re higher, but Vancouver is still insane and comparable to the highest.
The lowest corporate taxes claim comes from another study by KPMG:
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2010/12/c2891.html
Once again, you’re right, hyperbole. I’m sure that you could argue that there are places with lower taxes. I can’t find anywhere that has lower taxes. The province has been cutting corporate taxes willy-nilly for the past 10 years. The Federal government is incredibly fiscally conservative and has been cutting taxes for 5 years. The city has extremely low business taxes, which is a combination of levies, etc. Economics are incredibly convoluted. Maybe Mexico has higher taxes but once again, Vancouver’s are comparable. It’s insane. People think that Vancouver’s has some sort of welfare state in the DTES. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Other cities don’t have these problems because they solve them before they happen, with social services. Nobody seems to argue the study that shows it’s more expensive to house people than to leave them homeless. We let ours stay homeless because of anti-poor bigotry.
I didn’t really plan on spending my weekend writing up annotated citations for my Scout Magazine comment. I apologize for being extreme.
Right now, my neighbourhood, Mount Pleasant, is “being destroyed” in the sense Baron proposed. Developers are trying to build huge towers. There’s a 26 story tower they want to build on Main and Broadway. It will block out the sun. It’s insane. It’s making the neighbourhood very expensive. I have a job, that I like, and I’m going to be priced out to a basement suite in Surrey riding the Expo Line every day.
The 15 story buildings in the DTES aren’t going up to solve the problems of the DTES, they’re going up because developers will make money from them. This attitude of “destroying the DTES” is so uncomfortably negative. People are being screwed all over the city by developers. The attitude around the DTES is often incredibly hateful. The title of that article was. There’s no respect given to the human beings who live there. “Needs to be destroyed”??? That’s awful. If they wanted to leave they would. Ask them. Don’t invite developers to build condos for yuppies who want to buy the art scene.
Just to be clear: I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic I, I was admitting to over-hyperbolizing. Sorry.
Taxes and rent aside there is a laundry list of failures that has resulted in the perfect storm that is the DTES. I mentioned the early real estate battle between Victoria land owners and CPR which would later manifest itself when the BC Electric Railway was torn up to make way for the automobile. In the 20’s the anti-asiatic movement targeted Chinatwon and resulted in Canada’s first drug law (opium). During WWII the Canadian govt. forcibly removed Japanese Canadians to internment camps, leaving Japantown a ghost town. Then there were the many schemes for freeway development. The slow switch from a resource economy to a service one, wherein many of the hotels that served the logging/fishing industries became their permanent homes. At some point alcohol was considered to be destroying Skid Road and all alcohol licenses were frozen- the effects are still felt in No Fun City. Businesses turned to cater the growing drug trade who filled the vacuum. In the 60s the banks left. Eatons left in the 70s. After resisting the downtown freeway groups like DERA became powerful and Gastown was pretty much invented as a historic site. In the 80s the West End was cleared of much of the prostitution and drug use towards DTES. In 83 Riverview closed. In Expo 86 residents were kicked out of hotels to make room for tourists. In 91 the Canada Assistance Plan was canceled. In 93, before the introduction of crack, Woodwards closed. Women started to go missing and it wasn’t until 45 out of 61 went missing did police launch an investigation. In 2000 the Liberals were elected and soon after homelessness tripled. They slashed welfare, the ministry of families, closed schools and hospitals. They froze minimum wage and unfroze tuition fees. Then there was Lorne Mayencourt’s Safe Streets Act, followed by Sullivan’s Civil City which targeted pan handling and jay walking. The treatment of squatters and later tent city residents by police became evident. It was revealed that the City had not been enforcing by-law violations of slumlords. UN human rights complaint filed against Sullivan’s Downtown Ambassadors. New chief of police apologizes for decades of abuse against the poor in the DTES. Sudden evictions in the lead up to the 2010 Olympics led some to believe they were related to the games. And now, 2011 they want to raise height restrictions.
But most importantly, the DTES is just a continuum of the economic spectrum- an extension of the laws of economics that allow the super rich to colonize Shaugnessy, British Properties, Point Grey etc.
Start challenging your natural tendency to fall in line with your fear that change is bad and that we are such an awful mean society hell bent for leather to trample upon the downtroden masses, If democracy was allowed to function this area would have been cleaned up a decade ago not held hostage by nimby Dtes fascist’s (Vandu) Maybe a strong arm leader with a vision will appear on the scene and finally get something done.
“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people”
i c dR. darK has pulled his orange claw hammer out of the tool box and nails free choice to the cross with pridikt?b?l charm and boyish planetarium awe. cut your bangs cuz the world bus is has passed your stop. full fathom #5 orange claw hammer lies of his bones are corrall made: those are pearles that were his eies, nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich & strange sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. harke now I heare them, ding-dong, ding-dong lets all just get a long island ice tee
Right now we have a strong arm leader with an entire Vision party that’s trying to kick poor people out because they’re poor and it looks easy. I think that’s terrible and I still think you’re insane.
I’m not going to give an opinion one way or the other, but sorry folks, its going to happen, the DTES will be moved someplace else, where the land isn’t worth as much money as the city. I’ve seen it before when I lived in Chicago where a real ghetto called Cabrini Green, was right next to one of the nicest suburbs of Chicago. All the people were moved out (to the south side) and the developers had a field day and made a fortune. Places like the Waldorf and Au Petit Chavignol open up in the very far east and that makes a natural progression of the rest of it to catch up. Look at Hastings St west of Cambie across from Woodwards. Its all new. It’s because the developers give money to politicians, and that’s why the developers get whatever they want. That land is worth a fortune. Vancouver will continue to be a city of the rich and it’s only going to get worse and sure makes it hard for a regular person to make a living,. Why do you think the government is spending millions widening the highway to the suburbs? Because more people are going to have to live in the suburbs,.
“Start challenging your natural tendency to fall in line with your fear that change is bad and that we are such an awful mean society hell bent for leather to trample upon the downtroden masses” Um, the headline was “The DTES Needs to be Destoyed”. Sounds like ‘an awful mean society’ to me. So does ‘strong arm leader’ for that matter. Also, change is happening. It’s just not the change that developers want to see.
Polarized debate makes for entertaining reading!
A fair point of your own Sean, that you may have oversimplified, is discussing the great restaurants, boutiques and joints that have populated Gastown making it such a great vibe and cool hood. They’re as much to blame for your ‘gentrification’ as they chase cheap rents and cool digs. In fact, they’re the same type of people (sometimes the same actual people) who built up Yaletown into the type of douchenozzle ridden yuppieville you’re so afraid of (and be careful, as you start to paint yourself as the bigot you claim to hate when you spout so emphatically about them).
The truth of the matter, is that developers in any city will follow the early adopters (hip, edgy restaurants) into areas where a social scene or neighbourhood is starting to germinate, and create spaces that they think people will want to live in. Tribeca is a great recent example in NYC.
Don’t hate on the developers, blame Sean Heather for making such cool joints successful and bringing all the hipsters eyes to the eastside. Blame Gastown for having such cool architecture, you could even blame Andrew for covering anything on the east side in ‘The Westender’ and chasing Kitsilano Lululemon Latte lovelies all out to slum it and feel ‘edgy’.
I can’t help but tune out when a conspiracy theory about some local newspaper most famous for it’s sports section is touted as the reason we’re downtrodding on the poor and creating a classist society. No one can embrace an idea that brands everyone slightly critical of it as bigots, and if anyone loves this city, as I’m sure you do, then you better start dealing with the fact that there are successful, financially savvy business people contributing to all of this.
Skateboard parks and streetside art galleries don’t pay for roads, police, bullshit beaurocracy or those wonderful social programs funding all the people you’re fighting so hard to represent.
I know a few of the developers who own some fair sized chunks of property in the DTES, and they’re not Tony Soprano or Gordon Gecko. While one of them is known to do Yoga from time to time, they have a pretty cool vision of what that area can become, and none of it has to do with housing crack dealers, junkies, bong shops or keno bars. If you’d rather keep all those things in place of the next Chambar, Salt or Pourhouse, then perhaps you might consider a move.
I do hope your passion can be positively directed into action and inspiring more into taking an interest into an area long overdue for some help, but I would urge you to avoid alienating the people who are most likely to help make it happen.
Polarized indeed. Because it’s just that black and white. You either have crack heads or the next Chambar. Those are the only two options. Well guess what, my DTES includes Acme Cafe right next to Model Express. My DTES includes Woodwards right next to the Cambie. My DTES includes Au Petit Chavignol in front, with two secret clubs in the alley behind. My DTES includes Meat + Bread across the street from Vansterdam.
Gentrification is a neutral word. There is good and bad gentrification, responsible and irresponsible. There are so many interests at stake in the DTES that you just cannot make it into the next Coal Harbour and Yaletown. This is a good thing. I applaud developers who look for solutions, like the middle-market housing at the new Habitat for Humanity at 21 E Cordova (which itself has been labeled as gentrification by The Van Media Coop). I applaud Woodwards, I just don’t think it’s going to save the world. I applaud Donnelly for making the Met a Community Pub. I applaud Waves on Cordova for hosting social housing above its store.
In Yaletown it is completely clear that it was a wholesale operation, not a long historical process. Gastown is unique because it was created as a mechanism against gentrification. It was made out of thin air to stop the Freeway (steam clock, blood alley etc.). I fear the height restrictions will give validation to all those developers, not all,, who have been sitting on their property waiting for it to happen. This is called speculation, and it is entirely different from gentrification.
“Skateboard parks and streetside art galleries don’t pay for roads, police, bullshit beaurocracy or those wonderful social programs funding all the people you’re fighting so hard to represent.” This is such a red herring. A) I’m hardly calling for art galleries and skateboard parks, just a carful consideration of height restrictions and b) they aren’t supposed to c) no, obviously, but reason this area has fallen into disrepair is precisely because those things that do contribute taxes, like banks and big department stores, ABANDONED THE AREA! and d) are you suggesting that only things that generate tax revenue be given consideration when determining the livability of a neighbourhood? And what of, 2 links down, the clear low-ball tax assessment on the empty lot next to Science World owned by Concord Pacific? And what of, as Sean Antrim pointed out, Vancouver’s low corporate tax rate?
As far as blaming the Province, you’re simply picking one of an entire list of causal contributions. It’s a piece of the puzzle, a piece of history- not conspiracy. To call it conspiracy is a cop out. Then again, this entire discussion was spurred from a headline in that very paper. Is it so difficult to see how obvious the connection is between industry and media inherent in a headline that reads “The DTES needs to be destroyed”. I mean, who are you defending? Look at the email exchange with the author of the piece, he himself makes some serious consessions!