Downtown Eastside - DTES Issues

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by logan5

There are provisions within the dtes plan that call for a certain amount of social housing, even more so within the East Hastings district. If the dtes plan ever came to fruition, there would be more social housing than there was before the plan. It’s extremely unfortunate that the City put a halt to Chinatown development, because things were improving, and Chinatown development would likely spur development along East Hastings/Oppenheimer.

What do you mean "if the DTES plan came to fruition"?

[Vin]

DTES is more of a social/societal/cultural problem more than housing affordability problem. If you don't work, you can't afford anything: even the cheapest form of housing. Many of the people can only get proper shelter only because of handouts, full stop. It certainly doesn't come cheap and has cost us all dearly. Stop loitering around, use drugs or abuse alcohol, and I guarantee their lives can improve by leaps and bounds. Government policies on handing out free drugs without the proper follow-ups, as well as their lackadaisical attitudes on law/bylaw enforcement, etc, have certainly compounded the situation even more.

Hence stop blaming more developments and gentrification around the area, including Chinatown, which have absolutely nothing to do with why people here can't afford a roof over their heads.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by mcminsen

I’m kind of used to the street chaos and disorder in downtown Vancouver and have usually managed to navigate around it and get on with my day but I’ve had two nasty experiences just in the last week that have taken it to another level.

I was just violently assaulted about a couple of hours ago on Davie near Burrard. Out of the blue some deranged guy lunged at me and threw a box or something at me. It bounced off the left side of my head so hard it knocked the hearing aid out of my ear and I almost fell over. It was shocking to be randomly attacked like that in broad daylight on a busy sidewalk.

The people nearby just kind of moved away as the guy and I had a standoff. He seemed to be ready for a fight but I wasn't backing down or running away so he eventually started running away.

I got my camera out to get some pics of him and we brought traffic to a brief standstill while I got my pics.

I went up Davie a ways where there were some police directing traffic and I reported the assault to them. They took notes and looked at my pictures and gave me a case file and told me another constable would call me to to make a report.

The guy was obviously strung out and out of his mind. He had a hospital sheet over his shoulder and was having trouble keeping his pants up and his shoes on. I wasn’t hurt but he could have done that to anybody. A young woman, a mom with a kid, a frail old person.

And then about a week ago I was accosted by another deranged guy while on my way to Stadium Chinatown station. He just came at me ranting and raving while I was crossing the QE Theatre plaza. Again in broad daylight with people all around. He stalked me for blocks screaming and occasionally blocking my path and not letting me by. I stepped out into Dunsmuir a couple of times to get away from him and he would just go right into the middle of the street and bring traffic to a stop while I figured out a way to get past him. He didn’t back off until I went through the gates into the station.

I can shrug it off and just say well, just another day in the neighbourhood but I feel sorry for others who wouldn't be able to defend themselves. I bet there are lot of incidents that don't get reported. I don't expect much to happen but at least the incidents should be reported.

Davie and Burrard, Feb.21 ’21, my pics
...

This is unacceptable. People like that need to be locked up.

Does anybody think that if they started wandering around Kerrisdale, ranting and crapping on people's lawns that you wouldn't go straight to jail? Time for the city to stop offering one version of the law for this kind of persona and another for everyone else.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by SeymourDrake

I think we all have to ask ourselves what have we done to make our community better.

My wife and i do not. We donate our time and money one day at a time which is the way homeless people live. We leave the BS to the BSers and try and put a smile on someones face as best we can.

I really feel some of you are out of touch with what is actually going on in our city. You base your opinions on what the coorporate media says.

Get out and look for yourselves. Talk to people. They are all real people with a variety of issues.

Getting them housing is day 1 for them if they are willing to put the work into being a member of society again. But some may not be mentally capable to handle that level of resposibility.

This is an issue in every city in north america and around the glove i suspect. There is no last day for these issues it's a journey that never ends.

I think you are out of touch with reality here. Seriously ask yourself if your donation is working at all. Some people need discipline to improve, not freebies.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

What do you mean "if the DTES plan came to fruition"?

Ok. Poorly worded. If development , as outlined in the plan came to fruition, there would be more social housing than there was before. You have to have a majority market housing if we want to rehabilitate the area.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Would "revitalizing" the DTES / Chinatown area not simply increase a lack of affordability?

Yes, in the same sense that Canada and Australia are "less affordable" than Iraq and Haiti. Places with less chaos, less dysfunction, less disorder, less violence, less addiction, less illness, less unemployment, etc., are more desirable and thus "less affordable" than places drowning to death in those things.

If your primary concern is protecting "affordability" in that sense, by blocking revitalization and maintaining a miserable, unhealthy, undesirable (but "affordable") wasteland, then the DTES as we currently know it is precisely what you get: hell on earth.

The DTES is not a refuge for anyone; it's a brutal victimizer, a human meat grinder. No one's life is made better by living in the DTES. It's lethal. A troubled or "vulnerable" person needs the DTES like he needs a hole in the head. Any revitalizing forces that can break up and disrupt the status quo of that toxic neighbourhood would be a gift to all concerned, none more than those currently dying or wasting away there.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by logan5

Ok. Poorly worded. If development , as outlined in the plan came to fruition, there would be more social housing than there was before. You have to have a majority market housing if we want to rehabilitate the area.

Oh I see, and yes perfect clarification - much appreciated. If I understood correctly (going off of readings I did a year or so ago for a few projects) the main intent was to prevent a net loss, renovate the old units, and to keep a stable increase in a variety of categories of social housing and prevent increased effects of gentrification.

I don't know if I would go as far as calling it a "stop gap measure" but preventing a loss of units that rent for a certain income was a main goal to prevent from happening.

For secured market rental I think they are 50% of their 10 year goal. Shelter rate units are up with about 1,800 new ones and 1000 SROs were renovated.

I'm not sure about the net numbers for all housing types at this moment.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Yes, in the same sense that Canada and Australia are "less affordable" than Iraq and Haiti. Places with less chaos, less dysfunction, less disorder, less violence, less addiction, less illness, less unemployment, etc., are more desirable and thus "less affordable" than places drowning to death in those things.

If your primary concern is protecting "affordability" in that sense, by blocking revitalization and maintaining a miserable, unhealthy, undesirable (but "affordable") wasteland, then the DTES as we currently know it is precisely what you get: hell on earth.

The DTES is not a refuge for anyone; it's a brutal victimizer, a human meat grinder. No one's life is made better by living in the DTES. It's lethal. A troubled or "vulnerable" person needs the DTES like he needs a hole in the head. Any revitalizing forces that can break up and disrupt the status quo of that toxic neighbourhood would be a gift to all concerned, none more than those currently dying or wasting away there.

What is the "revitalizing force"?

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

What is the "revitalizing force"?

Profit-driven development and restoration where a large majority of the project is composed of commercial and residential spaces geared towards productive and self-supporting persons and businesses. What some would call gentrification.

The alternative is the atrocious and indefensible situation we have now.

[spacebjorn]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Profit-driven development and restoration where a large majority of the project is composed of commercial and residential spaces geared towards productive and self-supporting persons and businesses. What some would call gentrification.

The alternative is the atrocious and indefensible situation we have now.

Do these two things have to be mutually exclusive?

[whatnext]

Developer Peter Wall is in the news today over having made a $1 million donation to the VPD Foundation to help secure more policing downtown:

$1M donation to Vancouver policing inappropriate, critics say
BY MARTIN MACMAHON AND DENISE WONG
Posted Feb 22, 2021

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver real estate developer’s $1 million donation to the Vancouver Police Foundation for mental health and addiction services is raising the eyebrows of city councillors and homeless advocates.

In a bid to improve police services in areas including the Downtown Eastside, real estate developer Peter Wall donated the money for services delivered by police and for five community policing centres, but not everybody is convinced this cash will actually contribute to improving safety...

....City Councillor Jean Swanson says it’s not appropriate for millionaires and corporations to donate to the police and potentially influence how they approach things.

“That can skew what gets done by police and the direction of what they want, rather than what the general public wants,” Swanson said.

She said she didn’t know this was happening, and “was pretty horrified that corporations and rich people were donating to the police foundation.”...

https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/02/22/critics-donation-vancouver-policing/

Big LOL out to Councillor Swanson.

[casper]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Developer Peter Wall is in the news today over having made a $1 million donation to the VPD Foundation to help secure more policing downtown:

$1M donation to Vancouver policing inappropriate, critics say
BY MARTIN MACMAHON AND DENISE WONG
Posted Feb 22, 2021

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver real estate developer’s $1 million donation to the Vancouver Police Foundation for mental health and addiction services is raising the eyebrows of city councillors and homeless advocates.

In a bid to improve police services in areas including the Downtown Eastside, real estate developer Peter Wall donated the money for services delivered by police and for five community policing centres, but not everybody is convinced this cash will actually contribute to improving safety...

....City Councillor Jean Swanson says it’s not appropriate for millionaires and corporations to donate to the police and potentially influence how they approach things.

“That can skew what gets done by police and the direction of what they want, rather than what the general public wants,” Swanson said.

She said she didn’t know this was happening, and “was pretty horrified that corporations and rich people were donating to the police foundation.”...

https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/02/22/critics-donation-vancouver-policing/

Big LOL out to Councillor Swanson.

Our Councilor is misguided and focusing on the wrong question. ...

It is appropriate to make donations to non-profit foundations focused on public service. That is what he did.

Should the Vancouver Police department even have a foundation is the question the councilor needs to focus on.

[Metro-One]

“Homeless advocates” now there is a major piece of this problem.

I give the benefit of the doubt that many of them have their heart in the right place, but their heads are up their... well you know the rest.

Of course there are also those who thrive / profit off this current situation (either financially or socially) and know perfectly well that their activism is only continuing the problem.

[SeymourDrake]

All of the bad things going on in this city are actually good for the economy.

Think about it, it's no different than a War employing thousands of people. Selling weapons and so on.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Shot yourself in the foot with that metaphor; wars (and war profiteers) are near-universally seen as destructive and evil.

[Metro-One]

Yeah, don’t know why someone would use the context of wartime as a positive analogy for their position on this issue.

Unless they are so binary in their view of politics that they think that anyone against the current soft handed (enabling) approach towards homelessness in Vancouver must be hard right wing and therefore also loves war????? That’s as close as I can figure it.

[invisibleairwaves]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Developer Peter Wall is in the news today over having made a $1 million donation to the VPD Foundation to help secure more policing downtown:

$1M donation to Vancouver policing inappropriate, critics say
BY MARTIN MACMAHON AND DENISE WONG
Posted Feb 22, 2021

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver real estate developer’s $1 million donation to the Vancouver Police Foundation for mental health and addiction services is raising the eyebrows of city councillors and homeless advocates.

In a bid to improve police services in areas including the Downtown Eastside, real estate developer Peter Wall donated the money for services delivered by police and for five community policing centres, but not everybody is convinced this cash will actually contribute to improving safety...

....City Councillor Jean Swanson says it’s not appropriate for millionaires and corporations to donate to the police and potentially influence how they approach things.

“That can skew what gets done by police and the direction of what they want, rather than what the general public wants,” Swanson said.

She said she didn’t know this was happening, and “was pretty horrified that corporations and rich people were donating to the police foundation.”...

https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/02/22/critics-donation-vancouver-policing/

Big LOL out to Councillor Swanson.

Is there something wrong with what Swanson said? To put it another way, do you think people become billionaires by making million-dollar handouts without expecting anything personally beneficial in return? It's an awful precedent to set and opens the door for all kinds of misuses of police power.

The DTES's problems are not going to be solved by forking money over to the VPD; that's the one approach that has been tried more reliably than any other and it has failed completely.

[jlousa]

The dtes plan was never going to come to fruition. It made it unprofitable to build anything. We discussed it at the time and unfortunately I was proven right. Vision killed the momentum the area had. Stewart is just mire of the same. Also think its a lil much to say that Christy Clark closed Riverview... the closure of Riverview began decades earlier when the ndp were in power, and I don't even blame them, that was the common train of thought of the day, not to instuitionize people. Unfortunately most of us were wrong about that. There is a segment of the population that is better served being taken care of.
And let's be honest gentrification did not cause this, self medication, and our inability to address the problems in front of us is the main factor. Support the other 3 pillars instead of just the one.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Also think its a lil much to say that Christy Clark closed Riverview... the closure of Riverview began decades earlier when the ndp were in power, and I don't even blame them, that was the common train of thought of the day, not to instuitionize people. Unfortunately most of us were wrong about that. There is a segment of the population that is better served being taken care of.

You're right; I didn't mean to suggest Christ Clark's government made the decision to close Riverview, but I think they delayed funding the replacement. Apparently the decision to close the hospital pre-dates the NDP - it was around 1980 in the Social Credit Party era. And not a bad decision, provided the appropriate alternative resources are provided and funded - which clearly they haven't been.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Changing City

You're right; I didn't mean to suggest Christ Clark's government made the decision to close Riverview, but I think they delayed funding the replacement. Apparently the decision to close the hospital pre-dates the NDP - it was around 1980 in the Social Credit Party era. And not a bad decision, provided the appropriate alternative resources are provided and funded - which clearly they haven't been.

I'm hoping that was a typo and not an expression of admiration!