Gentrification of an empty lot latest debate by Pete McMartin

From the Vancouver Sun

March 26, 2013

On Monday, the City of Vancouver's development permit board met to consider the approval of a new 29-unit residential building proposed for 557 East Cordova St.

It is now an empty lot.

It has been an empty lot for years - for at least 25 years, according to the developer.

That vacant lot is this week's ground zero in the gentrification war consuming the Downtown Eastside, a fight that has, of late, been a series of running skirmishes.

One week it's Pidgin restaurant, the next week it's Save-On-Meats Diner. It's classic hit-and-run guerrilla warfare, though shining flashlights in the eyes of upscale diners and stealing a sidewalk sandwich board are more gorilla warfare than serious engagement.

Back to that vacant lot: The developer, Daniel Boffo, of Boffo Properties, wants to build a four-story condominium development on it. His company assembled the land last year. The lot, which is in what is called the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District, comes with restrictions: A percentage of the development must be dedicated to social housing.

Boffo's proposal meets that social housing requirement. Five of the ground-floor units are dedicated to social housing, with the initial plans calling for three to be rented at welfare rates of $375 a month, and two to be rented at subsidized BC Housing rates of $840 a month.

The remaining condos are to be sold at market prices - a dozen 600-square-foot condos for $231,000, and a dozen 1,200-square-foot condos for $462,000, prices which Boffo claims are the cheapest for new developments in Vancouver. Each condo, including the social housing units, will have access to a communal interior courtyard. It was designed that way to encourage social interaction.

"We worked with city staff closely on this," Boffo said, "so we expect it to be received favourably."

Anti-gentrification activists object to the proposal out of hand: Their argument has consistently been that free-market developers are destroying the fabric of the neighbourhood and driving out the poor and lower-income people who live there. Even the developer's inclusion of social housing in the design isn't enough, they have argued, since the two units to be rented at the BC Housing rates of $840 a month are still too much.

Yet here is the thing about that:

Those five non-market units are to be purchased at cost by the Community Builders Group, an international non-profit that provides housing for the homeless or those living in substandard housing.

Its headquarters are right here in Vancouver, and it operates four residential buildings of social housing here - three in the Downtown Eastside and one on Granville Street. In all, it provides 253 units to those in need. It could hardly be accused of being a rapacious, neighbourhood-destroying developer.

Here is another thing about Community Builders Group's involvement:

Instead of renting out three of the five social housing units at the welfare rates, it hopes to raise enough capital from donors and such partners as Vancity to allow it to rent out all five units at the $375-a-month rate.

"I'm in complete support of the development," said Gordon Wiebe, chair of Community Builders Group. "It represents private development of low-income housing, and there's a strong need for it. While social housing is essential in Canada, it is expensive and (government) can't provide all the needs."

Wiebe said he thought the design of the development was just what the neighbourhood needed - a mix of incomes and diversity.

"The detractors of it who say it will lead to the destruction of the neighbourhood and drive out the poorer residents ... In my mind, that's reductionist thinking. Density and diversity will lead, I think, to a revitalized neighbourhood.

"To my mind, that's the future." He could be right. The development permit board OK'd the Boffo proposal late Monday afternoon.

The Downtown Eastside will now have five new units of social housing, to be rented out at $375 a month, in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world, where once there was a vacant lot.

On to the next battleground.

A developer makes a cautious foray into Vancouver’s hardscrabble heart by Kerry Gold

from the Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Feb. 01 2013, 11:39 AM EST

Daniel Boffo is an easygoing 33-year-old with a degree in economics. He is the son of Italian immigrants from a small town in Italy, whose father settled in Burnaby and started a landscape and construction business in 1963. His dad Tarcisio is close friends with another Vancouver developer, Nat Bosa, who was best man at his wedding.

Tarcisio has put his son Daniel and daughter Flavia in charge of the day-to-day Boffo business, which has mostly built projects in the suburbs.

Last summer, the Boffos purchased an empty lot at 555 Cordova, a street where prostitutes hang out, down the street from a soup kitchen. It’s on the fringes of Strathcona, and between the growing Hastings Corridor and downtown. It will be central and affordable enough to attract the young urban crowd.

“We are targeting the cheapest price per square foot in Vancouver, around $385,” says Mr. Boffo. “We’re excited, because it will be a different model, a small, repeatable project that is putting non market and market on the same site.”

It’s also within the heart of the downtown eastside, known as the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer district (DEOD), where there’s a dense low-income population, between Hastings to the south, Alexander to the north, and along Cordova to the east. In that particular patch, there is special zoning that has long required new residential housing to include 20 per cent non-market housing. The 20 per cent rule, as well as the fact it’s skid row, has long turned off developers.

As far back as a decade ago, it was a worry by city planners that as surrounding property values increased, that 20 per cent requirement may no longer deter development of market housing. That day arrived when the Pantages Theatre on Hastings, in the heart of Oppenheimer, was demolished last year to make way for 79 units of market condos, as well as the required 18 non-market units, rental units, and artist studio space.

The outcry from the community was intense. The DTES Not for Developers coalition formed in response and held loud, angry protests. They also briefly occupied the Salient Group’s nearby Paris Annex construction site. That protest was mostly against Salient’s 21 Doors project located on the fringes of Oppenheimer. Close enough, they said.

The Pantages project, Sequel 138, was approved, and it was seen as opening the door into Oppenheimer.

Mr. Boffo’s comparatively small, 29-unit residence is next. It’s currently in the development permit approvals stage, and in order to build it, Mr. Boffo has partnered with non-profit housing provider, Community Builders Group, who will purchase and manage the five non-market units. Based on square footage, Mr. Boffo was only required to include three units, but trying to be sensitive to the issue, he increased it to five.

Community Builders is an international non-profit group that has the formidable task of scraping together financing to purchase low cost housing. They already own 250 low-income units in the area, and with the help of new market development, they have plans to double that number this year. That puts them squarely in the middle, between private development and community activism.

Mr. Boffo is selling the units to the group at cost, says Community Builders spokesman Gordon Wiebe. They will rent all five of them out at the welfare rate of $375 a month, which is also below the requirement. As is, some of the units could be rented for $870 and still be considered below market rate. Most would agree, however, that $870 is hardly affordable if you’re on welfare.

Enter Dave Diewert. Mr. Diewert is the spokesperson for the DTES Not For Developers Coalition, whose name says it all. He helped organize the Pantages protest, as well as a protest against Salient Group, whose 21 Doors project is on the fringe of the Oppenheimer area.

The coalition demands that new downtown eastside developments be entirely dedicated to non-market housing.

Mr. Boffo and Mr. Wiebe both insisted that I speak with Mr. Diewert to present his case, and I’m happy they did. Mr. Diewert knows the details of every new development in the downtown eastside. We met for coffee and he explained to me why he’s opposed to any new market development. He has also made his views about the Boffo project clear to his acquaintance, the housing provider, Mr. Wiebe, who lives in an SRO.

“I said, ‘this is not good for the very people you are trying to serve. You are going to offer five units for a few people. But what’s the effect of the 24 condos on the surrounding neighbourhood? How is that going to affect the low income housing around there? While you decide to work with this fellow for these five units, the ripple effect of gentrification may displace dozens.’

“Housing providers are complicit in that they agree to work on these projects,” he added. “Our fundamental stance is that the project as a whole is a problem, because when you bring condos into a low income area, you raise property values and that has a ripple effect to everything around it.”

He also condemns the much-lauded example of mixed market and social housing that is the Woodward’s Building. He says the building contributed 125 units of social housing, but he estimates another 440 nearby units that changed use or raised rents due to gentrification were lost.

“The social mix in Woodward’s is kind of a joke. I know people who live there, and they say, ‘my self-contained suite is beautiful. But as soon as I step outside, I am told to move along.’ And people in the condos, they take the elevator from their car up to their suite. They’re not living with us. They have a separate entrance. We call the social housing part, ‘Woodward’s East.’”

In a phone interview later, Mr. Wiebe sounded sympathetic, but a touch exasperated.

“If there is 100 per cent social housing, who is going to pay for it?

“We need social housing. Canada has a good history of it. But we also need private options.”

Mr. Wiebe put it well in an open letter: “Wealth is coming to the DTES, like it or not. It’s time to adapt, not to entrench. A social housing desert is a bad option and will never be supported in Vancouver, nor should it.”

New development has already revitalized areas of the downtown eastside that were former ghetto ghost streets. Those streets now have home décor stores and coffee shops. They’re happy streets again. But at what cost to guys like Mr. Diewert and his friends? They’ve formed a tight knit community, and they’d like to stay in their neighbourhood. As property prices go up, the cost of social housing in that area will too.

At the other end of it, Mr. Wiebe is trying to find decent new homes for people living in lousy 10 by 10 rooms. Mr. Boffo is a guy from Burnaby running a family business. He wants to build a small project on an empty lot on a street that could seriously use revitalizing. And he’s trying to be sensitive to existing residents. In comparison to living in an SRO, his 600 sq. ft. non-market units would be a major step-up.

“No one developer, no one city staff member, councilor, architect or community resident will know all the solutions, but if you can all come together you could add to the fabric, not rip it apart,” he says. Keep integrating, adding to it. Diversity is what attracts everybody.

“We are a young city. How do we set roots, to grow something good? I think we’re getting there. We are just going through growing pains.”

Business can help build a better, more diverse Downtown Eastside by Peter Ladner

Peter Ladner is a friend of CBG and former City of Vancouver Councillor. Notably, Peter is co-Founder of Business in Vancouver Media Group and Vice-chair of Natural Step Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to true sustainability in businesses and municipalities.

You rarely hear DTES advocates protesting drug dealers and pimps coming into the area

How ironic that the same week TEDTalks announced it’s moving to Vancouver because this is such a diverse, vibrant, turned-on city, we have yet another flare-up in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

It draws attention to our world-class failure to resolve the crippling poverty mental health and drug abuse issues in that neighbourhood. Easy on the self-congratulation, Vancouver.

Media attention has focused on the new Pidgin Restaurant, serving high-end patrons who gaze out over the crazy dysfunction that defines community at Pigeon Park across Carrall Street. Or at least they did until the windows were frosted over to protect them from flashlights shone in their eyes by the Downtown Eastside Not for Developers Coalition. That group’s goal is to “protect” the DTES as a government-financed “social justice zone” where only the very poor and the agencies that support them are welcome. No developers!

Many of the cutting edges of gentrification in the DTES have always struck me as bizarre. An influx of SFU and film students – healthy, active, low-income, community-minded – fits with a gradual transition of the neighbourhood. But the uber-high-end bars, condos, restaurants and design stores? Why here? They serve only to needle the bleeding gap between lower income people and the well-to-do.
Equally I have never understood the complete disdain of the self-appointed spokespeople for the DTES for anyone who isn’t in social housing, as though no lower-income people appreciate the benefits of a mixed community.

Read the rest at Business In Vancouver.
Published Tue Mar 5, 2013 12:01am PST