Vancouver March for Housing, April 2009 (photograph by Elvin Wyly)

The (Revanchist) Special

Martin Kozinsky [email protected] Geography 350, Fall 2012

The Vancouver (Revanchist ) Special* * 1 proven to rhetorically produce class marginalization.

The Revanchist City:

In The New Urban Frontier , Neil Smith coined the term ‘revanchist city’ to explain the uncomfortable duality between different societal groups and the physical manifestation of prejudice within the modern city. It is the emotional and revengeful response by the upper-middle and ruling class to the feeling of helplessness and loss of control when clashing with the “teeming masses” embodied by

2 identifiable racial, criminal, gender, or class groups. Smith argues that the cleanup of New York’s homelessness in the 1980s exemplifies how the city avoids addressing the root issue of homelessness by creating policies of displacement. In an effort to take back parks, subway stations, and other public spaces

3 for the upper classes, the city criminalized squatting, panhandling, and other deviant activities. The root issues are intentionally obscured by the spatial manifestation of undesirable persons, such as squatters, and the resulting political discourse . Smith suggests that this strategy is also part of a broader trend of

4 “increasingly market-determined public policy” as the economy influences political decisions. These legislative changes exemplify how the revanchist city uses social and political rhetoric to villainize a particular group, described as “physical, legal and rhetorical campaigns against scapegoats, identified in terms of class, race, gender, nationality, sexual preference, this reaction scripts everyday life, political

5 administration and media representations of the contemporary US city with increasing intensity.” Smith argues that the revanchist city is a useful lens through which to understand why a city alienates its minorities in the name of taking back the city and further its market-oriented goals. While not explicitly

1 This title plays with the term Vancouver Special; drawing a parallel from the ubiquitous, generic housing designs that shaped much of Metropolitan Vancouver’s development throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, to what I will argue has become Vancouver’s new plan for housing that systematically marginalizes lower class individuals. 2 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. (London: Routledge, 1996), 212. 3 Smith (1996), 224. 4 Neil Smith, “Social Justice and the New American Urbanism: the Revanchist City,” The Urbanization of Injustice (New York University Press, 1997), 117. 5 Smith (1996), 227.

Martin Kozinsky Page 2 of 10 engaged by Smith’s book, I believe social housing can also illustrate the manifestations of the revanchist city in Vancouver.

Vancouver, looks to its progressive social housing as a source of pride since the creation of False Creek South in the 1970s, which is considered to be a very successful experiment in mixed-

6 use housing. Because of its success, the city has provided incentives for developers to reproduce this concept through the building of public amenities and social housing. These incentives usually come in the form of rezoning property to allow for taller and denser development which shifts the potential ground

7 rent value above the capitalized ground rent value. This discrepancy represents massive gains in the redevelopment of land and helps us to visualize the motives behind why the city conducts itself in terms of social support policy. On the one hand, social housing has been the cornerstone of municipal political campaigns; for example, “Mayor [Gregor] Robertson has made affordable housing a top priority, with an aggressive, ten-year plan to provide thousands of affordable housing units for Vancouverites of all ages,

8 while ensuring that existing affordable housing is protected.” However, I would argue that the city employs a ‘Newspeak’ social policy which Jean Swanson describes as a revanchist tool to discriminate against social housing. Swanson borrows the term Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984 and uses it to describe the use of rhetoric, employed by political talking heads, to negatively manipulate the public’s

9 perception of individuals on welfare, a process she often terms ‘poor bashing.’ Considering Swanson’s argument in conjunction with potential capital to be gained in redevelopment, I believe one can understand the manifestation of Vancouver’s revanchist attitude towards social housing. I will argue that policy decisions made by the City of Vancouver have favored developers and led to the victimization and

6 See Mark Kear, “Spaces of Transition Spaces of Tomorrow: Making a Sustainable Future in Southeast False Creek, Vancouver, Cities 24(4) (2007), 328-329; See Thomas M Thomson, The Death and Life of the Little Mountain Housing Project: BC’s First Public Housing Community. (M.A. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2010), 41-43, 171. 7 See a discussion of rent-gap theory in Loretta Lees, T. Slater, E. Wyly, Gentrification . (New York: Routledge, 2007), 53. 8 “Mayor Gregor Robertson,” City of Vancouver, http://vancouver.ca/your-government/mayor-gregor-robertson.aspx (July 2012). 9 Jean Swanson, Poor Bashing (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001), 71-104, 192.

Martin Kozinsky Page 3 of 10 dislocation of lower class groups and have chosen the following three distinct examples of Woodward’s,

Little Mountain, and the Olympic Village to illustrate my argument.

Woodward’s:

After the closure of Woodward’s Department Store in 1993, it became a symbol of the decay taking

10 place in the (DTES). Activists claimed the space for a political squat, in what was soon dubbed Woodsquat, to protest the rampant gentrification, lack of affordable housing, and subsequent

11 dislocation of vulnerable individuals. This instigated interplay between the protestor’s demands for affordable housing and the city’s market-oriented housing goals that David Ley and Cory Dobson summarized as the “central role of public policy reacting to neighbourhood activism as well as the market

12 in setting the terms of reference.” Woodsquat became a prevalent obstacle to the city’s neoliberal market-focused development, especially while the city was in the midst of bidding on the 2010 Olympic

13 Games, and was shut down after 3 months under the pretence that it was a public safety issue. The squat had claimed Woodward’s and the city was uncomfortable with it; uprooting the squat can be understood as

14 the city`s attempt to regain control while undercutting the leverage gained by the protestors. By further justifying its actions with words such as ‘public safety’, or as former city councilman stated, “[the squat] has been a difficult thing for our community … [and] for some of the merchants in the community,”

15 the city engages in poor-bashing the protesters. Despite the action taken against the squatters, the city’s revanchist attitude continued throughout Woodward’s redevelopment.

The land was sold to developer Henriquez Partners and rezoned from the surrounding Downtown

District (DD) to Comprehensive Development District (CD-1) “to facilitate the proposed large and complex

10 Comprising largely of individuals on welfare. 11 See Nicholas Blomley, Unsettling the City , (New York: Routledge, 2004), 20, 38-41; See Noah Quastel, “Legal Strategies at the Woodwards Squat: Liberal Rights and Social Wrongs”, West Coast Line 37(3) (Winter 2004) : 208-220. 12 David Ley and Cory Dobson, “Are There Limits to Gentrification? The Contexts of Impeded Gentrification in Vancouver,” Urban Studies 45 (2008), 2486. 13 Blomley (2004), 30, 42-44, 84. 14 For the significant of property ownership and squatting see Blomley (2004), 20, 39-41. 15 Quote from Emily Yearwood-Lee, “Woodward’s Squatters in Vancouver Pack up Belongings,” The Canadian Press , December 14, 2002.

Martin Kozinsky Page 4 of 10

16 mixed-use development,” of which 400 units was mandated social housing. The new building was to address the concerns about gentrification by creating an inclusive space, filled with public amenities, to

17 juxtapose the DTES “gritty factor.” However, the reality of the project proved to be rife with deceitful rhetoric by politicians and the developer in an effort to marginalize the low class tenants to further their market interests.

Nicholas Blomley describes the gentrification occurring in the DTES as a “class-based revanchism” and “public-private partnership” aimed to “abolish or weaken social transfer programs while actively

18 fostering the inclusion of the poor and marginalized into a labor market, on the market’s term’s.” Indeed the market’s terms were felt as threats made by the developer to cut the units of social housing; they

19 stated that “with construction costs still rising the provincial funds set aside might build only 80 units.”

These threats enabled the developer to increase the height of the main structure and to include an additional condo tower of private-market housing, a fact that didn’t escape the notice of Swanson who explains: “at the last minute developers put in two condo towers … they said the rich needed to be there in

20 order to make the project pay.” Despite the liberties taken by the developer, the promised 400 units of social housing shrank by half, creating a stark contrast to the market units as the non-market units became a continually smaller proportion. However, the marginalization continued as it became clear that the project’s architecture had created an elitist space, cut off from the social housing to discourage class mixing. Jim Carrico, a community consultant, suggests a contradictory observation to that which was proposed by the developer: “the place was designed to fool … the whole building was designed to not have

21 real mixing. It was built into the architecture.” I would argue that the developer’s rhetoric and conduct is an example of a distasteful upper-class attitude towards social housing, seeing it as an unfortunate

16 Quote from May So, “The Site,” Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment (BlueImprint, 2010), 187; See Jim Green, “The Greening of Vancouver,” Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment (BlueImprint, 2010), 48. 17 Robert Enright, “Stories and more Storeys: How Woodward’s Got Rebuilt,” Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment (BlueImprint, 2010), 11. 18 Blomley, (2004), 30-31. 19 “Woodward’s Solution?” Journal of Commerce 93(60), July 28, 2004. 20 Isaac Oommen, “The Cornerstone of Gentrification in the Downtown East Side,” The Dominion (85), October 3, 2012. 21 Oommen (2012).

Martin Kozinsky Page 5 of 10 necessity to building big in Vancouver, and making every attempt to take as much space as possible. This

22 mentality was further emphasized by future Vancouver Mayor, , who suggested that the city

23 could financially benefit by selling off half the units. In conclusion, the redevelopment of Woodward’s has exhibited themes of Smith’s revanchist city through profit-driven policy change, poor-bashing, and political

Newspeak, at the expense of recipients of social housing, trying to regain a feeling of control with the

24 DTES.

Little Mountain:

The Little Mountain community was Vancouver’s oldest social housing project dating back to 1954.

Its open, sprawling design made it the target of Vancouver’s urban renewal project to, as Matt Shillito (City of Vancouver, City Planning) states in a City Hall meeting, “revitalize a large, underused site in the center of

25 our city.” Tempted by the potential gains of redevelopment, the city sold the land to developer, Holborn

Group, who proposed to build 1,500 condos, once the lot is rezoned, to replace the original 224 social

26 housing units that occupied the space. The city informed residents of Little Mountain of their eviction and promised to relocate them until the conclusion of the project’s redevelopment. Two major obstacles stood in the way of the redevelopment to which the city reacted in a revanchist manner; the limited availability of social housing and the stubborn resistance of some of the Little Mountain tenants.

After the eviction notice a majority of the tenants agreed to be relocated, however the city did not

27 have social housing to accommodate their transfer. There was already a large demand for housing when

22 He became Mayor in December 2008, two months after the statement was issued, see below. 23 Frances Bula, “Sullivan wants to Scale down Woodward’s Project,” The Vancouver Sun , September 17, 2008. 24 The gentrification and revanchist attack continues; as I am writing this paper zoning changes have been approved for an additional development called ‘Woodward’s East.’ Chief among the concerns are the 24 new social housing units that are supposed to replace the existing 154 SROs (single room occupancy). See “955 E Hastings condo rezoning hearing results: They accepted it,” Carnegie Community Action Project , October 30, 2012. 25 David Vaisbord, “City Hall meets Little Mountain: part 1,” June 2012, http://vimeo.com/51932448. 26 See Thomas (2010), 280; See Kevin Grittin, “Developer Hopes to Start Building Social Housing at Little Mountain by May,” The Vancouver Sun, September 25, 2012. 27 See Chris Bevacqua, “Little Mountain: A Fight for Social Housing,” 2010, http://vimeo.com/9137304; See Thomas (2010), 253.

Martin Kozinsky Page 6 of 10 the Little Mountain tenants were moved to the top of the waitlist, so the city reverted to displacing tenants from other social housing complexes. The majority of the Little Mountain tenants were relocated to the

Culloden Court facility. A tenant at Culloden Court described how the city actively tried to evict residents to create space: “Everybody’s being scrutinized in here. They are on a mission to empty this place. She’s

28 kicking people out. She walks right in the door and says, “You get out of here!”.” While it would appear that the tenants from Little Mountain were relocated as promised, the city did so at the expense of others; in so doing, the city was able to rid Little Mountain of most of its tenants without creating alternative housing. However, the reclamation of Little Mountain was not yet complete due to a small number of tenants that refused to leave.

Residents who refused to leave were worried about the city’s ambiguous promises of new accommodations and were apprehensive about having to make multiple moves; in addition, the developer

29 had suggested that the project completion may only be accomplished as early as 2023. The city retaliated

30 against those residents refusing to leave by boarding up windows of buildings that were still occupied.

They also started to have tenants removed based on technicalities; disgruntled Little Mountain resident,

Ingrid Steenhuisen, explains: “If you think about it, how else would they have been able to get 210 units within two and a half years? … They’ve never had that kind of volume of vacancy in 55 years … They were

31 using every single technicality in order to get people out.” Stories like Ingrid’s and the other experiences of tenants who were displaced in the wake of the redevelopment of Little Mountain exemplify the city’s revanchist tactics of Doublespeak and forceful dislocation as they have pushed the project into fruition.

The Olympic Village:

In anticipation of the 2010 Olympic Winter games, which was to put Vancouver in the world spotlight, the ambitious goal of creating the most sustainable community in North America was conceived.

28 Thomas (2010), 253. 29 See Bevacqua (2010); See Thomas (2010), 279. 30 Bevacqua (2010). 31 Thomas (2010), 253.

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The Olympic Village was to follow platinum Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) standards

32 while creating a diverse mixed-use space that included social housing. However when New York-based developer Millennium Development Group went bankrupt mid-project, the city stepped in to finish the construction which led to the planned number of units going from two-thirds social housing to under one- third at 252 units. While this decision seems justifiable given the $100 million bailout, the subsidized units continued to be the focus of criticism. After the conclusion of the Olympic Games the market units were slow to sell; this, coupled with the extra expense inherited by the city, caused uneasy skepticism among political figures and it was the non-market housing that suffered as the city began to push these users out.

Preliminary interactions between the private units and non-market units were tense with welfare tenants claiming, “threats of eviction over [medicated] pot smoking, and alleged sexual harassment and

33 beatings.” Developer and former Non-Partisan Association (NPA) candidate, Michael Geller, uses examples like these to state that “none of this cohort of people from the Downtown Eastside should be allowed to live on the property” and that the two classes should not mix. He furthers his argument by attacking the financial feasibility of providing social housing in such an expensive facility, advocating the sale of the 252 non-market apartments, and attributing the slow sales of market housing to the presence of

34 individuals on social assistance. His strategy of poor bashing is used as an attempt to blame social housing tenants for the loss of city revenue and the tensely polarized community. By evicting these tenants the city would be able to justify the occupation of their upper-class space. This is a rhetorical attack on the mixed space within the Olympic Village paving the way for the manifestation of physical displacement.

New tenants of the Olympic Village subsidized housing were shocked to receive their utilities bill which was uncharacteristically high due to the type of sustainable energy that was incorporated into the complex. One tenant claimed that the utilities bill coupled with the cost of living in the Olympic Village

32 See Doug Hooton, “Green Concrete Goes for the Gold at ,” Concrete International (2010), 45; See “Vancouver Cuts Olympic Village Social Housing,” CBC News , April 23, 2010. 33 Sam Cooper, “Olympic Village’s Low-Income Tenants feel Unwanted,” The Province , September 20, 2012. 34 Jim Green, “Prejudice against Social Housing is not a Vancouver Value,” The Vancouver Sun , October 9, 2010.

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35 represented 50% of his and his wife’s combined income. Scott Bernstein, Pivot Legal Society lawyer, spoke out against these imposed utility bills stating that “for many people, having a bill like that means that they’re going to have to go back on the street.” The building manager, Coho Property Management, stated that tenants had signed a contract agreeing to pay the utility bill, prompting the city to begrudgingly take on the payments. The city stated that they could not pay the bills indefinitely and slowed the intake of new tenants until they could find a cost effective solution. With 200 of the 252 social housing units unoccupied

(as of March 2011), NPA mayoral candidate complained that “it was a starry-eyed dream to

36 turn expensive housing into social housing.” The present conclusion of this issue was the further halving

37 to 126 social housing units, allowing the city to rent the other half at market-rate. This string of political rhetoric and market-influenced actions show the manifestation of the city’s disdain towards social housing and demonstrates how poor bashing is employed to marginalize the social housing users. The expressions of a revanchist city reclaiming its space have appeared in both the rhetorical and physical issues surrounding the Olympic Village.

In Conclusion:

It appears as though ‘mixed-use space’ has become a political buzz word for the municipal government, used to make progressive party-line assertions to address the issue of segregated and gentrified neighborhoods. However, I believe the city and developer employ it to appear socially concerned while they prioritize their commercial interests. Within the three examples cited in this paper, as well as many others, the concept of mixed-use space has been applied to housing developments to address issues of affordability in Vancouver. However, as I have discussed, there has been a methodical downgrade occurring within these spaces throughout development which may suggest that the process of building mixed-use space should be revisited. Furthermore there has been a growing commentary from local critics arguing that mixed-use space has not adequately addressed Vancouver’s goal of creating dense, affordable

35 Yolande Cole, “Low-Income Tenants in Vancouver’s Olympic Village Fear Eviction over Utility Bills,” Georgia Straight , December 8, 2011. 36 Kent Spencer, “Bulk of Olympic Village Social-Housing Units Sit Empty,” The Province , March 23, 2011. 37 CBC News, (2010).

Martin Kozinsky Page 9 of 10 housing. It is therefore important to engage in the discussion of these issues or risk continuing along

Vancouver’s current trajectory of marginalizing policies and market-prioritized redevelopment.

The unfortunate reality for Woodward’s, Little Mountain, and the Olympic Village is that they all lay at the confluence of the city`s political agenda to create social housing and the rampant inflation of

Vancouver`s property values. The resulting conduct of the city, and subsequent marginalization of social housing, demonstrated the city’s ferocious double standard; while politically promoting the preservation and growth of social housing the city actually takes steps to avoid solving those issues. Providing social housing is not conducive to economic growth and is thus victim to rhetorical revanchist attacks from the municipal government and other upper class elites. I was initially shocked at the seemingly scripted downward spiral and disengaging municipal advocacy at Woodward`s, Little Mountain, and the Olympic

Village, but, as made evident by the poor bashing rhetoric and actions of the city, I can conclude that

Smith’s revanchist city is an appropriate lens through which to interpret Vancouver’s approach to social housing. However, this discussion may not echo the same ‘doom and gloom’ that Smith refers to “where

38 nature and humanity habitually take vicious revenge on a degenerate and profligate populace.” Instead I would encourage readers to think critically about these discussed political tactics that the city utilizes, and to foster what David Harvey describes as “a strong concern to reinstate concern for social justice and to re-

39 elaborate upon what it takes to create the values and institutions of a reasonable just society.”

38 Smith (1996), 212. 39 As cited in Smith (1997), 118.

Martin Kozinsky Page 10 of 10