Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside plan disappoints locals
Posted March 9, 2014 12:33 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you’re traveling through the Downtown Eastside, you may notice some demands painted in the neighborhood. Locals are making their beefs over Vancouver City Hall’s Downtown Eastside Community Plan public, upset their needs aren’t represented.
Tamara Herman with Carnegie Community Action Project says the city’s plan didn’t include much of the input collected from interest groups. “What we’re hearing from the city is that… their hands are tied and they can only do so much about the housing crisis… Towards the end of the process it became less transparent.” She says those involved in the project didn’t even get the final document before it went public.
As for what they’d like to see in the plan, Herman says “we want 5000 signal room occupancy units to be replaced and we want enough housing for the 730 people who are street homeless,” but that’s not all. “We want a process where local low-income residents can have a voice in what businesses come here because we know that what’s happening is as land prices go up, businesses that serve low-income people can’t afford to stay.”
An aboriginal healing and wellness centre was also left out of the plan, so Herman says they chose to paint demands on the wall of the site where they would like one created.
However, she says there is one provision in the community plan locals are happy with; a zoning proposal for a section of social and rental-only housing.
That proposal would see 21-blocks of the Downtown Eastside excluded from condo development. Herman says there’s been a lot of controversy over that part of the plan because it could help control land value for the surrounding area. She hopes the City of Vancouver doesn’t cave to pressure from developers and real estate speculators who see potential for high-end development instead of social housing.
