City contemplates future of bridge lanes

WestEnder
November 5, 2009

The apparent success of the ongoing Burrard Bridge lane re-allocation trial is something urban planner Gordon Price would like to think foretells a new “post-motordom” era, in which urban roadways evolve to accommodate not only cars but a variety of transportation methods. “As we move into the post-motordom era, the car will be accommodated as one of the five modes of transportation that we use — in addition to feet, bikes, taxis, [and] transit — but it won’t be the dominant one,” Price, the director of SFU’s City Program, told WE. “I think what’s going to happen — and you can see it already in most places in Europe — is the streets will become places of common use for different users.”

Price was a supporter of the first Burrard Bridge lane re-allocation trial, in 1996, when he was nearing the end of his six-term stretch as an NPA city councillor. That trial, which lasted six days, was unsuccessful, Price says, because not enough effort was made to inform the public about it beforehand. “It just came as a real shock to people,” he recalls.

This year, however, a rigorous promotional campaign by City staff helped citizens prepare for the change, which, beginning on July 13, saw a southbound vehicle lane re-allocated for bikes, the northbound sidewalk become a bikes-only lane, and the west sidewalk rededicated for the exclusive use of pedestrians.

“It is important to note, historically, that there was never an option to keep the status quo,” Price says, adding that the legal necessity of making the Burrard Bridge safer for cyclists has already resulted in a court case. “Have things changed [between now and 1996]? Yeah, clearly they have, in two respects: more people are cycling, [and] more people realize the need for more sustainable transportation, so I think there’s more desire to make something like this work.”

Assistant city engineer Jerry Dobrovolny presented a Fall 2009 status report on the lane trial at Vancouver City Council’s Transportation and Traffic meeting Tuesday (Nov. 3), outlining the progress of the trial as well as disclosing the results of a September 2009 Mustel Group public-opinion survey on the subject.

The survey, which consisted of 300 random telephone interviews with Vancouver residents in the months leading up to and following the launch of the trial, indicates largely positive support, with 45 per cent responding in favour of retaining the re-allocated lanes after the Olympics, and 21 per cent opposed. Support for the trial, including from drivers of single-occupancy vehicles, outweighs opposition three to one in what the survey refers to as “target neighbourhoods,” or downtown and west-side neighbourhoods near the Burrard Bridge. Cyclists, in particular, responded positively to the trial, with 90 per cent favouring retention of the re-allocation after the Olympics. Seventy-one per cent of pedestrians surveyed favoured keeping the re-allocation.

Opinions expressed in the Mustel survey echoed Dobrovolny’s recommendation on behalf of City staff that the bike lanes stay in place. Staff will return with a post-Olympics proposal for permanent plans for the bridge. (The previously mooted idea of widening the sidewalks is reportedly no longer a consideration.)

The City status report mentions lingering concerns about pedestrians being restricted to the west sidewalk only, as well as increased travel times for vehicle trips on Pacific and Thurlow streets.

Members of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition (VACC) spoke at council Tuesday to call for a permanent two-lane re-allocation, as well as improved bike lanes approaching the bridge on either side. “We are concerned about the pedestrians having to use only the west side, and it would be so great if the pedestrians could re-claim their east sidewalk,” VACC president Arno Schortinghuis told WE before the meeting. “The other point is that the east sidewalk is a bit narrow for cycling... I think for a permanent solution, we would love the northbound lane re-allocated for cycling as well.”

Schortinghuis, who cycled across the bridge during the 1996 re-allocation trial, is glad to see more than 10 years of VACC advocacy work coming to fruition with the current lane trial. “It was such a thrill, even back then, to go over the bridge in a re-allocated traffic lane,” he says, “and it’s really great to be able to do that again.”

PHOTO: Following a well-received trial period, Vancouver City Council will now decide whether to make the re-allocated bike and pedestrian lanes on the Burrard Bridge permanent. By Doug Shanks.

New media centre hopes to empower troubled community

WestEnder
November 5, 2009

The controversial Woodward’s site, located near Hastings Street between Cambie and Abbott, has existed in a state of flux for years. Standing between the Downtown Eastside and Gastown — both rapidly changing neighbourhoods — the future of the block that once housed the historic Woodward’s department store has, for many, been symbolic of the future of the city itself. Like most major changes to Vancouver’s landscape, it has seen its share of growing pains, from the housing squats in 2002 to the day in September 2006 when the original building was demolished.

Now, with the 2010 Winter Games serving as the unofficial (and fast-approaching) deadline for construction in the city, and with big-box grocery and drug stores set to open at the Woodward’s site in a matter of weeks, years of planning are finally reaching tangible results.

Meanwhile, across the street, Irwin Oostindie’s work for the past five years is also coming to a head in the form of W2 Community Media Arts, an ambitious and multi-faceted art, media, and community centre that’s already played host to a wide range of events such as the Heart of the City Festival, the Fresh Media conference, and a Downtown Eastside photography exhibit. A sleep-deprived Oostindie met with WE last week, in the midst of hectic negotiations and final planning, to talk about W2’s progress to date.

“Woodward’s will only work if W2 works,” says Oostindie, who is the centre’s executive director. “And while there’s cynicism in some quarters of the Downtown Eastside towards Woodward’s — that it’s a retail giant and market housing — in reality, W2 is taking on the responsibility of making sure that Woodward’s isn’t alienating to Downtown Eastside residents. It’s a responsibility we carry very heavily.

“It’s also the policy framework W2 is working on to advance and to ensure that, 20 years from now, we have existing populations that are still intermingled in the Woodward’s complex, and that we don’t suffer the fate of Plaza of Nations or the Roundhouse Plaza, which became controlled by either market forces or strata councils.”

Prior to his role with W2, Oostindie worked as the communications director for the Roundhouse Community Centre, with the City of Vancouver as a senior community planner for the Downtown Eastside, and, most recently, as the executive director of Gallery Gachet. His experience with the Roundhouse in its formative years, he says, helped shape his thinking about how to develop W2, particularly within the context of the Roundhouse’s successes and failures.

“It’s about bringing many voices together, and the Roundhouse is a community piece of civic infrastructure, so W2 is very much the same way,” he says. “It’s a piece of communication infrastructure that empowers residents to access creative technology, and those residents may be Downtown Eastside residents, those residents may be citywide. It’s very much like a wired community centre.”

W2 will also take to the streets in the form of the two-year-old Fearless City mobile project, which aims to provide video and online technology with which Downtown Eastside residents can communicate to audiences in their neighbourhood, across the city, and around the world. During the Olympics, W2 will serve as a digital media space, giving Downtown Eastside residents the opportunity to share their experiences of the Games — good or bad — with a global audience. “Fearless City is the mechanism where residents can be engaged in telling their own stories around their own personal experiences. And for some, that will be critical, and for some, that will be celebratory,” Oostindie says.

For now, W2’s online membership and presence in the city’s independent arts scene is continuing to grow, with 628 members on the official website (CreativeTechnology.org) and 550 members on the W2 Facebook group.

For Oostindie, it’s a project he hopes will contribute positively to the city’s cultural and intellectual fabric. “I’m born and raised in Vancouver, so, for me, a place where we can re-imagine the future and deal with redress and cross-cultural dialogue issues — if W2 can contribute toward healing Vancouver’s past and imagining a socially inclusive future, then our work’s been done,” he says. “We can only walk the talk. If people are critical of W2 by lumping us into their opinion that Woodward’s is gentrifying, then we’re either not doing a good enough job or they’re not hearing our story.”

PHOTOS: Perel Gallery by Doug Shanks, Irwin Oostindie by Gavin Schaefer.

BOOKS: Leaving the city in stitches

WestEnder
October 29, 2009

The very first piece of knit graffiti has been traced back to Houston, Texas, in 2005, when Magda Sayeg and her friend affixed a blue and pink acrylic cozy to a door handle. The piece, now referred to among descendents of the art form as the “alpha piece,” was revolutionary: it signified the beginning of Knitta, the first knit-graffiti group, and the start of similar groups around the world dedicated to craft-based activism — or “craftivism” —through yarn bombing, the act of leaving tags in public spaces. In Vancouver, a prominent example of yarn bombing can be found at the entrance to the Davie Village Community Garden, where a crocheted pink rose joins a series of striped cozies wrapping the length of a wooden gate facing Davie Street.

But aside from the twee delights of seeing a distinctly suburban craft invading the urban landscape, what does it all mean? That question is part of the mystery and fun of yarn bombing, says Leanne Prain, who co-authored a book about the phenomenon with Mandy Moore. Yarn Bombing: the Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti was released through Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press last month, and has already garnered considerable critical attention, including a nod from The New Yorker magazine’s book blog.

True to the spontaneous spirit of knit graffiti itself, Prain and Moore’s collaboration on the book was, at first, a bit of a surprise to them both. Prain was finishing the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University, and Moore was working as the senior technical editor of Knitty, a Toronto-based knitting magazine, when Arsenal Pulp unexpectedly responded to a book proposal that Prain sent the publisher as part of her master’s thesis project. At the time, the two had only met briefly through the now-defunct Knitting and Beer “stitch and bitch” group.

“I had been working in the knitting industry for a number of years and had been thinking I’d like to write a book, and I get this e-mail out of the blue,” Moore recalls. “Leanne’s like, ‘I don’t know if you remember me. Let’s write a book together!’ And I’m like, ‘I do remember you. Yes, let’s! It’s perfect!’”

Starting in February 2008, the two embarked on an eight-month book-making journey, in which Prain’s partner took pictures, Moore edited patterns, and she and Prain interviewed fellow yarn-bombers from around the world via Skype. Moore kept her job as an editor with Knitty, and Prain continued to work full-time as a graphic designer, so they wrote the bulk of the book on evenings and weekends at Mount Pleasant’s Rhizome Café, a meeting place between the two neighbourhoods where they live (Prain resides in the West End, Moore in East Vancouver).

By the time WE caught up with the two of them at Rhizome on a rainy evening earlier this month, Prain and Moore had been receiving feedback on the book for several weeks, particularly from the extensive online crafting communities that have been largely responsible for the growth of knit graffiti. “The online knitting community is massive,” says Moore. “For a lot of people, that is their community for this thing that they’re really passionate about. You’re probably not going to know a lot of other people in your real life that do it, so this is where you hook up with other people and get your support, your inspiration, and feel part of something.”

“Even when we wrote the [book] proposal, we didn’t have an idea of how many people we would actually encounter,” adds Prain. “We started a blog at around the same time as we started writing the chapters, and people would contact us. We still have that community — people are coming back and talking and commenting, sending me articles that they find. It’s really interesting, to grow and grow.”

Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain will hold a special Yarn Bombing “stitch and bitch” Thursday, Nov. 5 at Book Warehouse (1051 Davie), 7 pm. More information about the book and their work can be found on their blog, YarnBombing.com

New report imagines a greener Vancouver

WestEnder
October 29, 2009

The City of Vancouver released its Greenest City Action Team’s 10-year plan last week in a report titled Vancouver 2020: A Bright Green Future. The report, which includes a summary of long-term sustainability targets for the city, is the product of collaborative efforts among the 18-member Greenest City Action Team, which is comprised of city councillors, representatives of local environmental groups, and green-business leaders.

Part of the report, titled “Green Mobility,” discusses the goal of creating a Vancouver in which, by 2020, more than half of trips within the city are carried out on foot, bicycle or public transit . “Great green cities are walkable cities,” reads the report. “Walking is the most environmentally sustainable form of transportation, creating no emissions, no noise, and requiring the least amount of infrastructure… Vancouver could do much more to facilitate walking and cycling, although the allocation of additional space on Burrard Bridge is a step in the right direction.”

As part of efforts to enhance Vancouver’s walkability, the report includes recommendations to connect all primary and secondary schools to existing green spaces, and to increase access to green spaces by ensuring that every Vancouver resident lives within a five-minute walk of a park, beach, greenway, or natural space.

Pedestrian City, a pedestrian advocacy initiative founded by Natalie Ethier, as well as the Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN), have started to explore these and other goals through “green mapping sessions,” the first of which was held last Thursday (Oct. 22) in Mount Pleasant. The mapping sessions aim to create visual representations of the city’s existing green spaces, thereby helping to maximize future use, and hopefully illustrating the need for the creation of more green space. For Ethier, who moved to Vancouver from Toronto this spring, it’s an extension of her previous work with Pedestrian City, which she started as part of her master’s degree in Environmental Science at York University. Her work was influenced in large part by Canadian urbanist Jane Jacobs and cultural theorist Guy Debord, who coined the term “psychogeography.”

“Psychogeography is the study of the effects of the geographical environment —consciously or subconsciously — on the emotions and behaviours of individuals,” Ethier explains. “One of the ways to explore that is through... inventive strategies that take pedestrians off their predictable paths and bring them into this new awareness of the urban landscape.”

One of Ethier’s goals with the VPSN’s mapping projects is to give participants an opportunity to reflect on their neighbourhoods and their sense of place. “As one of the participants noted, it was about connecting the dots between the places and interactions you experience in a neighbourhood — the things that you notice but never put together in the same mental space,” she says.

Connecting with one’s sense of place in public spaces, Ethier says, is crucial for building awareness of the importance of pedestrian spaces and their role in urban life. “Canadian cities, in particular, have changed really quickly and developed around the car, and didn’t give much thought to other modes of transportation,” she says. “I think most people just don’t think that pedestrianism needs to be advocated for, because, for the most part, there are sidewalks everywhere, so you don’t need to go and build sidewalks like you do with bikes.”

Even though she’s fairly new to Vancouver, Ethier says she sees strong interest in sustainable-transportation issues among the city’s residents, and she hopes to expand her work with Pedestrian City to community centres in the future, so she can reach out to more diverse populations. “So far, I’ve found everybody who participates is around my age: mid-twenties to mid-thirties,” she says. “I think it would be really interesting to reach out to children and seniors, to get different perspectives... I think it’s really important to foster a sense of environmental awareness and education within the community.”

Future calls for public participation in the mapping sessions will be posted on the Pedestrian City website, PedestrianCity.ca, along with other pedestrian-advocacy resources.

“You notice a lot more when you’re passing through a space on foot rather than zipping by on a bike,” Ethier says. “There’s just more opportunities to come across new spaces or found objects, or to wander off a path; you really get a sense of what a neighbourhood is like. Jane Jacobs herself said, to get to know your neighbourhood, you have to get out and walk. I think it’s really important that we encourage people to do that.”

PHOTO by Doug Shanks.

Critics slam Olympic bylaws

WestEnder
October 29, 2009

Last week, while Premier Gordon Campbell showed off a pair of Olympic mittens on U.S. television as part of promoting the 2010 Games during a visit to New York City, MLAs in Victoria were debating Olympic-related civil liberties issues. The debate focused on a second reading of Bill 13, an omnibus bill containing a controversial act critics say restricts Charter rights to free speech during Games time.

The Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act, which gives the municipalities of Vancouver, Richmond, and Whistler temporary enforcement power to remove unwanted signs and graffiti during the Games, was introduced earlier this month, and garnered criticism from civil liberties groups and Olympic critics.

The Act gives Olympic security officers the right to enter private residences with 24 hours’ notice to remove or cover up signs that the City of Vancouver classifies as “ambush marketing and graffiti.” Under current provisions of the Vancouver Charter, it would take the City 30 days or more to remove such signage, but the new Act would allow the City to stop the unauthorized distribution of flyers and display of commercial signs immediately. While the City distributed a media release on October 20 stating that “there is a misperception that free speech during the Olympics is at risk” and that the City is “not focused on anti-Olympic signs,” Olympic critics Chris Shaw and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe will continue with their lawsuit against the City of Vancouver for infringing on Charter rights to free speech, which they launched with the BC Civil Liberties Association earlier this month.

“We’re not going to back down,” Shaw told WE. “I am going to take a very hard-line view that I’m not going to negotiate Charter rights with any government entity. It’s non-negotiable. They can withdraw it or they can face us in court.”

Shaw hopes the lawsuit will force the City to back down or withdraw what he says are “egregious” Charter of Rights infringements. “I think the implications of having a bylaw — or Bill 13 — that essentially strips away, in principle, civil rights, is a very, very damaging piece of legislation to have on the books,” he says, “and I can’t imagine that that sort of legislation would not be abused in the future by other cities, maybe even by Vancouver.”

Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Herbert was one of the five opposition MLAs who raised concerns about the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act in the legislature on October 20. “The thing about Bill 13 is it’s kind of a miscellaneous grab-bag... But then you dig through the bill and you find the provisions related to the sign bylaw,” he told WE after the session. “You’d think something like that would come to more substantive debate through the introduction of its own individual bill, but I can understand the government does not want to highlight this and does not want this to become an issue. They’d prefer people didn’t know it was happening.”

Herbert says the bill should have been addressed earlier. “I think the international community would have supported that, as they were sold on a vision of a sustainable and socially just Games,” he says, “but when they come to B.C. and Canada, I don’t think that’s what they’re going to get.”

COVER: Rude awakening

WestEnder
October 22, 2009

Once my eyes stop resembling dried fruits, I’ll know I’ve won. Until then, the nightly battle my mind wages against my body (or is it the other way around?) continues to torment me. I can’t sleep, and it’s the worst.

The infuriating number of times I wake up in the night, combined with the number of mornings when I feel as though I’ve had no sleep at all, stonewalls me from achieving my lifelong aspiration to approximate the relaxing woodland-cottage life of the heavy-lidded, pajama-clad bear featured on boxes of Sleepytime Tea, which I drink before bed in the hope that its promise of sleep-inducing camomile and lemongrass will one day have an effect on me — but to no avail. Instead, I lie awake most nights, waking frequently from dreamless almost-sleep, the following day fuelled by a variety of caffeinated beverages which probably hinder that night’s sleep. As any sleep-deprived person will tell you, it’s a vicious cycle.

My morning coffee, followed by a steady stream of tea as black as my heart, keeps me somewhat alert through the workday, but once it’s time for bed, I can only fall into a light snooze that barely sustains me until 2:00 a.m. Then begins the pattern of waking up almost every hour until the alarm goes off. Sometimes my frustrated interior dialogue gets the better of me, and I’ll swear at myself out loud for not sleeping, which wakes up my partner, a sound snoozer and well-rested contributor to society. If only I possessed the Zen-like inner peace of that damn Sleepytime bear.

Despite the gentle solitude I feel while looking out my window at the desolate 4 a.m. streets of the West End, statistics suggest I’m not alone. According to information released in 2002 by Statistics Canada, one in seven Canadians (about 3.5 million people) over the age of 15 has a hard time falling or staying asleep. About 18 per cent of that group averages less than five hours of sleep per night (seven to nine hours is considered optimal for adults).

Comforted by the widespread company I seem to be keeping, I went to the doctor to talk about my dilemma. She ruled out anemia and thyroid problems, and instead suggested I might be overworked (this is probably true), especially since I tend to sleep relatively well on weekends. She suggested warm milk before bed, vitamin B, and acupuncture or massage therapy. I’ve yet to allow myself to be stuck with needles, but the B supplement I started taking a few weeks ago has helped my energy levels a little, and the new apartment I moved into last weekend boasts a quieter bedroom than the one where I used to live. These factors, combined with the age-old “going to the doctor makes things seem better” remedy, have left me hopeful.

But, according to Dr. Jonathan Fleming, a psychiatrist who works at the UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health sleep-disorder clinics, a number of popular misconceptions — such as the idea that people who experience regular daytime sleepiness are lazy, that you should catch up on sleep by lying in on the weekend, and that most people adapt to shift work — prevent people from seeing a doctor about their problem.

“The most common sleep disorder is insomnia associated with stress,” says Dr. Fleming. “If the stress resolves, the sleep commonly reverts to normal.”

This could explain my Sunday nights of no sleep, and my relatively restful Saturday nights. The next most common sleep disorder, Dr. Fleming says, is sleep disruption associated with an undiagnosed psychiatric disorder.

Previous to seriously exploring the psychopharmacology of sleep by opening a sleep clinic at Vancouver’s Shaughnessy Hospital in 1983, Dr. Fleming says he received relatively little training on sleep disorders. “I, like many of my vintage, had received a total of one hour’s instruction on sleep, but this was largely on sleep EEG [electroencephalography] and the investigation of seizures,” he recalls. “At this same time, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh were reporting that depressed patients had specific sleep findings... which looked as though it may be a marker for clinical depression. This finding, and my ignorance about sleep, prompted me to get further training in this new area.”

At that time, Dr. Fleming says, quality of sleep was not considered to be very important, and sleep apnea — disturbed breathing during sleep — was thought to be fairly rare. Today, sleep disorders are still under-reported and untreated relative to other health issues — something that Dr. Sunny Dong sees frequently among his patients at the Burnaby-based West Coast Sleep and Breathing Centre.

As a trained respirologist, Dr. Dong treats patients suffering from sleep apnea, but he says about 90 per cent of people with the condition are unaware of its occurrence. “Quite often, they’re told that they snore,” he says of some new patients who are later diagnosed with the disorder. “Some people will say they have difficulty getting to sleep, other people complain that they’re waking frequently at night, or they feel that they’re sleeping soundly but they don’t feel rested in the morning. So during the day they may feel tired or feel sleepy or have difficulty thinking clearly.”

Daily lack of sleep — experienced as a result of sleep apnea or otherwise — results in an accumulated sleep debt, says Dr. Dong. “Over time, fatigue and sleepiness would tend to increase, as well as problems with mental function,” he says. “If, at the same time, you’re having disturbances in your breathing, and the episodes are long enough that there’s a significant drop in your oxygen level, then you can also develop diabetes or hypertension or liver disorders, such as elevated cholesterol.”

While the toll that lack of sleep takes on the body is considerable — changes in concentration, energy, mood, and physical resilience are some of the most common drawbacks — public awareness and medical progress on understanding and treating sleep disorders is increasing. The National Sleep Foundation is a U.S.-based non-profit agency dedicated to alerting the public, health-care providers, and policy-makers on the importance of adequate sleep. Dr. Dong recommends SleepFoundation.org as a helpful resource centre for anyone interested in learning more about disordered sleep.

Nevertheless, public awareness about the health impacts of inadequate sleep lags behind other health issues, Dr. Dong says. “”There’s a growing awareness, but there will probably be another two, three decades before sleep is something that people think of as being a possible cause of their problems in the same way that they would think of hypertension or diabetes. It took a long time for people to be aware of hypertension as a chronic medical condition; that effort started decades ago. Even now, quite a few people with hypertension aren’t getting assessed or the appropriate treatment. It would be the same kind of timeline I’d expect for sleep as well.”

While I wait patiently for the day when widespread awareness of sleep disorders results in the construction of outlandish contraptions like cozy workplace napping rooms where Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” plays on a loop (No! —Ed.), I’ll keep exploring new frontiers in sleep hygiene and tea-drinking. One of these days, I’ll sleep through the night and not wake until morning. And when that day comes, life will be awesome.

The fight for territorial rights

WestEnder
October 22, 2009

When Thomas Berger was appointed by Vancouver City Council in 2004 to conduct a review of the city’s electoral system, the former B.C. Supreme Court judge noted in his report that the existing at-large system we use to elect our municipal government “is not a truly democratic agreement.” He discussed problems of representational inequality that continue to figure prominently in Vancouver civic elections. “Disparities in income and education, family status... and so on have led to disparities in voter turnout,” Berger wrote. “As a result, our city councillors have largely been chosen by (and to a large extent from among) west side residents.”

Berger recommended that the City reform its electoral process by adopting a ward system, in which voters elect a candidate from their ward — or voting neighbourhood — to represent them in city council. The recommendation was taken to a plebiscite on October 16, 2004, and of the approximately 66,000 citizens who voted, 54 per cent voted in favour of keeping the at-large system.

Now, with the 2011 municipal election on the horizon, and with the creation of a provincial task force on electoral reform (which Premier Gordon Campbell introduced at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention earlier this month), renewed debate on Vancouver’s electoral system suggests the results of the 2004 plebiscite left more than a few stones unturned.

In an effort to encourage citizens to weigh in on current debates surrounding electoral reform, COPE held its first of 14 “travelling neighbourhood office” sessions on Commercial Drive last weekend (October 17) to ask the question, “What does local democracy look like to you?” The left-of-centre municipal party will set up the travelling office every three weeks for the next 14 months as a means of reaching out to every neighbourhood Berger suggested be divided as a ward in his 2004 report.

Information gathered by COPE will be used to help form party policy going into the 2011 election, says the party’s executive director, Rachel Marcuse. But the electoral system isn’t the only thing that holds citizens back from becoming fully engaged in democratic processes, she adds. “It’s the distrust of politicians, it’s the distrust of the big money that’s used to run elections in Vancouver... It’s a feeling of,‘Why waste your time on electoral politics when you can be doing more community organizing?’ I think there are a lot of things that contribute to low voter turnout, particularly with young people.”

Neil Monckton, chair of municipal-issues advocacy group ThinkCity, says the at-large voting system discriminates against minorities and, for that reason, is ruled unconstitutional in parts of the United States. “We’re the only city left in Canada in the top eight [metropolitan cities] that elects people in this really old, outdated way from the 1930s. Calgary, Edmonton — everybody does wards. No other city but Vancouver is like this,” he says. “Voter turnout continues to go down... We’re not at all engaged around elections, and we have to ask ourselves why.”

Monckton discounts the results of the 2004 plebiscite because he doesn’t think it was fair. “Putting a plebiscite in front of people using the same system that sustains the at-large system is a bit of a conundrum,” he says. “I don’t think it was something that reflects the majority view of people of the city. In fact, every public polling that I’ve seen on this in the past 10 years has said the majority favours getting rid of the at-large system.”

For NPA councillor Suzanne Anton, the debate on wards ended with the plebiscite. “There was a lot of energy spent on that a few years ago... and the voters of Vancouver clearly chose to stay with the at-large system. These things consume a lot of time and energy in city staff and resources and so on,” she says. “I favour the at-large system.”

The piece of electoral reform that must be addressed, Anton says, is campaign financing. “We are the lawless wild west in election financing; there are very few rules,” she says, adding that Vision Vancouver’s U.S. campaign donors in the 2008 municipal election would have been more controversial if the money had gone to a different party. “Imagine if the NPA did that. You would have people setting their hair on fire. It seemed to be okay when Vision did it, but it is shocking.”

Premier Campbell’s electoral reform task force will report back by the end of May 2010.

PHOTO: A new B.C. government task force is revisiting a previously proposed electoral system in which representatives would be elected by neighbourhood. By Jackie Wong.

Reaching out to senior renters

WestEnder
October 15, 2009

Since the landmark mass eviction of tenants from the West End’s Bay Towers apartment building three years ago, the advocacy work of local organizations such as Renters at Risk and the West End Residents Association has resulted in stronger public awareness of the precarious housing situation facing renters, who make up 80 per cent of households in the West End. But awareness of the issue hasn’t stopped mass evictions and volatile landlord-tenant relationships from continuing in the neighbourhood.

The stress of finding and keeping affordable rental housing takes a particular toll on seniors, says Sharon Isaak, who co-founded Renters at Risk after taking her Bay Towers eviction notice (issued by the now notorious Hollyburn Properties) to B.C. Supreme Court, where she and other tenants fought for — and won — the right to continue living in their apartments during renovations Hollyburn claimed would necessitate eviction.

“One of the seniors that got thrown out of my building... had been living in the building for years. She was the first one to go,” Isaak recalls. “Watching her move out and move into her daughter’s place in Kamloops was heartbreaking.”

Since her Bay Towers experience in 2006, Isaak has counselled and educated numerous tenants on their rights under B.C.’s tenancy legislation. Seniors, she says, continue to be among the most vulnerable tenants she meets. Fixed incomes and limited resources can put a cap on their ability to advocate for themselves, which often results in their being displaced and moved around, especially when they face an eviction notice that other tenants choose to fight. “The first people to leave are the seniors, because of the stress of the situation,” Isaak says. “They quite often have no other option but to move in with family in another city, another province, and they have to leave everything behind.”

As part of efforts to raise awareness of tenant rights and to address the many affordable-housing concerns facing West End residents, Isaak has started holding weekly outreach sessions at Gordon Neighbourhood House under the title of Senior Housing Outreach Coordinator. The position is the product of a $25,000 United Way Seed grant that partners Gordon Neighbourhood House, the West End Residents Association, Women in Search of Housing Society (WISHS), and the West End Seniors Network. Isaak will be available to assist renters with their tenancy concerns on Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

When WE interviewed Isaak on her first day of outreach work last week (October 8), she already had two appointments. “There has been a real increase in evictions over the last three years because of the tight [rental] market, and because other companies are recognizing the opportunity to make significant profits by evicting tenants to do renovations [and then] increase the rent,” she says. “We need to have a review of the [Residential Tenancy] Act on certain issues to stop and solve these problems.”

John Lucas, executive director of the Gordon Neighbourhood House, says he has seen many seniors come through the neighbourhood house in search of advice on disconcerting rumours they hear about the rental buildings in which they live. “A number of seniors are in the position of not knowing exactly what’s going to happen to them,” he says. “A lot of seniors become stressed because they hear rumours about their apartments, [such as that] they’re going to be sold and it’s going to be renovated.”

Moderate- and low-income renters over the age of 40 are a vulnerable population that Leslie Stern, of the Women In Search of Housing Society, has been working with for years. “If we don’t help people at 45 and above to start earning more money and saving money and doing personal planning, they’re going to go into their senior years with even less,” she says. “Landlords don’t want these people anymore, because they don’t have the ability to pay the high rents that they think the market can take. That’s where I think we’re at a crisis in housing.”

In addition to Isaak’s weekly work at Gordon Neighbourhood House, the project, called the West End Seniors Affordable Housing initiative, will host public forums this winter and next spring on tenant rights and affordable-housing concerns. The first forum, called “The Right to Rent: Aging in Place,” happens November 22 at 2 p.m. For more information, contact Sharon Isaak at isaaksharon@gmail.com.

PHOTO: Sharon Isaak, co-founders of tenants’ rights group Renters at Risk, says many seniors would sooner move out of their home than deal with the stress of fighting unfair eviction. By Doug Shanks.

Education feature: It's never too late to change

WestEnder
October 15, 2009

Like many people enduring the seemingly endless drudgery of life in a cubicle farm, Sharon McFayden was biding her time in a job (in her case, as a project administrator for an internet-banking software company) and looking elsewhere for more fulfilling work. She started volunteering at a homeless shelter in the Downtown Eastside, and found that despite the late nights, she had more energy at work the day after her volunteer shifts than she did the rest of the week. “I realized that the thing that was missing in the job I was doing is that there was no heart,” she recalls. “It was just computers.”

McFayden was eventually laid off from her job along with 46 of her coworkers — a situation that coincided fortuitously with a full-time staff opening at the shelter where she volunteered. She stayed in the job for almost four years before entering the Social Service Worker program at Langara College to formalize her skills. “It turned out to be one of the best things I ever did for myself,” she says. “I never went to college or university when I finished high school. I’m in my late forties now, so to go back to school was a little daunting... but I totally enjoyed it, which I never did when I was in high school.”

McFadyen graduated from the one-year certificate program in June 2008, and is now working as the Shelter Programs Manager for Salvation Army Harbour Light in Vancouver. She’s also taking classes toward a degree in social work. Her new career, she says, couldn’t be more different than the administrative jobs that used to fill her days. “The people that are living on the street, people who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, people living in poverty— all they need is somebody to care, and there are far too many people who don’t,” she says. “The reason I keep doing [this job] is because it’s needed... and I really, really enjoy the company of the people that I work with. They’re intelligent, they’re funny, they’re no different than the rest of us, except that they’re having to deal with other issues.”

With the fourth annual Homeless Action Week wrapping up in Metro Vancouver on October 17, the region’s ongoing struggles with homelessness and affordable housing have been the focus of extensive public attention and discussion. But, of course, effectively addressing and solving such broad issues requires more than an annual week of events. For many, the missing link lies in career-driven educational training that can facilitate the shift to a new job.

“It’s never too late to pursue academic study. It’s not always easy — [it requires] balance between study, work, and family responsibilities — but being a mature student is sometimes an advantage, as it brings a lot of focus, life experience, and perspective to one’s interest and work,” says Faith Eiboff, a single parent who graduated last week with the first-ever honours degree from Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences. Eiboff also received the Top Honours Student Award for her outstanding studies addressing housing, homelessness, and mental illness.

Eiboff is now pursuing a master’s degree in public health at SFU, and she plans to continue with research focusing on homelessness and housing. “My hope is to inform the future direction of housing policy and development, help prevent the occurrence of homelessness, and contribute to the development of effective strategies to better serve the housing needs of the more vulnerable and marginalized populations of society,” she says.

As someone who faced her own housing crisis a few years ago, Eiboff has first-hand knowledge of the circumstances that can push someone into homelessness, even though she didn’t end up on the street herself. “I grew up in Vancouver, and have witnessed the growth of homelessness here, particularly in the Downtown Eastside,” she says. “I hope that my academic research and other involvements will make a contribution, even in some small way, to improve the living conditions and quality of life for people living in Vancouver.”

The School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC is another hub for activity related to housing policy and city planning. Spring 2009 grad Latosia Campbell, who is now working for the regional municipality of Fort Buffalo in Fort McMurray, Alberta, will return to Vancouver tomorrow (October 16) to speak at a UBC symposium on challenges to sustainable and affordable housing. Campbell’s research focused on Vancouver’s rental-housing market –something she first became interested in when faced with the struggle of finding affordable housing as an international student in Vancouver. “I first stayed on campus, and campus housing was okay, but I really wanted to live in the city and have that interaction with city life,” she says. “I was unable to do so because rents were very high in the city, especially downtown.”

Campbell’s research suggests more collaboration is needed between different levels of government in their approaches to affordable housing, and so does Eiboff’s. “More affordable housing and... service coordination is necessary to achieve a greater impact,” Eiboff says. “This suggests the need for a comprehensive provincial-level homelessness strategy to better support initiatives that are working. I think this also warrants mention of the need for a national housing strategy. Canada is one of the few countries in the world without a national housing strategy.”

If students like Eiboff, Campbell, and McFadyen continue to contribute to the large body of work and discussion around citywide and provincial housing issues, a national housing strategy — and more — could be in the cards for Canada’s housing future.

B.C. publishers left reeling by funding cuts

WestEnder
October 15, 2009

One week before the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival kicks off its 21st annual edition, three B.C. literary organizations have learned that the provincial-government funding they’ve relied on for years has been dropped.

The Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia (ABPBC), the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP), and BC BookWorld newspaper were notified of the funding cut, effective immediately, on October 6, via phone calls from the office of the B.C. government’s arts and culture branch.

“That was the first we knew of it, that phone call on the 6th,” ABPBC executive director Margaret Reynolds told WE. “There was no discussion ahead of time... We would normally be applying for our operating funding now.”

The $45,000 in funding the ABPBC has now lost from its operating budget comprises 20 per cent of its annual budget. But since Reynolds’s operations are already tight (she shares an office with only one other ABPBC staff member), the cut, she says, will significantly affect new projects, such as a digital library of B.C. books the ABPBC is about to launch for libraries across the province.

“We’re particularly concerned that there [likely will be] no budget for the BC Arts Council for next year, and we’re concerned that we’ve been cut 100 per cent; we’re concerned that other arts groups are going to fall into the same situation,” says Reynolds. “I feel badly for the writers festival, because that’s a celebratory event and does so much for our community, and to have this come on the eve of it is not good news — it’s rather embarrassing.

“I hope the government is watching and seeing how we’re viewed internationally. We’ve got writers from all countries here. And what are they going to think of a society that doesn’t support its writers and publishers?”

Aside from membership dues, funding for the BCAMP relied on its $20,000 in annual provincial-government funding. Executive director Rhona MacInnes says the already trim operations of the organization, which supports the province’s magazine industry, will now need to shrink even more — but she’s not sure how. “We’re a two-person office... We feel like we’re doing the work of five between the two of us,” she says.

Like Reynolds, MacInnes was notified of the cuts by a phone call from the office of Andrea Henning, executive director of the B.C. government’s arts and culture branch. While she was anticipating some funding cuts to her organization, she wasn’t expecting all her funding to be slashed. “I understand there’s a recession. None of us are saying, ‘Absolutely no cuts.’ We’re saying, let’s be fair about this. Let’s not decimate an entire sector,” she says. “Seventy-eight thousand people make their living and contribute to the economy through this sector. That’s 78,000 taxpayers. We’re not just artists. We are part of this economy.”

BC BookWorld’s $31,000 in funding was cut less than a month before publisher Alan Twigg was scheduled to renew the publication’s 21-year funding partnership. The newspaper, which is distributed quarterly to more than 900 outlets in B.C., was named by the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing as “the most important cog in the infrastructure” in a report commissioned by the provincial government.

BC BookWorld, the ABPBC, BCAMP and its supporters have formed an ad-hoc organization called the Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in B.C. to draw public attention to the cuts.

Vancouver-West End MLA and NDP culture critic Spencer Herbert has projected that there will be 90-per-cent funding cuts for arts and culture in the 2010-11 provincial budget, which has been discussed by the provincial budget committee this month in public consultation sessions across the province. BC Liberal finance minister Colin Hansen will present the budget March 2, 2010.

PHOTO: Margaret Reynolds (left), executive director of Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, and Rhona MacInnes, executive director of the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers, were given no advance warning by the provincial government that their annual funding was being cut. By Doug Shanks.