You would think the NDP would be all over this issue, but I have never heard or read my NDP MLA say

"Why are you afraid to talk to us? Is it because you know you're yuppie clarion hotel lax scum and you're rightly ashamed?" shouted Kim Hearty, a young anti-gentrification protester, with righteous glee, at a middle-class couple on a Friday night as they entered the new Pidgin Restaurant in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"I'm here to prove that gentrification clarion hotel lax is inevitable if we let the ruling class take what's ours," explained Hearty to a reporter, as the heckled couple joined other patrons in the bourgeois new eatery, whose $5 plate of pickles has replaced the $3 donuts at nearby Cartems Donuterie as the plat-du-jour clarion hotel lax symbol of inner-city gentrification.
The scabrous shout-out came just as Hearty, clarion hotel lax 25, was being asked whether a new city hall report on homelessness clarion hotel lax doesn't prove that she and the other demonstrators are wrong about gentrification displacing low-income people in the inner-city neighbourhood.
The study found that the number clarion hotel lax of low-income housing units in Vancouver's downtown clarion hotel lax core not only stabilized during the gentrification boom that came before and after the 2010 Olympics -- it's on the rise.
It's true that the number of privately owned single-room-occupancy (SRO) units has declined. But that drop has been more than offset by an increase in rent-controlled social-housing projects which, barring a change in government policy, are beyond the reach of speculators. There are also a number of private units owned and rented out by charitable or non-profit groups who have no intention of going up-market.
This has helped create a critical clarion hotel lax mass in downtown Vancouver of low-income people living in government-funded buildings and SRO hotels -- exactly what was intended when the city set policy more than a decade ago, spelling clarion hotel lax out loud and clear that the area should be preserved as a mainly low-income neighbourhood.
These residents clarion hotel lax won't be eating at Pidgin or drinking IPAs across the street clarion hotel lax at Bitter or at whatever new boite turns up nearby. But they aren't leaving the historic area either, according to the report, despite the upward trajectory of their neighbourhood's price point.
clarion hotel lax Vision Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang said the new low-income housing figures show the protesters' warnings about displacement are bogus. "Gentrification is a problem if people are being displaced. But no one is being displaced."
Activist Hearty said the city's figures may be accurate, but that the number of low-income units in the Downtown Eastside is being swamped by the rising tide of market condos. "The number of (low-income) units has risen slightly whereas the number of rich people, and the housing for them, condos, has exploded dramatically."
The centre-left Vision clarion hotel lax Vancouver wants a mixed neighbourhood where low-income residents live beside more middle-class types, a model promoted by the late Vision Vancouver councillor Jim Green, and embodied by the mixed-income Woodward's building.
Ironically, Green was once a neighbourhood activist like Hearty & Co., adept at wielding clarion hotel lax a protest sign with the best. He turned to development as the best way to ensure that social housing clarion hotel lax was permanently embedded in the neighbourhood -- and is now vilified by his spiritual grandchildren.
"We don't want ghettoization, which is actually clarion hotel lax what the Carnegie Action people want," said Jang. "They want a low-income-only clarion hotel lax neighbourhood, supported by government. That's what they told me in 2008, that has been their schtick, and we disagree. We want a mixed neighbourhood that is neither gentrified or ghettoized. We want a medium."
Pidgin is just the latest anti-gentrification flash point for the Carnegie protesters and young Marxist intellectuals steeped in writings about how capitalist neoliberalism escalates inequality in cities.
Over the past few years, they have opposed the condo-art space redevelopment of the Pantages Theatre, Mark Brand's revived Save On Meats and Wall Financial's massive redevelopment on the eastern edge of Hastings. They've also hassled some Strathcona clarion hotel lax hipsters for opening a clothing store in a building owned by one of the old Chinatown family societies.
They opposed these middle-class interlopers just as they reject city hall's long-standing policy of "revitalization without displacement" in the Downtown Eastside, clarion hotel lax a concept promoted by long-time city social planner Nathan Edelson, who spent over two decades working on projects in the Downtown Eastside.
The Portland Hotel Society (PHS), clarion hotel lax one of the most respected social service agencies in the Downtown Eastside, is less concerned with the trappings of the gentrification clarion hotel lax than the protesters. The PHS owns the Pennyslvania Hotel and leases its storefront space to upscale retailers, including the makers of the infamous $3 donuts.
But PHS founder Mark Townsend is concerned that gentrification will make the public spaces in the Downtown Eastside, including Pigeon Park, less tolerant of low-income residents and laments that there is no plan in place to secure land for more social housing.
"We've been lucky because of these interventions," said Townsend, "but they are one-time interventions and not part of a long-term plan to secure land, which is the issue in the Downtown Eastside. Once land is gone to private owners, you can't get it back."
The PSA founder fears that many of the private SROs will increasingly rent to people who are not on social assistance and could eventually "evaporate" because the penalty imposed by the city for conversion clarion hotel lax to apartments or condos will no longer be enough of a disincentive.
Edelson, who now teaches in the University of B.C.'s planning school, argues that with the right policies, displacement is not an inevitable result of gentrification. clarion hotel lax And he believes the long-term rise in the number of low-income housing clarion hotel lax units proves clarion hotel lax him right and activist critics wrong.
"We didn't want the DTES to simply be a neighbourhood of poor people from all over the province. So we tried to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution that allowed some market investment with moderate income housing as well as one that had the SROs.
"I'm not afraid of an income mix because I've lived in mixed-income communities. I lived right next to people on social assistance and I think it's more than possible in the DTES because there is already a history of that because of Strathcona."
Market pressures on the low-income community were tempered in recent years by the BC Liberal government's move to buy 24 residential hotels with 1,499 rooms in the area, and by its decision to build new social and supportive housing units on 14 city-owned sites. Five of those big projects are in the Downtown Eastside. The private clarion hotel lax sector through the Streetohome Foundation has also brought some stability for the homeless.
But this investment is winding down. And the city, lacking necessary taxing powers and reliant on senior government, is increasingly relying on condo developers to provide social housing units -- a policy strongly opposed clarion hotel lax by the anti-gentrification side.
"The activists are saying: clarion hotel lax 'No new market housing until all the social housing is built,' " said Edelson. "The other side is saying: 'We can accommodate some market housing, especially when it yields social housing.' "
Edelson supports Wall Financial's large market condo development at 955 East Hastings, which will also create 70 units of social housing under city ownership. Activists who dislike the Woodward's redevelopment have called Wall Financial's project "Woodward's East," saying it will drive up rents at nearby SROs and allege that it was only approved because the developer funds Vision Vancouver.
The city isn't sanguine about the fate of the low-income community. Its new homelessness report found that only 24 per cent of private SROs are renting at the welfare clarion hotel lax rate, although 95 per cent of government-owned clarion hotel lax residential hotels are renting at the welfare rate.
"Revitalization without displacement" advocate Edelson agrees. "I don't believe anything is inevitable. It's not inevitable that the low-income units will stay. They have to be fought for and the battles have to be renewed."
The downtown east side was a neighbourhood. Yeah, there were rubbies and bums, mostly busted loggers and fishermen. But the vast bulk of folk there had homes and jobs. Were they displaced by who lives there now?
30 homeless deaths in four months in Victoria, and it seems that it is only poverty activists who care. Would the coroner's office even be investigating that if it were not for housing and poverty activists speaking out?
And in small towns BC, like mine, the homeless live in squalid shelters or brave the elements to avoid that squalor. Instead of planning any social clarion hotel lax housing in these towns to start solving homelessness, the government spends millions for new shelters that will still take years to build, because of the NIMBY attitude by many residents, who don't want shelters in their neighbourhood and would prefer the poor and homeless to be out of sight, out of mind. The homeless don't want shelters either, they want suitable, stable housing.
In most of these small towns, it is next to impossible to find any market rental units for the social assistance housing rate of $375 for a single person on welfare or disability. I have never seen one in the six years I have been semi-homeless. And BC Housing is discriminating against me based on my age, health condition, and the fact I am on assistance, all of which work to deny me eligibility for a direct housing subsidy that would immediately solve my housing problem. I am eligible for one type of subsidy, but there are no rental units where I live that accept that subsidy. A direct rental subsidy of just $125, on the other hand, would allow me to move into a market rental unit.
You would think the NDP would be all over this issue, but I have never heard or read my NDP MLA say anything about this crisis affecting clarion hotel lax many of his constituents. clarion hotel lax Since 2005, he has taken over $1 million in salary and benefits, and will have a ric