Same old tune - permanent low barrier housing in a neighborhood near you
Same old tune - permanent low barrier housing in a neighborhood near you
Will ABC make it as easy as 1,2,3 and 4? Stay tuned, for Valentine's Day tonight
At Victoria and Marine Drive, looking so green and leafy, like a college campus.
At Grandview Highway, not far from the Italian Cultural Centre and definitely looking like a modular housing project.
Two new rezonings for permanent modular housing are being presented for approval on Feb 14th:
CD-1 Rezoning: 2518-2540 Grandview Highway South
CD-1 Rezoning: 1925 Southeast Marine Drive
More of the same has come from City of Vancouver staff about dispersing the hard to house throughout family neighbourhoods in Vancouver, using the objectionable:
non-legally binding memorandum of understanding with BC Housing, and
absent neighbourhood engagement into the development of this housing project and assessment of its impacts on the local residents and businesses.
The following is a submitted letter to Council. Will anyone read it?
Dear Mayor Sim and City Councillors:
This is a new City Council. You do not have to repeat the mistakes of the previous one. The ABC Party has a mandate for public order with the acquisition of 100 additional police officers and psychiatric nurses. Please go further and demand manageable and safe housing options for those with mental health and addiction issues.
Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun recently had an excellent article about his father, addled with schizophrenia, who could live his life and blend into the neighbourhood by living in a small boarding house.
To make a comparison, this is similar to what BC public school teachers achieved by having smaller classroom sizes. A teacher, despite having a dedicated teaching assistant, needs a smaller group size in order to know, understand the needs of and adapt teaching style in order for the students to best learn. Why do we expect adults with significant cognitive disabilities to need less, especially if they have had decades of neglect?
Regardless of how good you think a non-profit agency is, they are made up of people with limitations. They need a reasonable work load in order to produce good results.
Not only is the warehouse approach wrong, it doesn't build relationships and community within the building and the neighbourhood. An excellent example comes from the Phillipines where multiple Christian groups, including Campus Crusade for Christ and Habitat for Humanity, built homes for people living in slums. They acquired funding to build 50 homes at a time. Before building homes, 12 to 18 months was spent with the future residents to educate them on Christian ideals (you can substitute civil behaviour here) and relationship building. This was key to give people a new beginning. Otherwise, you bring slum behaviour into the new housing project and create a new slum. This is the opportunity to bring new neighbours to meet others and find ways to belong to the neighbourhood. This is transformative housing.
At the heart of it, people are fearful of their neighbourhoods being transformed into slums, with crime, violence and open drug use. It's already happened in Vancouver, and from the evasive performances from City staff and BC Housing at the West 8th and Arbutus public hearing, we know that officials don't care - just get the unit numbers and claim success.
Demand a new attitude in transforming lives of the disadvantaged and don't add to the growing distrust that residents of Vancouver have for their local politicians.
I note that the Grandview Hwy building, is 6 storeys and not 12-13 as in Kits Arbutus.
Furthermore unlike Kits which has precisely 30cm left around it to the sidewalks, because the site (remnant woodland and off leash dog park) is too small -this building has community garden boxes, benches and tables.
Those living in the Kits building will have no choice but to sit in the very popular kiddie park, directly outside their front door, so depriving toddlers of their one play space.