Urban agriculture moves into the mainstream

WestEnder
April 21, 2010

While urban agriculture may appear to be a relatively new trend in Vancouver, everybody knows that people have been growing their own food for centuries. One crucial development, however, is that the City of Vancouver is now providing more municipal-level infrastructure for people to grow their own food, dispose of food waste, and learn about food-security issues. The City marks this year’s Earth Day (Apr. 22) by making it the launch date for a new curbside compost pick-up program, which is initially restricted to homeowners but will expand in the future to include apartments and businesses.

On a somewhat related note, council approved a new policy earlier this month that allows Vancouver residents to keep backyard hens. While that issue spurred naysaying from some members of the media and the general public, it’s old hat for Michael Levenston, who penned the first article on the backyard-hen debate for City Farmer magazine in 1978. “It was [about] a woman in trouble for raising chickens in her backyard. A protest went to City Hall, and, of course, the woman lost her bid to keep them,” Levenston told WE in a phone interview from his Kitsilano office.

City council’s recent decision to approve backyard hens, Levenston says, marks an ideological shift that proves urban agriculture has moved from the fringes to the centre of mainstream thinking. “We [City Farmer] went from being the fringiest of the fringe to a group that speaks the same language as our educators, our leaders in universities, our leaders in politics,” he says. “In the end, it’s the same thing that our ancestors did: It’s growing food close to where we live, in backyards, to help feed ourselves.”

City Farmer magazine is now defunct, but in the mid-’90s Levenston launched the first blog on city farming, CityFarmer.org. He continues to write about urban agriculture at the website CityFarmer.info, as well as maintain the City Farmer demonstration garden at Maple and 6th. Designed to help educate the public on how to grow their own food, Levenston believes the garden has played a significant role in showing the benefits of urban agriculture. “It gives some strength and positive feeling to communities to know that there’s something we can do [for the environment],” he says. “You don’t have to feel defeated... There’s something you can do to improve things.”

There’s still room for improvement, though. According to Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer, the Greenest City Action Team (an initiative developed by Mayor Gregor Robertson in early 2009) has a goal of decreasing Vancouver’s food-related carbon footprint by 33 per cent over the next decade. By extension, the City is increasing its support for composting initiatives, community gardens, and farmers’ markets, matching already strong support from the public. “We have way more people who want to access community gardens than we have community gardens right now,” Reimer admits. “If anything, we’re lagging behind the public now, not ahead of them.”

A case in point is the recent growth of East Vancouver’s Fresh Roots (FreshRoots.ca), an urban-agriculture project that aims to convert six East Vancouver backyards into food-producing gardens by the end of the year. Those who have paid to participate in the project will get a share of the harvest. The initiative started a few years ago, when project co-founder Gray Oron started growing food for his housemates. “I’m an avid cook, so I like to have fresh, good food. And I don’t like the implications of our food system when it comes to the carbon footprint, the way it’s being produced, and the resources it uses and abuses,” he says.

After successfully growing enough produce to feed his 10 housemates, Oron embarked on a pilot project last year that included seven garden shares, and Fresh Roots grew from there.

“We’ve become a B.C. business: I’m beginning collaborations with different youth organizations, preparing various forms of youth curriculum and skills-training through urban agriculture,” says Fresh Roots co-founder Ilana Labow. She and Gray also have a team of volunteers and UBC interns working with them on the backyard gardens, and news of the project continues to spread. In fact, most of this year’s Fresh Roots participants learned of it through word of mouth. A major draw, Labow says, is affordability. “[A lot of] money goes into maintaining a green lawn, as opposed to putting that energy towards growing food and knocking down the food bill at the end of the week,” she says. “This is so much more affordable for folks — to have food growing in their backyard — than going and buying it.”

Responding to what he thinks is a dearth of locally produced food in Vancouver grocery stores, Labow’s friend, 22-year-old Martin Gunst, has embarked on a food-security enterprise of his own. Gunst will graduate from UBC next month and start working full-time as Grocer Gunst (GrocerGunst.com), a bicycle-delivery grocer specializing in produce grown at local farms. “Eating food that I know is grown sustainably and locally is important to me, and I find that when I go food shopping it’s pretty difficult to find food that meets those qualifications, with the exception of the farmers’ markets,” Gunst says. “So, I wanted to start a business that would make eating farmers’-market-type produce more accessible.

“I think the farmers’-market movement of the past 15 years has played an important role in increasing people’s interest in having a personal connection with their food. Farmers’ markets have increased people’s interest in putting a face on their food, and knowing that their food comes from a place that they can trust.”

PHOTO: Michael Levenston in the City Farmer demonstration garden. By Doug Shanks.

Walking to discover the city

WestEnder
April 21, 2010

In her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, urban-planning theorist and activist Jane Jacobs described what she called “the sidewalk ballet,” a term for the rich pedestrian life she felt was crucial to a city’s vibrancy. “Individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole,” she wrote. “The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

The American-born Jacobs, who relocated to Toronto in 1968, passed away at age 89 in 2006, but her influence on subsequent generations of people who work in fields associated with urban and community planning is widespread. In 2007, a legacy project honouring Jacobs’s life, called Jane’s Walk, was launched in Toronto and New York City. Described by its organizers as “a series of free neighbourhood walking tours that helps put people in touch with their environment and with each other,” Vancouver played host to its first Jane’s Walk in 2008, and the event has grown to include dozens of cities in the U.S. and Canada. More than 700 people participated in the second Vancouver edition of the event last year, and Think City, a local civic-issues group, hopes for an even stronger turnout when it hosts the city’s third Jane’s Walk, which take place at various locations on May 1 and 2.

“Jane’s Walk has really provided a vehicle for people to come out of their houses and talk to their neighbours and talk to the other people in their community,” says Jane’s Walk Vancouver chair Kim Fleming. “People want to have a reason to get out and walk around and to know the city.”

Think City’s wide-ranging roster of Jane’s Walk hosts each pick their own route and the theme of their walk, which covers topics including local history, public art, housing, and urban growth. While Think City has played a part in recruiting some of the walk hosts, others have volunteered. For the first time this year, walks will also be hosted in Surrey and on the UBC campus, as well as in the form of bike rides.

“Livability and sustainability are really at the heart of Jane’s Walk and Jane Jacobs’s work,” says Think City board member Kera McArthur. “Livable communities are walkable communities. We really want to promote that idea, that walking and sustainable transportation are absolutely inseparable from creating a livable, green city.”

Last year’s Burrard Bridge bike-lane trial helped catalyze interest in pedestrian-advocacy issues, says McArthur. “We’ve also noticed that with an aging population, there are more issues and concerns around pedestrians and walking. As we move towards a livable, sustainable city, people want to get out and walk and be part of their communities, and we’re seeing that emphasis.”

For more information on this year's Jane's Walk, visit JanesWalk.net and ThinkCity.ca.

PHOTO: Jane's Walk organizers in Gastown. By Doug Shanks.

West End residents unite over City zoning plans

WestEnder
April 14, 2010

West End residents presented city council with more than 2,000 petition signatures last week in support of developing a neighbourhood community plan. The petition was circulated in response to mounting concerns among local residents about West End rezoning applications that have been introduced under Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Short Term Incentives for Rental (STIR) program. The program, intended to speed up rental-housing development, allows for expedited permit processing. But the program has caused worry among many people living in the community, due to the allowances it makes for building height, density, and affordability. In response, they have launched neighbourhood campaigns and blogs, such as WestEndVision.ca, and circulated the petition, which urges the City to reconsider the applications. The petition, called “No Rezoning Without a Comprehensive Plan,” asks that the City maintain its six-storey maximum building height for the West End (in contrast to a proposed 22-storey apartment building at 1401 Comox Street), and engage in a consultation process with residents to protect neighbourhood livability and character.

The residents’ petition was delivered to Mayor Gregor Robertson and Vancouver City Council in advance of a nine-hour council meeting on April 8. The meeting was largely dominated by debate concerning COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth’s motion to engage the West End community in an open discussion of its needs and provide a timeline for a community-planning process.

“I think that everybody is pretty well unanimous that they want some kind of comprehensive plan for the West End, that spot rezonings mean that individual developers are being lobbied by individual groups, rather than [there being] a comprehensive plan of what’s needed in the community,” Woodsworth said in an interview with WE. “Neighbourhoods are the strength of this city. You’ve got the heritage, you’ve got parks, you’ve got livability and sustainability. We can only maintain them if we engage the neighbourhood in a visioning process.”

Vision Vancouver councillor and West End resident Tim Stevenson has been working on West End housing issues since he was elected to council in 2005. He called parts of Woodsworth’s original motion redundant. City staff, he says, are already working on a community plan for the West End, but other neighbourhoods are ahead of it on the list.

Grandview-Woodlands will be the City’s next stop for developing a community plan, after it finishes with Mount Pleasant this fall. The process, Stevenson says, takes about two years. “All that’s going on in the West End is part of a very transparent, open process that the City has always engaged in,” he says. “This is not different except for the fact that we now have put into the mix rental housing.”

Rusty Ker, who has been participating in an ad-hoc group of fellow West End residents who share information about neighbourhood development, believes he speaks for many when he says the rezoning applications do not mean business as usual. “The big impact [on] the community is the apparent unwillingness of the planning department to listen to the concerns of the community [with regard to] the 1401 Comox development,” he says. “It is a five-fold increase in [floor-space ratio, the size of a building’s footprint in relation to the size of the lot it’s built on].”

Ker adds that a rezoning application for 1215 Bidwell Street, currently home to the nightclub Maxine’s Hideaway and a grocery store, is an increase of three times the allowable density under the City’s current zoning, “with minimal return to the West End community in the form of contributions that would allow improvements to area amenities such as the library, the aquatic centre, and other area amenities that the West Enders sorely need.”

Another West End resident, Randy Helten, is supportive of city council engaging in discussions about the community’s future, but he is critical of the way the city’s planning department is communicating to council. “People who understand the language of land-use planning are quite disappointed that the planning department was not portraying correct information to the council,” he says. “[West End planning issues are] the tip of the iceberg. It has to do not only with single-site rezoning, but the whole way that planning decisions are made in the city right now.”

Members of the public are invited to attend an open house about the 1401 Comox Street rezoning application on Tuesday, Apr. 20, at the Coast Plaza Hotel (1763 Comox), 4-7pm. A West End town hall meeting takes place later that week on Thursday, Apr. 22, also at the Coast Plaza, 7-8:30pm. Details will be posted at WestEndVision.ca

PHOTO by Doug Shanks.

Homelessness rises

WestEnder
April 14, 2010

Homelessness in Vancouver has risen 12 per cent over the last two years, according to the preliminary results of the City of Vancouver’s 2010 homeless count, released last week.

According to the City’s numbers, 1,762 people are homeless in Vancouver, which is 186 more than were tallied in the last count in 2008. As of this year’s count, 1,334 people are living in shelters, while 428 live on the street. When the City’s first homeless count took place in 2002, the City identified 670 homeless individuals. That number went up to 1,364 by 2005.

In a report to City of Vancouver staff and council, city manager Penny Ballem noted the effectiveness of shelters in reducing street homelessness. “While solving all homelessness is a large goal to attain, other cities are demonstrating real progress by targeting efforts on getting people off the street as the first step,” Ballem wrote. “Our review of best practice has shown that street homelessness is the most expensive and socially erosive part of the homelessness problem.”

For Ballem and Vancouver city councillors, the numbers from the latest homeless count provide evidence to support their interest in keeping the emergency shelters opened by Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) operating past their scheduled April 30 closing date, when operational funding from the Province runs out. While, as yet, senior housing officials from the Province say no final decision has been made about the future of the shelters, city councillors like Kerry Jang have been clear in stating their belief that pitching in for operational funding is not the City’s mandate. “Operations is provincial responsibility,” he says, “and now they’re saying, ‘Oh, no, we want the city to pay for half....’ It boggles my mind that they would actually want to pass off their responsibilities onto a city that doesn’t have the money or capacity to actually operate shelters or interim housing. What we’re able to do, and have done, is provide the land and capital costs.”

The B.C. government has invested $7.25 million into three HEAT shelters and four winter shelters since 2008, in addition to an annual $17 million budget to operate 700 year-round emergency shelter beds. Provincial officials note they are also investing $172 million to build six of 14 City-owned sites for long-term social housing.

Meanwhile, opposition critic and Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert is worried about what will happen in the immediate future if the HEAT shelters close. “What do you do if the hundreds of people that have been staying inside are now going to be forced out onto the street?” he says. “What the province is doing here is saying [to] all those folks who have been assisted, ‘Go out and find somebody’s doorstep [or] some park or some back alley to sleep in,’ because without a shelter, there’s no other place to go. In fact, I’ve had people come into my office looking for shelter space so they can get off the street, but I have to tell them, ‘Well, all the shelters are full.’”

PHOTO: A new survey says homelessness in Vancouver has risen 12 per cent over the past two years. By Doug Shanks.

City mulls summer closure of Robson Street

WestEnder
April 14, 2010

Robson Street may soon hark back to the raucous party atmosphere it played host to during the Olympics, if City of Vancouver staff support a motion to close parts of the street to cars on weekends during summer.

COPE councillor David Cadman brought forward the motion in council April 6, asking City staff to report on the viability of the idea. The effect, Cadman says, would be similar to the traffic closures on Robson during the 2010 Winter Games in February: Pedestrians, not cars, would fill the street, creating a festive environment.

“When I looked at the difference between the way in which we celebrated the Olympics and what has sometimes happened on Granville Street, where essentially you have a bar culture and you have adults, it’s very different,” Cadman said in an interview with WE, adding he was particularly pleased to see families and people of all ages on Robson and Granville streets during the Olympics. “I think this just opens up the possibility of us really beginning to look at, and cooperate on, creating a new dynamic to our downtown core that is celebratory, that is pedestrian, and that brings people together.”

The Vancouver Public Space Network (VPSN), a non-partisan advocacy group, wrote a letter to the City in support of Cadman’s motion, with a few suggestions. The letter points out that the motion is not precise in identifying which parts of Robson would be closed. “Given that the pedestrian areas created along Robson were in some state of flux during the Games (in terms of number of blocks closed and degree of closure), some clarity is needed here,” VPSN members wrote in the letter. “We suggest that the space on Robson that is closed be restricted to an area east of Burrard and west of Granville — and ideally less than this.”

The VPSN recommends a closure of the area surrounding Robson Square, which is currently under renovations. “We are concerned about the lack of information presently available about the extent of the renovation work,” wrote the VPSN. The letter urges City staff to confirm the extent of the renovation taking place at Robson Square, and also encourages the Province to make that information available to the public. These and other communication strategies on the part of the City could make for a more successful street-closure process, they say.

Cadman is hopeful that City staff will consider implementing the Robson closures this summer instead of waiting until next year, even though he’s mindful of the project’s short timeline. “I know we’re a little behind the ball in terms of timing on this,” he admitted. “[But] one needed only to go down there during the Olympics to see that [Robson] had become an iconic place for celebration in Vancouver. I think it opened the eyes of a lot of people to what anyone who’s been to Europe knows: Walking [pedestrian-only] streets can be very dynamic, very interesting, and very good for business.”

COVER: Home win: the global street soccer movement is transforming Vancouver’s less fortunate

WestEnder
April 7, 2010

It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon in March. Inside the Carnegie Community Centre, a social hub of the Downtown Eastside located at Main and Hastings streets, people are engaged in their usual weekend activities: eating lunch, playing cards, and reading the newspaper, away from the noise outside.

But all is not quiet. Shouts and cheers can be heard from the small gymnasium on the second floor. A lively group, comprised mostly of men, greet each other enthusiastically, shedding their winter jackets to reveal matching black T-shirts and workout gear. They’re members of the Portland FC street-soccer team, meeting for their weekly Sunday practice under the direction of head coach Alan Bates, a resident physician in UBC’s psychiatry department. Bates, a longtime soccer player in his early thirties, is firm yet encouraging as he leads the group through warm-up activities and soccer drills, explaining to the team that today is different because I’m here.

“So, look busy!” jokes Don Chran, an energetic forward who has played with the team since its inception in 2008. Chran, formerly a resident of the New Fountain Shelter in Gastown, recently moved into social housing at Woodward’s — a significant improvement over his time on the street. One of the first users of the New Fountain when it opened its doors as part of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Homeless Emergency Action Team, also in 2008, the shelter was where Chran found a sense of community in Vancouver. He became homeless shortly after arriving here from the U.S. and, he explains, “making some bad choices.”

“Everybody I know is basically a friend, or a friend of a friend, through that shelter,” Chran says.

When shelter staff began organizing a soccer team made up of New Fountain users in 2009, Chran was among the first to sign up. Encouraged by shelter workers such as Vancouver Park Board commissioner Sarah Blyth (who also helped secure sponsorships to get players running shoes and outfitting), he started attending practices regularly.

Portland FC’s biweekly practices — Thursday mornings at Andy Livingstone Park, and Sunday afternoons at the Carnegie — have played a transformative role in Chran’s and other players’ lives. They’ve made friends, improved their physical fitness, and become part of a supportive, empowering community. Many players have found housing and jobs, and have reduced or eliminated substance abuse, during their time on the team.

“A lot of times, if someone’s at a place like a shelter, they get babied so much, and all of a sudden they’re in an SRO, and they don’t have any support group or infrastructure,” Chran says. “You get someone a home, but after homelessness, then what?”

Even though Chran now lives on his own at Woodward’s, he feels connected to his friends from New Fountain through the soccer team. “I still see a lot of these people, and they can help me out, ask how you’re doing, make sure I’m still alive — stuff like that.”

★★★

Portland FC is part of a growing street-soccer movement in Vancouver, across Canada, and around the world. Its players, most of whom are homeless or at risk of homelessness, come together to play at parks and community centres. The aim is to empower and inspire players through community-building and athletics. National teams have been competing in a Homeless World Cup since 2003. This September, the Cup will take place in Rio de Janeiro, where teams from 64 countries are expected to participate.

Street soccer in Vancouver started only two years ago, with the Dreamcatchers soccer team, launched through Vancouver community programmer Sandy MacKeigan’s twice-weekly program at Oppenheimer Park. “Most of the folks that accessed that program were either living in the area, homeless, or street-involved,” MacKeigan says. The team went on to win a gold medal in 2008 at a national tournament in Calgary, marking Vancouver’s official debut in Canada’s street-soccer movement.

The Dreamcatchers evolved into what is currently known as the Eastside Suneagles. Other teams, such as Portland FC, sprung up around the Vancouver area. Now, with street-soccer teams in Burnaby, North Vancouver, and throughout the Downtown Eastside, MacKeigan and other organizers have been talking about building a Vancouver-wide street-soccer league. “[Right now] we’re running separately, we’re managed individually, we’re all struggling to continue playing,” she says. “Getting gyms [for practice] is really hard; we’re all looking for the same money.”

Coaches like Portland FC’s Bates, Blyth, and former Vision Vancouver campaigner Kurt Heinrich, volunteer their time for practices and seek out sponsorships. The ultimate goal, MacKeigan says, is to unify the city’s street-soccer teams in a league to support activities such as hosting the annual national tournament, which took place in Toronto last year.

Toronto’s street-soccer scene started six years ago under the direction of Paul Gregory, who now manages Street Soccer Canada, the sport’s national organizing body. A homeless-shelter worker and counsellor, Gregory would play pick-up outside the shelters where he worked. “All of a sudden, I’d have a dozen or more guys playing,” he recalls over the phone from his home outside Toronto. “It combined my love of soccer and the fact that I knew these guys needed to be connected in a way that wasn’t working currently in the shelter system. While we warehouse people and put them in these places, there’s no real next step, in a lot of cases. They’re not engaged or empowered in any way.”

Gregory formed a street-soccer team that summer, which represented Canada at the 2004 Homeless World Cup. “It was just an unbelievable celebration of talent and skill,” he says. “It was a bit of a life-changer for me, and for a lot of the guys that went.

“You’d never look at these guys the same way after you’ve seen them play,” Gregory continues. “We’ve had a number of heavy alcoholics and crack users over the years, and when they start playing, they get off it, at least a little bit. It’s a major use of [harm reduction] — you replace drug use [with soccer]. If it’s one night a week, that’s a success.”

For Gregory, street soccer has been a refreshing alternative to traditional approaches to dealing with homelessness. “Oh, someone needs a job,’” he says, by way of example. “Well, you know what? Maybe not. Maybe not right now. He needs something else, and the connection of soccer and sport is just something that goes deep into your core.”

★★★

Back in Vancouver, New Fountain Shelter staffer Zoran Barazanci has seen similar results with Portland FC. “We have over 70 per cent of [players] off drugs — for weeks now, and months, which is huge,” he says. “We bring some happiness and some relief from everyday problems. It’s good for us — the staff — and it’s good for them. We made a lot of friends like this.”

For Portland FC goalie Kevin King, playing on the team has helped him keep clean. “I’ve had my slips here and there, but it’s helped keep me grounded, and from going back to the life I used to live,” he says. “Getting back into athletics and keeping your body safe — I can’t be doing that, being involved with drugs, because then I would have no strength to be able to keep going.”

Elaine Smith, the only woman on the team, says it’s the people that keep her coming back. “These people here, I trust them; they’re looking out for everybody’s best interests,” she says. “They set aside race, class, gender. In a very transient area, it’s kind of nice to know that someone’s looking over you, and making sure that all’s well.”

For more information on street soccer in Vancouver, visit VancouverStreetSoccer.com. As part of efforts to raise money for the team to participate in the Homeless World Cup in Rio de Janeiro this fall, Portland FC is holding a fundraiser, feature live music and a silent auction, on Thursday, April 15, at the Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tickets $25 from 778-997-3930.

PHOTO: Portland FC after practice at the Carnegie Community Centre. By Jackie Wong.

Budget negotiations will determine fate of homeless shelters

WestEnder
April 7, 2010

Seven Vancouver homeless shelters are slated to close April 30, but if the Province and the City are able to reach an agreement on funding, three of them will remain open.

The three shelters in question — located at 201 Central Street, near Main Street Station; 51-B West Cordova, in Gastown; and at First United Church, in the Downtown Eastside — have been heavily used since their doors opened in 2008 as part of Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT). The other four shelters, referred to as Winter Response neighbourhood-based shelters, are located on East Broadway, in Kitsilano, in the West End, and under the Granville Bridge.

While housing officials for the Province say they’re waiting on the City to offer to pay half the operating costs to keep the three shelters open, Vision Vancouver councillor Kerry Jang says the Province is shirking its responsibilities. “The province has to come up with those operating dollars,” he says. “That’s their job.”

As for the Province’s negotiations with the City, Jang says, “They’d never really spoken to us in detail. We [the City] don’t have the dollars because there has been no change in our budget.”

Provincial housing officials say the Province has provided more than $6.8 million in funding for HEAT shelters since December 2008. On top of that, they say, there are just over 600 year-round shelter beds in the city that receive annual provincial funding of almost $17 million.

At First United Church, Reverend Ric Matthews is still waiting for information on the future of the 250-person shelter he has run out of the church sanctuary since December 2008. “There’s been no formal conversation; we’ve been pretty reliant on what we can glean from Facebook pages of [provincial housing minister] Rich Coleman and the Globe and Mail and so on,” he says. “But during the Olympics, Gordon Campbell did very specifically shake my hand and say he wanted to reassure me that after the Olympics, their commitments to the issue of homelessness would not go away.”

While Matthews is sympathetic to the challenge of finding funds from both the City and the Province, the bottom line, he says, is that there is greater need for shelter for Vancouver’s homeless population than existing shelters are able to accommodate. “People have developed enough trust and comfort to be in [the shelters] that they don’t automatically, if there isn’t pressure, go back to being outside,” he says. “It’s not just because they’re cold that they’re coming in. It’s because they feel safe in here, and feel okay to be in here... At the end of the day, the problem with homelessness is not necessarily housing. It’s homes.”

Matthews describes the First United shelter’s users as being at the extreme end of society’s margins. “They’re folk who most deeply distrust society or have been hurt by it... These are folk who are least likely [to simply] just go back into some formal housing because we offer it to them,” he says.

Shelters like First United, Matthews says, serve as an intermediary home between living on the street and more structured housing. “This is the place where all their life possessions are, this is the place where their mail comes to, this is the place where they get their three meals a day, and this is the place where they sleep. Well, how do you define home other than that?”