Above: 2086-2098 W 7th Ave and 2091 W 8th Ave. Rezoning application approved in principle by Vancouver City Council at public hearing July 26, 2022, adopted through BC Legislative Assembly Bill 26 - Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 5) Amendment Act of 2023. Development Permit Board approved, Development Permit issued Jan 15, 2024. The provincial government intervention is currently subject of a Supreme Court challenge.
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For decades, dating back to at least the 1980s, leaders at all levels of government tried to ignore, minimize, or blame each other for Vancouver's growing problem of homelessness. Though each individual's story is unique, the situation for many is that they find it impossible to cope without self-medicating addictive analgesics like opiates and alcohol to suppress mental and/or physical pain that is usually the result of neglect, abuse or trauma. Finally, after the indigent and homeless population had become a huge civic embarrassment--even attracting international wonderment at how so many can live, suffer and die on our sidewalks and alleys surrounded by opulence--governments belatedly began to take action.
But instead of heeding the advice of experienced caregivers backed by compelling research--some conducted by Dr. Julian Somers of SFU--showing that a decentralized or 'scattered' housing approach works best for those in need and for communities in general, our governments have been pushing an extreme version of the discredited congregate model, cramming hard-to-house residents into outsized low-barrier facilities, like the notorious Marguerite Ford Apartments.
Worse, a 13-storey 129-unit SRO-type building situated a block north of the new subway station at Broadway and Arbutus Street is on the way, funded by the Province and approved by the City despite an unprecedented outpouring of concern from the Kitsilano community--with other similarly humongous facilities to follow in other Vancouver neighbourhoods. This project even contradicts BC Housing policy (which was scrubbed from their website without explanation) stating that such facilities should house no more than 40-50 individuals. Even that is a stretch--not supported by anecdotes or formal research.
Because of the modular construction it will be taller than a typical 13-storey apartment building, with small windows, and facades bereft of balconies due to the elevated risk of suicide and the certainty that many would get used as spare bedrooms and for storage. The prefabricated but permanent structure is devoid of design flexibility; the micro-units cannot be combined for larger apartments, making it about as adaptable as a prison. And despite attempts at decoration it will forever look like rows of self-storage lockers stood up on end.
The building site is undersized and the surroundings have vulnerabilities. It will be adjacent to an elementary school and in close proximity to a shelter for battered women. The latter has said they will be forced to relocate or close down due to an open drug-sharing common room in the new building. Consider also that very few of the residents will be working poor. They will not be going off to jobs, but be an outsized presence concentrated around the station where violent incidents and disturbing encounters could be frequent enough to discourage transit use. Despite these challenges, the support services will be minimal, and experience shows that large numbers of low-barrier residents in a single facility, particularly around a transit station, tend to be a magnet for drug dealers, fences, pimps and other exploiters of the disabled, with police, fire and ambulance calls a routine, often several-times-daily (or nightly) occurrence.
These problems cannot be prevented, treated, or sensitively enforced (no, that's not an oxymoron) by warehousing, which will not hide Vancouver's civic embarrassment, but highlight it. Many, including some of our low-barrier residents, may even begin saying that street homelessness is a better outcome than warehousing. That would be tragic, because we need genuine homes for all our people, and we can do much better than this. But to do so requires all four pillars--not just harm reduction--along with commitments from all levels of government to the independent living plus supports approach, with access to treatment and a realistic path to sobriety. When full costs are taken into account, this is no more expensive than warehousing, and a much better deal for taxpayers, who want and deserve to see our safety net showing evidence of real progress through the use of proven best practices.
Politicians are drawn to human warehousing by the lure of the 'quick fix', with media-friendly ground-breaking ceremonies and press releases touting the numbers of homeless that will be housed in one fell swoop. But people are not statistics, and attempting to lower the cost of human supports through economies of scale is inappropriate and delusional--penny wise, perhaps, but pound foolish. Unintended but predictable consequences, compounded by scale, inevitably require costly remediation--like a much heavier police presence, which could actually prove an aggravant, especially if the one hundred well-trained, highly motivated psychiatric/public health nurses, promised in 2022 by then-mayoral candidate Ken Sim, continue to be an illusive mirage.
For these and other reasons, in the summer of 2022, when many were on vacation, more than 240 citizens registered their opposition to this project in five nights of public hearings, while about 1600 submitted their dismay in writing. And because the consequences will be so problematic--so grim--the Kitsilano Coalition of concerned residents and stakeholders refuses to accept defeat, and have taken their cause to court. Whatever the outcome, no ground has yet been broken, nor is it too late for Premier Eby to act sensibly and reject the short-sighted expedient of the low-barrier congregate model in favour of a process that would, whenever possible, support and monitor hard-to-house residents in normal types of social housing.
Above: Ned Jacobs speaks as a participant in the Jane's Walk on May 4, 2024, at the subject site near Delamont Park on Arbutus Street
To be clear, my point is not that projects like this should be excluded from 'nice' neighbourhoods like Kitsilano; they should not be erected in any neighbourhood on the planet. The renowned urbanist, Jane Jacobs, was a longstanding critic of human warehousing, and when asked about so-called 'NIMBY' opposition to poorly conceived projects that ignore or downplay legitimate concerns, she would explain: "If it doesn't belong in my backyard, it probably doesn't belong in anyone's backyard!" The cause of the Kitsilano community is civic sanity--for Vancouverites in all neighbourhoods, including our hardest to house, whose fates are indicative of who we truly are. There but for fortune go I.
Human warehousing hasn't worked out well in Vancouver or anywhere else. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then we must ask who has the more profound mental disorders: candidates for low-barrier housing, or for public office?
Ned Jacobs, a son and lifelong student of Jane Jacobs, lives in Vancouver's Riley Park neighbourhood.
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Reminder - related.
Event notice: Policy Roundtable On Substance Prevention, Education, and Recovery (PROSPER) launch event May 30, 2024, Vancouver
https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2024/04/08/policy-roundtable-substance-prevention-education-recovery-prosper-may30/
BC and Canada are in crisis when it comes to addiction, homelessness, and crime. We now have the dubious distinction of the highest rate of deadly drug overdose in the developed world (BC's rate is 50% higher than the US as a whole). You are invited to a special launch event on May 30, 2024, to start to turn back the tide.
Thursday, May 30, 2024
9am – 1pm PDT
Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, 1000 Burrard Street Vancouver, BC.
The Policy Roundtable On Substance Prevention, Education, and Recovery (PROSPER) is being publicly launched on May 30th at the Wall Centre from 9am to 1pm to offer a new approach based on prevention and recovery. This symposium will feature representatives from First Nations, first responders, physicians, people in recovery, law enforcement, decision makers, citizen-activists, researchers, and policy specialists to put forward a new agenda in BC and beyond—one based on hope, not despair; on recovery, not helplessness.
Their motto is "A Culture of Prevention, A Climate of Recovery."
See the link for more details.
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