architectureofdoom:

ryanpanos:

Hill of Shame by Gianni Cipriano

The so-called Hill of Shame is a hill in the island of Lampedusa, half-way between Sicily and North Africa in the Mediterranean Sea, where hundreds of migrants lived in poor conditions in improvised tents during the immigration crisis in April 2011. Tents were built with metal sticks, sheets, clothes and mattresses in an open-air dump of plastic bags, dishes and bottles used as urinals. In 2011, about 53,000 North African and Sub-Saharan migrants arrived in the so-called “Door of Europe”, fleeing the unrest of the region and stranded on the island in appalling conditions. Migrants weren’t provided with the most basic humanitarian assistance such as shelter, medical care, blankets and access to sanitary facilities, while thousands slept outdoors.

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Source: ryanpanos

Change is coming to Grandview-Woodland

alexsamur:

image

Architect Timothy Ankenman envisages the revitalization of an often-overlooked stretch of Commercial Drive. (Photo: Jeff Vinnick, The Globe and Mail)

An article in yesterday’s Globe and Mail reports on new developments coming to Grandview-Woodland - the area around the former Van East…

Province funds new Vancouver shelters, transitional housing

Image by Bigstockphoto

Story by Katie Hyslop

New funding from the provincial government will provide for 100 transitional housing beds and enough shelter beds to “theoretically” keep all of Vancouver’s homeless people warm and dry this winter. 

The province has pledged $1.6 million in funding for 160 new low-barrier shelter beds. The City of Vancouver will provide the sites, while RainCity Housing will run the shelters from December until at least March 2013. 

“It’s interesting,” says Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang. “[Government] always gives us a March cutoff and then always end up extending it as we help transition folks.”

In a press release from the ministry responsible for housing, the government estimated this would increase the number of government-funded shelter beds to 998. A list of both private and publicly funded shelters on BC Housing’s website puts the bed count at 1,056 with the new beds. But the 2011 Metro Vancouver Homelessness Count found 1,581 homeless people in Vancouver. 

Jang says that number doesn’t include Extreme Weather Response shelters, and that “theoretically” it should be enough shelters to house the city’s homeless population.

“We did our best guess estimate as to how many of each type we’ll need: [high] barrier, temporary, emergency, HEAT shelters, all the different forms,” he told Megaphone. “You don’t really know until people start coming inside if you’ve got the right balance.”

The City doesn’t have sites for new shelters or 100 new transitional housing beds, which the province pledged to fund for 18 months. The shelters are scheduled to open in December, but there is no timeline for opening the transitional beds, which are supposed to bridge homeless people until the 14 sites of government social housing are built. 

“Right now it’s a funding commitment. We have no idea what type of housing it will be,” says Jang.

City Limits: Can Brian Jackson build a better Vancouver?

Photographs by Matt Chen.

by Jackie Wong

It’s the first day of October, and Brian Jackson is six weeks into his new job. It’s a position that some call the most influential one at City Hall: Jackson is the City of Vancouver’s new general manager of planning and development. Unlike the others who previously occupied his post as the director of planning, Jackson’s new role makes him part of the city’s management team, so he has a hand in shaping city policy in addition to how and where new development will take shape in Vancouver.

Jackson succeeds former planning director Brent Toderian, who was controversially fired in January 2012 after working as planning director for six years. This summer, the brass at City Hall picked Jackson out of 107 candidates to fill the position. He started work in Vancouver at the end of August after leaving a four-year position at the City of Richmond, where he worked as Richmond’s director of development, then acting general manager. 

Today, looking at Cambie Street from the front lawn of City Hall, Jackson remembers how the Canada Line transformed his former Vancouver-to-Richmond commute. The Yaletown resident is now only two train stops away from his office. The proximity, he says, offers him more time to enjoy the city’s outdoor spaces.  An avid walker, Jackson says he loves to travel across the city on foot, taking in the sights and sounds of urban life from street level. 

Sitting down for an interview with Megaphone, he shares his perspectives on housing affordability, density, how to manage growth, and his personal philosophies on city planning. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Megaphone:  You’re starting your work with the City of Vancouver at a fascinating time in city history. The Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability recently released its final report. Meanwhile, hundreds of members of neighbourhood groups have been jamming the speaker’s list at City Hall over the last four years, many of them harshly criticizing the current council for coming up short on building and protecting affordable housing stock. How do you plan to address housing affordability in your work as the general manager of planning and development?

Brian Jackson: I’m very excited about working with the recommendations of the Affordable Housing Task Force. I think that they’ve made some very concrete recommendations and set a framework for what they believe should be addressed to increase the affordability of housing in Vancouver.

Clearly, it’s an issue that has to be addressed. I’ve got a niece and her partner who make $80- or $90,000 between them and they can’t afford to live in Vancouver. [Ed’s note: they live in Burnaby.] So it’s very personal, but it’s also professional for me in terms of wanting to help plan a city that provides a diversity of housing types for all income groups. 

We’re going to be working very quickly to implement the top priorities of the task force, including the 20 pilot projects for affordable housing throughout the city, as well as in the area of implementing thin streets and the issues of incorporating the recommendations of the task force into the area plans. 

MP: You hold a vote on the Development Permit Board. In 2012 the Development Permit Board approved every proposal that came for review, including the controversial approval of the Sequel 138 condominium on the 100 block of East Hastings Street, which has been widely opposed by Downtown Eastside community members. Thinking about your own future work with the Development Permit Board, do you think things will change with regard to how the process for approving developments takes place?

BJ:  To be honest, I don’t know the specifics of that particular application. But the Development Permit Board follows the regulations approved for it by council, and they look at the form and character of the development. They do not look at the height or density; they look at form and character.

It’s really important that people understand that there’s a difference between the function of council that looks at heights and densities and uses. When an application comes forward [to the Development Permit Board], [it] is in accordance with the policies and the overall zoning regulations that council has approved. The Development Permit Board, then, looks at the details of how the building’s design responds to the conditions.

My understanding of the issues associated with the Development Permit Board and people’s concerns [over Sequel 138] had to do with the amount of affordable and social housing. But that decision was not to be made by the Development Permit Board; that decision was already made by council. The Development Permit Board works within the confines and the opportunities presented by the decisions made at council.

MP:  Do you have new plans for engaging with community groups who are concerned about affordability and community plans for neighbourhoods?

BJ:  The first is making sure we develop a community outreach that tries to achieve as much public participation as we possibly can, using traditional and non-traditional methods. For example, I was just down in the Downtown Eastside for a day-long workshop that had been set up by staff. 

I thought that the cross-section of people that attended that meeting was amazing: young and old and condo owners and people who live in SROs; there were people from First Nations. I think there was a real, concerted effort to make sure that there was a broad spectrum of people participating. They had more than 80 people there for a full day’s session. And they were coming up with great recommendations for moving forward with policies in that area. I think we have to do that with all our area plans. 

We have to be as up to date as we possibly can, using all the social media techniques for those people—not necessarily us, me—who are very adept at social media. But we also have to look at the traditional methods and non-traditional methods to make sure that we get people who are and aren’t connected to the Internet and that they know about the community plans. 

MP: Vancouver’s population is expected to grow exponentially over the next few decades. What is your vision for managing growth in Vancouver?

BJ: I think that growth can be managed well in Vancouver. The infrastructure is there in terms of the transit that is built and/or contemplated. The City has a wealth of park space and open space, and community amenities, and community facilities in place to accommodate people moving into Vancouver. I think that it can be done in a way that doesn’t have to scare people. 

We can look at where growth is going to occur. We know it’s going to happen in and around the downtown, in former industrial areas like southeast and northeast False Creek. We know that it’s going to happen along major arterials, like Cambie and some of the other arterials. We know that it’s going to happen at transit hubs as well, at major intersections where two transit modes cross each other.

I don’t think that the growth has to de-stabilize our single-family neighbourhoods, for example, or even the multiple, stable multiple-family neighbourhoods that we have when look at Kitsilano, and even, for the most part, the West End.

We’re looking at how to carefully do it, [so it] maintains the character of those areas. And in some cases, it is leaving the communities alone in terms of not encouraging new forms of development in some of the more stable single-family neighbourhoods. 

When you look at the amount of the land base we have here in Vancouver, in order to accommodate growth, it’s going to be a very low percentage of the overall land base of the city. And so I think that when you look back 20 years, when you look forward 20 years, you’ll be able to recognize Vancouver. But you will be looking at good development along major arterials and adjacent to the downtown, because it helps to achieve more walkability, more livability, eyes on the street; all the things that we’re looking for in terms of creating a healthy city.

MP: Do you have lessons from Richmond as to how to manage growth in an urban setting?

BJ:  It’s important to put in place the plans as quickly as you possibly can in those areas where you’re anticipating growth. When you come forward with the plan, you have to make sure that the implementation strategy is part of it so that people understand what the community amenities that are going to be coming as part of growth is going to be happening, and then who pays for it.

When you do that as a package, which was done in Richmond, especially in the City Centre Area Plan, but also in the West Cambie area, which is the two areas where the bulk of the developments happening in Richmond—when you put that in place, then the development that follows after, if it’s in conformance with the previously approved plans, it tends to be less controversial.

You have to make the effort right at the beginning to make sure your plans are specific enough so that people understand what growth is going to occur and how much is going to occur, when it’s going to occur and who’s going to pay for that growth.

MP: Do you think building density in Vancouver is part of the solution to improving housing affordability? 

BJ:  When you increase the housing supply, that is a way of attempting, without other levels of government support—financial support—as a way for the City to do what it can, with all the levers that it has, to try and ensure that we provide a variety of housing types for the people who live here and want to live here, but also provide a range of housing affordability as well. So yes, selective density, in key locations, is a way of addressing the housing affordability issue.

MP: What do you make of the ShortTerm Incentives for Rental (STIR) program? Do you see it as a success?

BJ: Before council put in place the STIR program, there were no rental units being constructed at all: no market, no below-market. So the City took it upon itself a couple of years ago to look at the ways, the financial ways and the non-financial ways, to encourage residential rental accommodation. It provided some incentives through a fast-track process, but it also looked at forgiveness of some fees. 

I think it is a success because it has generated hundreds of new residential units, which are now under construction, as well as through the son of STIR program, the STIR 100, it’s generating hundreds more.

I don’t think that would have happened had council not taken the initiative. The margins for constructing rental housing, with the cost of land that we have in Vancouver, are so razor-thin for developers that they wouldn’t have done it without that little bit of a boost that council gave them.

MP: What is it about urban planning and cities that keeps you inspired about your work?

BJ:  In Vancouver, we’re living in an extraordinary time. We’re one of the very few cities in the world that is growing the way we’re growing: not too fast, not too slow, in my opinion—and we’ve got concerns for the built environment in terms of good architecture. But we’ve also got concerns for the environment and sustainability and affordable housing and trying to do something for the hard-to-house and the homeless.

We live in an extraordinary place. And it just is very exciting to feel like I can make a difference in any or all of those particular aspects. All we do as planners is provide our best professional advice to city council. We’re often between council and the developer, between the public and the developer. It is the profession in between. And the best we can do is to provide our opinion as to what we think is the appropriate action and make those recommendations to council.

Some people see planning and change as an adversarial process. But when I was downtown in the Downtown Eastside on Friday [at the Downtown Eastside Local Area Plan workshop], I was struck by the collegial environment of the dialogue that was happening there.

I think that we’re all in this together; it’s all of our city. And I’m looking forward to creating opportunities where people can realize that we’re all going in the same direction. It’s a wonderful thing that we get to do in terms of creating and enhancing this wonderful place.

This article originally appeared in Megaphone Magazine #115.

OPINION: Housing Affordability plan will bring benefits to low-income neighbourhoods

Photo by jmv

As two members of the Mayor’s Task Force whose backgrounds are in low-income housing issues, we are proud to have participated on the Task Force over the past nine months. The proposals that are being recommended represent a significant step forward for Vancouver city hall, as they will create new affordable housing while enabling a greater level of fairness and equality with regards to where and how new housing is created in Vancouver.

With the release of the final report from the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability, there has been a flurry of media coverage about some of the  specific proposals. These include pilot projects to create narrower streets to allow more housing in single-family neighbourhoods like Marpole, as well as allowing more rental townhouses and row houses closer to transit lines.

The media focus up until now has been on policies that are likely to impact wealthier neighbourhoods, ones with large amounts of single-family homes. This overlooks how the Task Force’s report has put forward several policies that will directly help low-income renters, particularly in areas like the Downtown Eastside, Mt. Pleasant and Strathcona.

The two of us combined have spent over 75 years working with low-income groups in Vancouver, from Nathan’s work establishing Little Mountain Neighbourhood House in the 1970s to Karen’s role as the executive director of Lookout Emergency Aid Society, creating housing solutions for homeless adults. 

We are united in our belief that many of the ideas advocated through the Task Force will strengthen low-income communities, create affordable housing for people at risk of homelessness and enhance protections for existing buildings.

Vancouver’s high housing costs don’t just impact people who want to own a house in Dunbar or Collingwood. They impact low-income people—students, seniors and young families, many of whom are on fixed incomes. High housing costs, combined with aging rental and co-op housing, put pressure on vulnerable people, whether it’s a lack of available housing or the threat of renoviction.

The City is strongly committed to ending street homelessness by 2015, and has a 10 year homelessness strategy in place. The Task Force’s work complements that, by addressing the segment of the population right beside those who are homeless or in shelters—people who are renting, but can just barely make ends meet. They don’t need health supports, but they do need quality, affordable rental housing to allow them to go to school, work in the city or raise a family.

The Task Force proposes the City expand the creation of row houses and town houses into more neighbourhoods, provided they are affordable rental or are sold at 20 per cent below market value. It recommends leasing city land to develop new non-profit and co-op housing, and creating a City “Affordable Housing Authority” to get projects going. 

Another key piece was to continue seeking 20 per cent social housing in large developments—but when senior government funding isn’t available, seek out ways to get affordable rental in place with the hope that many of these units can be transitioned to low-income housing over time, as mortgages are paid down or funding becomes available from senior governments. 

This will allow us to avoid what happened in North False Creek—sites designated for social housing have sat empty for years, because there is no funding from other levels of government.

Collectively, these policies are intended to create new supply—to add more rental housing so that people can get off wait lists, have more choice in where they live, locate closer to where they work and ease the intense demand that drives rents up. The key piece is that the housing be affordable. 

The Task Force focused on people whose incomes range from $21,500 for an individual, up to $86,500—less than the median income for a Vancouver couple. Affordable is defined as 30 per cent of a household’s income within that spectrum.

But supply is only one piece of the puzzle. Thousands of people live in substandard rental housing. These low-quality units often have leases set to expire, or the owner threatens renoviction.

That’s why the Task Force set out very clear policies for how we can protect and enhance this housing. 

We’ve also recommended identifying all of the non-profit and co-op leases set to expire, and that the City start working on protection strategies now in cooperation with tenants and their neighbours, and seek one-for-one replacement with renovated or new affordable non-market units.

This work adds to recent initiatives launched by the City of Vancouver, such as a rent bank, and a new online rental building watchlist, set to go live early next year.

A key piece is to ensure strong community support—which is why the City is continuing its work with community partners on a new Downtown Eastside Local Area Planning Process that will guide planning decisions in that community for years to come. The City is also in the midst of new community plans for Marpole, the West End and Grandview Woodlands, all of which are home to large amounts of low-income housing. 

It’s not going to be easy to get new affordable housing built, and it won’t happen all at once. What the Task Force has put forward is a framework for enabling a steady supply of new affordable housing for many years, while prioritizing urgent needs for the housing that exists today. 

Like other members of the Task Force we will be watching for and supporting the implementation of the recommendations that will ensure a more inclusive city for years to come.

By Karen O’Shannacery, Executive Director of Lookout Emergency Aid Society, and Nathan Edelson, 42nd Street Consulting and founder of Little Mountain Neighbourhood House. Both were members of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Task Force on Housing Affordability.


This article orginally appeared in Megaphone #115.

Fixing SROs won’t fix homelessness: Drury

The Dunsmuir Hotel. Photo by jmv on flickr.

by Katie Hyslop

Housing activist Ivan Drury says the deteriorating conditions in 13 BC Housing-owned Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels are the result of federal and provincial governments’ refusal to build safe social housing in Vancouver.

Two weeks ago, CBC reported the hotels, run by social enterprise Atira Property Management, were dirty and in disrepair, with clogged plumbing, used needles on the floors, feces and blood on the walls, broken locks and no money for cleaning supplies. 

Drury says his organization, Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP), has been aware of the situation in the Atira buildings for some time. They were in the process of launching a campaign to pressure BC Housing into cleaning the buildings when the story broke.

“The conditions in those buildings are really bad, and it’s really shocking because they’re comparable to the conditions in the Wonder and Palace Hotels,” he says.

One of the worst buildings is the Dunsmuir Hotel (pictured), which has the capacity for 165 people, but Drury says is in such a state of disrepair it can only house half that number. In a TV interview with CBC, Atira CEO Janice Abbott said the government had put a cap of 80 people on the building. The cap was in place until last winter, when they moved 40 more people in. 

“That building has been the catchment for homeless people when they’ve cleared the HEAT shelters, when the Occupy Vancouver tent village was shut down,” says Drury. “And the building is physically incapable of handling the load that BC Housing has placed on it.” 

In 2009, the City of Vancouver gave $500,000 to BC Housing to repair Dunsmuir, and this past March the province announced $116.4 million for repairs to 13 other SROs, including some of Atira’s buildings. Drury says the renovations won’t turn SROs into suitable homes, however, as residents still won’t have their own bathrooms or kitchen facilities.

“These buildings are not meant to be the homes of human beings, and they’ve always supposed to have been replaced with self-contained social housing,” he says. “It’s city policy to replace these buildings with self-contained, safe social housing and it’s BC Housing’s mandate to do that, and they’re falling down on the job.”

This article originally appeared in Megaphone Magazine #113.

MEGA-NEWS: City housing ideas competition now open for public votes

Story by Jackie Wong

We have to move the real estate discussion beyond shelter and investment,” Vancouver journalist Luke Brocki told the crowd of housing nerds, city staffers and architects at the Roundhouse Community Centre July 5. “I see an obvious problem in commodifying investment into a home.”  

Brocki, alongside journalist Tyee Bridge and poet Evelyn Lau, shared their thoughts on affordable housing at Rethink Reveal, an event hosted by the City of Vancouver to unveil public submissions to its Rethink Housing ideas competition.    

The competition, borne out of the seven-month-old Mayor’s Task Force on Affordable Housing, is designed to generate ideas and solutions from the public on how to solve Vancouver’s affordable housing crisis. 

The 67 submissions are now open for public viewing and voting at RethinkHousing.ca. Winning submissions will be announced in late July and included in a final task force report to city council this fall. 

The interim report, released June 27, includes recommendations to expedite affordable housing applications, offer cityowned lands for affordable housing and lobby the provincial government to amend the land title act for row housing. 

One can already anticipate the many other requested amendments that local housing advocates will be calling for as the task force gathers steam. After all, Brocki said, what’s really needed is for governments to simply “build a whole bunch of cheap housing all over the city.” But how?

Enter the ideas competition. Wideranging submissions fall into two categories: “building bold” for large sites, and “vibrant hoods” for infill housing. 

Several submissions look to affordable housing solutions in other cities. In their talks, both Brocki and Bridge referred to Options for Homes, a non-profit development consulting firm in Toronto, as a model that Vancouver should adopt to foster affordable home ownership for people who earn $30,000 a year and up. The City’s affordable housing task force, meanwhile, is geared at generating housing solutions for people who earn annual incomes between $21,000 and $86,500.

This article originally appeared in Megaphone Magazine issue 108.

MEGA-NEWS: Women’s shelter gets money to renovate, double capacity

Story by Katie Hyslop

Photo by DaMongMan

The 329 Powell Place Women’s Shelter will double its capacity and provide more services for homeless women thanks to new funding from BC Housing.

The 26-bed low-barrier facility, operated by the St. James Community Services Society, was temporarily relocated to a warehouse at 625 Powell Street in 2009, where the number of beds was doubled to 52. The original 329 Powell Street Women’s Shelter was reopened last November to provide an additional 26 temporary women’s shelter spaces until September of this year.

BC Housing is providing $2.3 million to St. James to renovate 329 Powell to accommodate 52 beds, as well as creating health assessment and treatment facilities, recreation space, workshop space, and a commercial kitchen. Three permanent supportive housing units currently operated by St. James will be moved to 329 Powell as well.

“It’s not only doubling the sleeping capacity,” says Jonathan Oldman, executive director of St. James, “but also creating the amenity and meeting room space to be able to work with the women in the shelter to move on towards permanent housing and out of the cycle of homelessness.”

St. James is hoping a second capital grant will be provided by the City of Vancouver, who owns the land 329 Powell sits on. The application is currently being considered by the city.

Renovations are expected to begin in spring 2013 and be finished by the end of the year. The province is also providing $575,000 to keep the interim shelter space open for an additional six months, and will help with operational costs once the new space is opened. Once 329 Powell’s renovations are complete, Oldman says St. James has no plans to continue to provide shelter spaces at the 625 Powell Street location.

He says it’s important for women to have the choice of a space separate from men.

“A lot of women who are homeless are victims of violence, they have mental health and addictions issues,” says Oldman.

“We know women benefit from having a women-only shelter so they can feel confident about accessing services that they feel safe in.”

This article originally appeared in Megaphone issue #107.