To the editor:
Re: "Many Vancouver 'hoods are feeling the squeeze," March 29.
If Allen Garr would agree to live in an SRO on the welfare rate of $610 a month, I bet he'd have some fairly powerful "anecdotes" that would justify replacing the crummy hotel rooms that pass as housing in the Downtown Eastside with decent self-contained social housing.
If he were living in the First United shelter for a month, or on the street, I suspect he'd have some more "anecdotes" about why the 850 or so homeless people in the Downtown Eastside should be housed.
That being said, there are measurements of the impact of gentrification on the Downtown Eastside community. The Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) released a report last month called "We're Trying to Get Rid of the Welfare People." The title is a quote from a desk clerk in a hotel near Woodward's. The report, the fifth annual one, found that between 2011 and 2013, rents in 426 Downtown Eastside hotel rooms rose to $425 a month or more. The welfare shelter rate is $375 so this means people are either being pushed out or having to get by with not much food. CCAP presented this report to Brian Jackson so he knows about it.
Or you could take the city's own numbers. Earlier this year city staff presented a slide show to council with a bar graph showing, allegedly, that the total stock of "Low income singles housing" in the downtown core had increased to 12,126 in 2013 from 11,384 in 2003.
In another slide it did mention that only 24 per cent of the 4,484 privately owned units rented at welfare shelter rates. CCAP's research show that some of the 76 per cent that were above shelter rates go for amounts like $975, $700, and many at $500 a month, far too expensive for people on welfare, disability and basic seniors pension.
So if the city really meant "low income" housing stock, they should admit that the total is more like 8,718, not over 12,000, and that low-income stock is dropping fast.
So, yes, anecdotes or facts, the sense of belonging and the actual financial ability to belong, is being threatened, and it's time the city put some brakes on gentrification so low income Downtown Eastside residents won't be pushed out.
Jean Swanson, Vancouver
