DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE AN ARTIFICIAL SLUM

Canada's Poorest Postal Code Didn't Get That Way By Accident. Its Troubles
Are Largely The Result Of Policies That Warehouse The City's Most Disadvantaged

Trevor Boddy Special to the Sun

Despite the current campaign's fixation on Philip Owen's Four Pillars, a
drug policy alone will not solve the problems of the Downtown Eastside.
While these four posts may provide structural support for its most
bedraggled residents, this community also needs a roof over its head, some
fundamental rebuilding that may not be possible when a broad crisis is
dominated by one issue alone.

Our Downtown Eastside is Canada's poorest postal-code area. Consider what
that means: poorer than the most desperate stretch of outport Newfoundland,
years after the cod fishery has been shut down; poorer than the most
forlorn band of northern Manitoba's bush and lake country. The ignoble
economic status of the Downtown Eastside is even more puzzling when one
realizes that the area--unlike these two hinterland poverty zones--numbers
amongst its residents some average-raising high-income celebrity chefs,
film-makers and accountants living in the gentrified condominiums of The
Edge and The Van Horne. How could this be?

There is a direct answer to that question, but neither the left nor right
of our current civic spectrum wants to hear it.

The Downtown Eastside is an artificial slum. The density of poverty
deposited here is as willed and made as a concrete parking garage, though
not nearly as nice to look at. The simple fact is that millions of dollars
of public funds and a string of public policy concessions have further
concentrated the poor, the distressed, the infirm and the addicted here as
nowhere else in the country.

The savage irony is that despite the former NDP government's building boom
of 1,500 new units of social housing, then 365 more now on stream in the
Liberal era, plus investment in numerous frontline social service agencies,
the situation has only gotten worse, much worse. Neighbourhoods behave much
the same way as their individual residents do, and the Downtown Eastside is
now at the breaking point, losing its ability to cope.

The crucial issue is not the expenditure of public money on housing and
social services -- I, for one, feel we need a lot more -- but its
concentration in one tiny geographic area. The rest of the city of
Vancouver and our broader urban region should be sharing responsibility for
the poor, not warehousing them in a conveniently isolated 20-block area.

This is where a cosy little conspiracy of right and left comes in. In the
urban calamity which is the Downtown Eastside, NPA is as guilty as COPE, as
for different reasons they have worked together to water down public
policies advocating diversity that have served Vancouver well in decades
past. It is as if the NPA and Liberals are relieved to have social
problems sealed away from their west-side power bases. Conversely and
perversely, COPE and poverty activists seem dedicated to increasing pockets
of indigent voters who might elect an NDP member or two provincially or
federally.

Here is how this cynical convergence happened:

Ever since the sawmills cleared out of the area in the late 19th century,
the Downtown Eastside has been Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood, though
not nearly by the spectacular margin it is now. When I first got to know it
in the 1970s, it had also become the Vancouver neighbourhood with the
oldest median age and highest ratio of singles, with laid-off, injured and
retired resources workers from all over the province filling its modest
hotel rooms. For generations, it has also been the Canadian neighbourhood
with the highest concentration of intravenous drug users, and the last
address of convenience for terminal alcoholics.

Yet despite these knocks, the combination of independent-minded seniors and
the Chinese community gave the Downtown Eastside a stable backbone, strong
enough to support shops and institutions, and serve as a steadying
influence for its more troubled residents. Over the past decade, these
seniors died off and Chinatown businesses and residents moved to other
parts of the city, while the drug crisis rose in intensity.

Added to this is the first of the public policy mistakes that have
condemned the area to ever-more marginal status: differential policing.

Whether because of outright graft or for the convenience of residents from
tonier districts who use illicit services here, this part of the city has
always had different standards of policing, right back to the early 20th
century when Dupont (now Pender) Street was open home to houses of
prostitution, and cops on the beat chose not to notice the opium dens and
gambling parlours of Chinatown.

A key turning point was in the early 1980s, when a campaign led by city
councillor-to-be Gordon Price chased street prostitutes out of the
middle-class West End and Mount Pleasant districts and back into the
Downtown Eastside. Vancouverites let out a collective civic sigh with that
change, similar to the one that was released when crackdowns on drug
dealing on the Granville Mall, SkyTrain stations and Commercial Drive areas
further concentrated that activity you-know-where.

While some American police forces effectively implement de facto 'anything
goes' zones through differential law enforcement (usually locating these
crimes and misdemeanors in a failing, non-white part of the city, in order
to better manage them), this is unique in scale in Canada. The brazenness
of the drug dealing and prostitution in the Downtown Eastside shocks
visitors from other parts of Canada, where at least the pretence of uniform
enforcement of laws is maintained. We have all joined in creating this sad
carnival.

The location of Vancouver's social housing follows precisely the same
pattern. There once was a time, as recently as 15 years ago, when city
council and urban planners sought to create diverse, socially integrated
communities, where differing income groups could live together, their lives
enriched by mutual contact. Not so any more. Where once housing co-ops
sprouted in areas as diverse as Champlain Heights and Kitsilano, and even
West Point Grey saw an assisted living complex go up, there are no new
ones, thanks to funding cuts by senior governments.

I live in Mount Pleasant, one of the city's most diverse neighbourhoods,
ranging from crack houses below Broadway to modish neo-heritage homes above
city hall. With its established diversity, why is it that a dozen social
housing developments have gone up in the Downtown Eastside in the seven
years I have been here, while nothing larger than a group home has been
built in my neighbourhood?

The simple political calculus is that DERA and other poverty organizations
lobby for more social housing in their area (much of their operating funds
come from the development and management of social housing), while every
other Vancouver neighbourhood fights it tooth and nail.

Here is a suggestion for my neighbourhood along these lines, and one close
to city hall itself. The former VGH nurse's residence at 12th and Heather
is a fine building from the 1950s and has sat empty for years. It could
readily be adapted to senior, student or other single resident social housing.

But whether NPA or COPE or vcaTEAM, we have no current politicians with
urban convictions strong enough to withstand the inevitable opposition such
a proposition would engender from nearby condominium owners, the merchants
of City Square, not to mention the denizens of our own town hall.

Even in new developments where there are few current residents to object,
social housing is being squeezed out. It was once and is still public
policy (at least officially) that such new urban developments as Concord
Pacific and Bayshore/Coal Harbour include social housing on site, within
sight of their sparkling penthouses. But in one of its most egregious
decisions, our current city council agreed to developer's requests to give
cash in lieu of social housing, as long as it is located somewhere else.
Guess where?

I feel sorry for the social and urban planners who supported this violation
of an important moral principle of Vancouver city-building of the past few
decades, a Faustian deal to get a net total of more units where they
perceived the problem to be greatest. Vancouver has lost twice in this
decision, in further concentrating the poor in the Downtown Eastside and in
making two new neighbourhoods less diverse.

The lesson from cities around the world is that communities--when not
stressed artificially--have a surprising ability to heal themselves,
especially when they possess the latent strengths that come with a diverse
social and economic makeup. Other parts of this city and region need to
share in housing and serving the poor, because planting them in one place
has served nothing but political expediency.

The Downtown Eastside needs to have its housing stock upgraded, the same
policing standards as the rest of the city, and when it is ready, a modest
influx of new employed or student residents, as the same principle of
diversity that applies to Concord Pacific should also apply here.
Meanwhile, these same anti-diversity forces continue and strengthen.

Last week, Surrey city council voted to increase licensing fees for
methadone dispensaries by 10,000 per cent. In their debate and in media
interviews afterwards, Surrey councillors clearly stated that the intention
of these vastly increased fees was to push this service, one component of
the Four Pillars, out of their municipality. Shunned there and elsewhere,
we all know where the methadone dispensaries will end up.

Shame.

Winner of the Western Magazine and Alberta Book of the Year prizes for his
architectural and urban writing, Trevor Boddy has taught architecture and
worked as an urban designer across Canada and the United States.