For a link to the proposed City of Vancouver study click here
The DTES NH response to the study:
Madame Chair and Councillors
The Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House addresses Mayor and Council today on the subject of the proposed Height Study, a position intimately informed by more than 8,000 of our DTES neighbours who annually enter the door of our storefront. We begin by affirming our respect for the City Planners who sculpted this Report and who so often generously lend us their talents as we manoeuvre the learning curves of an emerging Neighbourhood House.
The DTES NH asserts that the Height Study is illogically timed in relation to the pressing need for a meaningful DTES Land Use and Planning Process which must be initiated in order that the future design and content of the DTES landscape includes and reflects the voice and the vision of the longstanding low-income community.
We propose that this last can only be accomplished by tabling the Height Report for the moment and that in its stead, the City commit to undertake a Socio-Economic Impact Study to determine the effects of the Woodward’s Redevelopment and other recent buildings on the fabric of our community. Ironically, the City – in tandem with the Woodward’s developer – has on two fronts played a principal role over the past few years in creating the need for such an Impact Study. The first front being the City and the developer’s failure to include the once promised amenities within Woodward’s. The second front is the consummate silence from both the City and the developer to the DTES community regarding the opening of Woodward’s: there has been no semblance of greeting or welcome to our neighbours. A city with a soul is an amalgam of people of all ancestries, incomes and ages living in productive complicity. If the communications disaster of Woodward’s is truly your template, then you are positioning the DTES to become a series of bereft, parallel enclaves.
Since January 2008 we have asked: “Who and what is going to humanize Woodward’s to the pre-existing DTES community?”
As Woodward’s has revealed itself to be an example of how not to proceed, let Mayor and Council now – in partnership with DTES residents – make wiser choices, better communicated and acknowledging of residents. Logic dictates that a Socio-Economic Impact Study be completed before the Height Study’s recommendations be considered and/or approved, for the Impact Study will inform height and density needs, as well as community capacity, from a solid community footing.
In recent years, a fervent embrace from a variety of sources has wrapped itself around the DTES.
Once the preoccupation of few, we are abruptly the favoured of all, and all certain that they know what is best for us. The 1000s of residents who constitute the DTES low-income community and who wish to continue to live here, are complex, talented, hard working, ambitious individuals – material poverty, substance dependency and compromised physical/mental health status notwithstanding. The DTES NH asks Mayor and Council to establish a Land Use and Planning Process which is steered by low-income representation proportionate to the current population.
The modern tongue is fond of the term ‘inclusive’ – the DTES NH is not, for at multiple turns it is increasingly used as an instrument of manipulation. We sometimes hear that our allegiance to 1000s of low-income people is exclusionary of others. We know however, that those of us with privilege inevitably find our way to exercising that privilege as well as our inherent sense of entitlement. The DTES NH considers it simply neighbourly to include the majority of the DTES population in our deliberations and invite you to do the same, in concert with others of like mind.
Thank you.
The DTES NH acknowledges and honours the fact that our community lies within the Traditional Territory of the Coast Salish people.
