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The Conflict Over Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

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The Conflict Over Vancouver's Downtown Eastside Ideological constructions of place: The conflict over Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Cory Dobson University of Calgary I – INTRODUCTION As global real-estate and finance markets have become increasingly fluid and governments at all levels have embraced neoliberal policies, pressures of large-scale gentrification and redevelopment of our inner-cities have become increasingly prevalent. With these relatively new developments, there has been a great deal of debate surrounding the most effective way to deal with the dilapidated areas in our cities. Seen as a visual and moral blemish to the marketability of the city, many neoliberal proponents have called for a ‘cleansing’ of these regions, through an opening up of inner-city housing to the forces of the market, thereby ensuring the ‘highest and best use’ for all parcels of land. As the guiding ideological outlook continues to align itself with this objective there has been increased pressure placed on the neighbourhoods of the poor. What are the causes and consequences of such ideological constructions, and how has the embrace of these anti-social motives affected the livelihood of the poorest Canadians in our cities? Few neighbourhoods in Canada have been as adversely affected by the discourses and pressures of redevelopment as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in British Columbia. This neighbourhood, and the constant struggle endured by its occupants, is the focus of this paper. Vancouver is one of Canada’s leaders in attracting foreign investment. The Downtown Eastside faces a great deal of uncertainty as capital investment promisses further redevelopment and social change. The struggle over the Downtown Eastside is currently being staged by two primary groups: Those individuals who subscribe to the neoliberal ideology that calls for the complete liberalization of all markets, believing that the goal of achieving ‘world-class’ city status should be the primary objective of all Vancouver citizens; and those individuals who see this monetary achievement as a secondary priority at best. This paper will attempt to provide an understanding of these two positions and will highlight the way in which the dominant ideology has negatively impacted the residents of the neighbourhood boasting the “poorest postal-code in Canada” (Steele, 1997). II – FRAMING THE COMMUNITY: history & trends in the downtown eastside a history of decline The Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s original townsite and oldest community, is located just east of the City’s central business district and has become one of the most marginalized regions in Canada (Hasson & Ley, 1994; figure 2.1). Although the working-class residents of the community have experienced a long history of conflict and struggle, the present day pressures of socio-spatial polarization present a violent threat to the livelihood and history of the long-time residents of this community. With the economy of British Columbia historically rooted in resource extraction, the original townsite of Vancouver was constructed to house, service, and act as the big city home for the miners, loggers, fisherman, and railway workers who flowed into the community after figure 2.1 - Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (adapted from www.vancouver.ca) months in bush camps (Layton, 2000). With the function of the district focused on servicing the desires and needs of these single men, the Downtown Eastside became a site where ‘in- between job’, seasonal labourers could not only find dollar-a-day accommodations but also the entertainment they desired (Blomley, 2004). As the economy of the city grew and the majority of new investment capital shifted west, this transition facilitated the separation between the middle- and upper-class west-side from the working-class eastside. With this shift the affluent members of society migrated out of the community and the Downtown Eastside became a physical extension of the provincial resource economy (Hasson & Ley, 1994). Canneries, sawmills, meat-packing, and metal-working facilities all agglomerated within the region (Hasson & Ley, 2 1994), creating, due to this concentration of blue-collar labourers, a sense of working-class pride within the community. This agglomeration of sawmills and the lumber industry provided the context for the creation of the label “skid road”, which originally lacked any of the negative connotation attached to the term today. In its infancy, “skid road” expressed the pure function of the roadways within Vancouver and Seattle where logs were ‘skidded’ on their way to the numerous mills that lined the strip (Shier, 2002). Later this expression came to invoke a sense of excitement and vitality as it was applied to the vast agglomeration of bars, hotels, and bordellos that congregated around logging camps and mills to service and entertain the single workers. The energetic, and not yet stigmatized nature of the early term is illustrated by the name of the 1913 midway at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, “Skid Road”, which instilled a sense of frontier fun and excitement (Sommers & Blomley, 2002). At the outset of the First World War, the vibrant Downtown Eastside continued its function as the centre of warehousing and transportation for the city, as well as the main shopping corridor for the working-class (Blomley, 2004; image 2.2). Following the Second World War however, the community began a slow and continual decline as its central role in warehousing, transportation and manufacturing operations based on resource extraction of the hinterlands began to fade (Sommers & Blomley, 2002). With figure 2.2 – A Once Vibrant Community this process of decline under way, two specific trends further ensured an era of disinvestment within the region: First, the mass exodus of industry from the community, which fled in search of cheaper land far from the downtown core; second, as the era of the migrant worker came to a close, the once part-time residents of the hotels were now out of work and left seeking permanent residence within the community (Blomley, 2004). By the end of the 1940’s the region had become home to a concentration of retired resource workers, a surprising number of whom had been handicapped in industrial accidents (Hasson & Ley, 1994). The decline intensified following wartime recovery as the community became even further marginalized from mainstream society. By the 1960’s substance abuse had become increasingly noticeable as the community of retired and unemployed resource workers were joined by a “transient population of middle-aged and elderly men, some alcoholic, native, and youth” (Hasson & Ley, 1994, p.175). With the community’s further removal from the remainder of Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside became increasingly identified, not through the work ethic and achievement of its once proud resource workers, but rather through the morally deviant activities which were becoming more frequent (Sommers & Blomley, 2002). With the community now “coded as a place of dubious morality, racial otherness, and masculine failure” the discourse of “skid road” as we know it today became readily applied (Blomley, 2004, p.34). 3 With the socio-spatial make-up of the community already greatly altered, the events surrounding the 1986 World Exposition (Expo 86) provided the impetus for another significant shift in the residential profile of the community (H. Smith, 2003). A number of long-time tenants of the residential hotels in the neighbourhood were given eviction notices as landlords anticipated an influx of tourists. Estimates of the actual number of individuals displaced during the event range anywhere from seven hundred to one thousand (City of Vancouver, 1995). This drastic eviction, which left up to one thousand of Vancouver’s residents homeless or in search of housing is often overlooked by critics of the Downtown Eastside community activists. The main reason for this denial is the relatively modest change in the total number of low-income Single Room Occupancy (SRO)1 units lost due to Expo 86. However, this discrepancy reflects not the lost units for the period of the exposition, but rather the total change over time, from year to year. So, due to the fact that many of these hotels reverted back to low-rent units following the events, the impacts experienced by the residents are often ignored through statistical analyses of total units (City of Vancouver, 1995). While the outside observer, focused on statistics may consider these impacts modest, to the neighbourhood the effects were sizable (Hasson & Ley, 1994). Although many of the residents found housing again following the event, their sense of comfort, security and ownership in their homes was fundamentally altered. The reality of how close they were to homelessness in the City of Vancouver was now clear. Although this loss of security in one’s home is troubling, the squalid living conditions in the Downtown Eastside are equally disturbing. Jack Layton (2000) provides insight into these horrid living environments from an interview with a 73 year old World War Two veteran, living in the neighbourhood who describes his home: It’s steep for a little room. I’m paying $375. It’s hot, smelly and noisy. It’s filthy. Badly in need of a good coat of paint. No hotplate, busted fridge. Everything is busted here. The sheets and towels fall apart in my hands. Mirror is off the wall, can’t shave. I found a hypodermic needle underneath the bed, so druggies have used it... It’s full of cockroaches. I don’t know how they get away with that. Why aren’t the inspectors around more often? (quoted by Layton, 2000, p.119) This description sheds some light on the living conditions in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and evokes the sense of helplessness and isolation felt by residents of the neighbourhood. Although the causes for this neglect may be debated, one thing is clear: As these conditions worsen, long-term tenants face possible eviction as their homes deteriorate beyond the limits of the building code (H.
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