give til it hurts and then give some mo'

Realtor Bob Rennie was a little reluctant to discuss his decision to give quietly to charity rather than host a swank Christmas party for clients. (Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun)

Seasonal giving goes beyond presents for family, friends

It's a phenomenon of Christmastime that the Vancouver Foundation sees an uptick in the number of people wanting to park $10,000 or more there to start a donor-advised fund

The Vancouver Sun

Thursday, December 28, 2006

By Frances Bula

Four Christmas-party seasons ago, Bob Rennie hosted a cocktail party at Morton's steakhouse for 275 of his closest clients.

The bill was $35,000.

Not that much money for the man whose name is synonymous in Vancouver with sold-out condo towers bearing swish one-word names.

But Rennie, a kid from the east side who still occasionally seems like an outsider at the rich people's ball, decided he'd like to redirect that money. Not that his clients weren't nice people, but they could probably afford their own steaks and wine.

So instead of the client Christmas parties this year, Rennie has given instead thousands of dollars to the institutions that mean something to him: the Contemporary Art Gallery; Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, where his $12,500 will be matched by the school to help pay tuition for a few students; BC Children's Hospital; the University of B.C., where he sponsors artists' talks; and the high school he almost graduated from in 1974, Vancouver Technical.

The $5,000 a year he gives there is for principal Dave Derpak to use for special needs that fall outside what the school board will pay for.

Rennie doesn't have much to say about why he decided to change his approach. I have no sentimental quote here from him about wanting to give back to the city or looking for deeper meaning in life.

(In fact, he's mildly uneasy that I've wormed this information out of him and wants me, in the interests of full and frank disclosure, to state that he still buys presents for the people in various clients' offices who help him throughout the year, that he has $15,000 worth of chocolate sitting in a warehouse waiting for delivery, and that he still hosts non-spartan staff parties at Christmas.)

But his impulse to give quietly to the more needy rather than the less needy, and to do a little more of that towards the end of the year, is far from rare, although Rennie may have a bit more cash to spread around than some.

I know I started my own little end-of-year distribution a few years ago. I'd started giving more to charities after we all got our fabulous tax cut.

And as I gave back my tax cut, I wanted it to go to people or local institutions that I knew personally: a friend's daughter doing volunteer work in Africa; the local neighbourhood house; an inner-city school. It was like my Christmas present to myself to choose a few special places for my money to go.

At the Vancouver Foundation, it's a phenomenon of the Christmas season to see an uptick in the number of people who come through the door or pick up the phone to say they want to park $10,000 or more with the foundation. The $10,000 is the minimum the foundation needs to start what's called a donor-advised fund, a fund where the foundation staff help donors work out a plan for which services or particular groups they'll support.

Last year, 45 people started funds in the first 101/2 months of the year. Another 21 showed up between Nov. 12 and Dec. 31.

"Sometimes it's a question that people collect their thinking about their donations just at year end," says Lisa Pullan, the foundation's vice-president of donor services. "Also, that's when the needs are brought to their attention. It's much more in your face at that time of year."

The pattern seems to be on track to repeat itself this year, with perhaps even more of a year-end bulge, thanks to the Conservative government's new policy that eliminated the capital-gains tax on gifts of securities to charities.

People come to the foundation because it acts as a screener for them, giving them some confidence that the groups getting money have been checked out. That's something Canadian donors to charity seem to want. We give ($8.9 billion in the most recent yearly stats) and we want to know that our money is going to a trustworthy organization.

"Donors these days want to be much more involved in their giving. They like doing the research and knowing the projects," says Pullan.

And they're giving more.

"Because government funding has been reduced, fundraising has become much more tangible for people."

Of course, some people do their research and donate in much more direct ways.

Karen O'Shannacery has been running shelters and drop-in services in the Downtown Eastside for 30 years, although Lookout Emergency Services has also spread out to Mount Pleasant, New Westminster and North Vancouver in recent years.

"We get the majority of our donations in December," says O'Shannacery. "It starts when the first real cold weather hits."

And they come from the wildest variety of sources. Some people drop off $5. Others donate their book collections. One Iranian man walked in to the society's Alexander Street office last year with $5,000 cash in his pocket and handed it over. Nervous staff counted the money three times.

Another man came into the downtown shelter four years ago, wearing a nice suit. He handed O'Shannacery a cheque and then said, "You don't remember me, but I stayed in your shelter 15 years ago and you really helped me. I'm married now, I own a house, I have a family."

He had come down to the shelter in previous years, driven around, but been too embarrassed to come in. That year, he made it.

Those donations, $442,000 last year, make up five per cent of Lookout's budget and allow the staff to buy all kinds of small items that are no longer covered by government grants.

"If we didn't have it," says O'Shannacery, "we'd be dead in the water."

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Wet, windy, snowy B.C. tops year's weather list

Thursday, December 28, 2006 | 5:42 AM PT

CBC News

British Columbia suffered — and suffered and suffered — from the weather in 2006, Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips says in his annual roundup of top weather stories.

"It was almost as if Nature had this area in its crosshairs," Phillips told CBC News on Thursday.

The province took the top two spots in his Top 10 weather stories for the year, and also nailed position No. 9.

B.C. was very wet, excessively dry, battered by storms, snowed on and frozen, and in Vancouver, approached a record for the most consecutive rainy days.

The consequences were dire, from a widespread and lengthy boil-water alert, to hundreds of thousands left without power, damage to hundreds of homes, trees down in Vancouver's Stanley Park, extensive wildfires and the depression that comes from 27 wet days in a row.

But it wasn't all bad in 2006, Phillips said.

"This year we were spared devastating hurricanes, severe drought and plagues," he pointed out. "There were no summer blackouts, and we experienced less weather-related personal injuries and fatalities."

His Top 10 are:

1. Early November storms in B.C. brought so much rain, "every river in the Lower Mainland, the South Coast and the southern half of Vancouver Island rose close to or above flood stage." A Nov. 15 storm toppled power lines, leaving an estimated 200,000 people without electricity. The rain caused landslides into reservoirs that serve Vancouver, forcing two million residents to boil their water. Later in the month, snow and freezing temperatures hit Vancouver.
2. Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland residents suffered three storms in five days in mid-December, with violent winds leaving a record 250,000 without power.
3. Three summer windstorms cut swaths through central Ontario and Quebec, starting on July 17. In Ontario, two people died and 250,000 were left without power. Two weeks later, tornados smashed cottages and trees in Ontario and left 450,000 without power in Quebec, where two were killed.
4. It was the second warmest summer on record, with temperatures more than three degrees above normal near the Northwest Territories-Nunavut boundary. Southern Manitoba suffered record dryness.
5. In parts of the Prairies, hail events set a record, with 221 in total, compared to the 179 record set last year. Calgary was hit with golf-ball-sized hail in July, then in August, a storm in central Alberta dropped hail as large as tennis balls. In Springbrook, "damage to 400 homes reached into the millions of dollars." In Manitoba on Aug. 5, a tornado devastated Gull Lake, uprooting trees, flipping vehicles and destroying small buildings. One person was killed.
6. January delivered a flood of mild Pacific air across the country. December to February proved to be the warmest winter season in almost 60 years.
7. "The Canadian wildfire season began early, ended late and was extremely active." Between late June and early July, more than 2,000 people north of La Ronge, Sask., were evacuated from their homes.
8. It was an average hurricane season, though the Atlantic region saw heavy rains, winds and some damage. On Sept. 13, tropical storm Florence toppled trees, knocked out power and flooded property in Newfoundland and Labrador.
9. Vancouver suffered 27 days of rain from December into January. "Residents of the Lower Mainland came to calling it the 'Lower Rainland' following never-ending downpours that were wearing out umbrellas and spirits." In Tofino, usually one of the wettest spots in Canada, there was no significant rain from July 14 to Sept. 16, and the town declared it was running out of water.
10. Pundits predicted voters would stay home because of cold and storms in the first winter election in 25 years, on Jan. 23. But it was unseasonably warm.

The rankings are based on the impact of the weather, the extent of the area affected, economic effects and how long the event remained as a top news story.

four blocks of hell on earth

Welcome to hell: Enter at own risk

Amid reeking garbage and blood-sprayed doors, humans ravaged by addiction feed their habits

The Vancouver Sun

Friday, December 8, 2006

By Randy Shore

His hair is black and tangled under his ball cap. The moniker stitched into his jacket is Rusty, but I doubt that's his name. He picks at the ground with blackened fingernails near a knot of drug dealers, hoping to assemble enough crack cocaine to get a hit.

He looks up at me for a second with watery, desperate eyes. Our meeting is like an electric shock. A raw nerve. He turns back to the ground, scratching the concrete with his fingers.

A few strides away, the alley is teeming with people heating the ends of their crack pipes.

It is midday and the traffic of customers is continuous for the drug dealers. After a quick huddle on the sidewalk, the deal is done. The addicts hurry to the alley to find a doorway or a dumpster to use as cover -- from the wind mostly, no one cares if the police are watching -- for a few deep hits from the pipe and a few minutes of relief from a bone-gnawing craving.

As I walk up the alley, the faces that emerge from the smoke are ghostly white and emaciated, like skulls. Their stares are as vacant as the storefronts that line Hastings between Main and Carrall.

City workers in orange vests walk the alleys and streets of what the city calls Area A, often under the gaze of police officers. The four blocks bordering the intersection of East Hastings and Columbia Streets form the core of the Downtown Eastside, the epicentre of hell.

In fact, the locals here greet outsiders with a cheerful, "Welcome to hell."

A group of street cleaners passes, heading north on Columbia. The street and sidewalks behind them are tidy. Their shovels and bins are full of cigarette wrappers, chip bags and snack cake boxes. The street ahead of them is still strewn with trash. The snow beside the garbage can on the corner is black. The bin itself is empty but there is trash lying all around it.

The doorways of abandoned storefronts are sprayed with blood and littered with discarded syringes. Above the Radio Station Cafe are several storeys of apartments with window boxes mounted up the side of the building. The marigolds are doing their best, but it isn't enough. They look very lonely.

The boarded-up windows and doors are a magnet for graffiti. There are names and the usual assortment of bad language and even some drawings. I am impressed by the intricate rendering of two syringes crossed like the bones on a pirate flag. The messages, political and personal, are gibberish.

As if to light a candle rather than curse the darkness, the City of Vancouver has posted a letter-sized piece of paper in one doorway at 112 East Hastings St. with a bold red stamp reading "Legal Notice." The order requires the removal of graffiti, though there is none apparent. Every other building in the area is covered with scrawl, but not this one.

A man with long, nicotine-stained grey hair walks out the front door of the Regent Hotel and kicks at the discarded cups and newspapers on the sidewalk, then goes back inside. Outside The Only Sea Foods, a woman wails for a dollar from passersby. Her face is twisted with anguish, her sweatpants bloody from the knee down. In the doorway of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, a couple lies in a huge pile of cardboard, blankets and suitcases. The two look sick and both have a gravelly cough. The office is closed. A small crowd is gathered, watching them.

The United We Can bottle return depot is the most popular business in the area, with a lineup that reaches down the block. This is where the city's binners -- the people who fill bags and shopping carts with returnable empties -- come to get paid. A makeshift flea market springs up here in the afternoons. People are selling what they have from little squares of fabric. One man offers a snow-globe, a video game controller, a hacky sack and a novelty rubber hand. Another has channel changers, four of them, and plastic toys still wrapped in plastic.

The crowd is well-behaved, but the police swoop in about every half hour or so. On their third visit, one officer has a lengthy argument with one man and then another is arrested. The man is cuffed while five officers mill around. The crowd takes little notice.

The alley behind United We Can is humming with activity. As I enter the alley, a city worker with a wheeled trash bin passes by a large malodorous pile of garbage. Even though it is near freezing, the stench is powerful. A woman looks up at me as she inserts a needle into her ankle. Two men pass by with plates heaped high with potato salad, bread and lasagna. Pieces of bread are dropped everywhere, as are discarded socks and men's underwear.

Midway up the alley, a cube van unloads a dozen kegs of beer behind the Dodson Hotel and just beyond it are about a dozen people smoking crack. A police car pulls into the mouth of the alley, but nobody moves. The police car backs up and moves on. More crack is smoked.

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Our four blocks of hell

Even the trash collectors demand police protection. In a month, this Downtown Eastside area produced: 39 tonnes of abandoned rubbish - 8,300 discarded syringes - TV sets dropped from windows - Graffiti on every building

The Vancouver Sun

Friday, December 8, 2006

By Janet Steffenhagen

A four-block area of the Downtown Eastside is so filthy and hazardous that sanitation workers have asked for police protection when they go in on routine duties.

The small area around the intersection of East Hastings and Columbia was the subject of a four-week pilot project in late summer that found tonnes of refuse abandoned in its alleys and streets, every building tagged with graffiti, and thousands of hypodermic needles tossed away.

The project was aimed at determining what could be done to improve things, but the findings alone are a stunning documentation of just how bad things have become in the heart of the city's Skid Road.

The zone, which has more police officers assigned to it than anywhere else in Vancouver, is the scene of "some of the most profound and concentrated public disorder and street cleanliness problems in the city," says a report to be considered by a city council committee on Thursday.

The report says nearly one-half of all the garbage picked up in the city during the pilot project was found in the four-block zone. Clothing thrown out of the area's many single-room occupancy buildings became tangled on overhead lines and heavier items like television sets were dropped to the streets, endangering passersby. Human feces and urine polluted lanes, sex-trade detritus was littered in public areas, and buildings were opened up to vermin where scavengers took away fittings for their scrap value.

The project was called SWEEP (Solid Waste Engineering Enforcement Program.)

City staff admit in their report that "the area reverted to baseline conditions within three to four days post pilot."

Keeping the area clean requires street and lane flushing six nights a week, emptying public waste bins nightly, and hand cleaning of gutters and sidewalks every night as well as five days a week.

The project was sparked by complaints from sanitation staff and Vancouver police department employees that they no longer felt safe working in the area. The city hoped to find out what it would cost to keep its most ragged neighbourhood clean and whether the results would be worth it.

From August 14 to September 8, city staff and an independent work crew, accompanied by police and bylaw officers, began removing and cataloguing litter and garbage and then sweeping the streets and alleys of the four blocks bordering the intersection of East Hastings and Columbia streets.

They collected 39 tonnes of waste, including abandoned mattresses infested with bed bugs, household appliances, stolen shopping carts, remnants of donated food and its packaging, human feces, 8,300 intravenous syringes, condoms and broken glass.

Crews removed graffiti and issued 92 violation notices for illegal street vending, urinating in public and littering. They also tagged 41 commercial waste containers that were either unauthorized or breaching city rules.

The total cost of SWEEP was $60,000, but that was reduced to $45,000 when regular cleanup costs for the area were deducted. The bill for a full year of SWEEP was estimated at $200,000, with costs expected to fall in weeks following the initial cleanup.

The report calls the project a success. "Although it was not possible to determine a statistically accurate correlation between public disorder and street-cleaning demands, it was confirmed through observations that there is a direct relationship between poor social conditions and high cleaning requirements," it says.

But it is too costly to continue, the report concludes, and wouldn't be an equitable use of taxpayers' money.

"A more sustainable approach for dealing with chronic street cleanliness issues in the DTES would be to focus on the root conditions that contribute to the disproportionate street cleaning demands, such as homelessness, drug addiction and inadequate commercial container regulations."

It suggests city council consider a bylaw requiring commercial waste containers that are visible from streets and lanes be locked. Council rejected a similar proposal in 2005.

Tom Timm, the city's general manager of engineering services, says in the report he continues to believe that a bylaw requiring locked dumpsters would be an enforcement tool to deal with improperly maintained bins.

Ken Lyotier, executive director of United We Can bottle depot in the Downtown Eastside, opposes locked bins, because he says it won't address the bigger problems in the area and will hurt those who make a few extra dollars through recycling.

He said he understands citizens' concerns about conditions and behaviours on the streets. "However, it's naive to think that locking our dumpsters will address those issues."

He said the project changed the look of the streets but did little to change behaviour. "But to maintain that level of sweep and enforcement would be very, very expensive, frankly, and that's really where we need to get serious -- to look at, in fact, what it is going to cost us as a society to do what we've said we hope to do by integrating folks into our communities who have substantial barriers and disabilities."

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rich get richer, poor get the picture

For richer and poorer

City faces the costs of a growing gap between haves and have-nots

The Georgia Straight

December 7, 2006

By Nick Rockel

Down Alexander Street, on the wrong side of Gastown, a popped umbrella lies flattened on the curb. Storms have delivered the heaviest rain in decades, and fierce winds rip through the Downtown Eastside, where Vancouver’s poorest are gathering on this sodden mid-November after­noon. Some have parked their shopping carts outside the Evelyne Saller Centre, a drop-in facility for low-income and special-needs people. Run by the City of Vancouver, the province, and local residents, it served 361,000 meals in 2005.

Those who need a warm, dry place to sleep head down the block to the Lookout Emergency Aid Society’s Downtown Housing Centre. And if they’re lucky, there might even be a vacancy. With 44 beds, the centre is one of four Lower Mainland shelters operated by Lookout, which took in 4,200 homeless last year and turned away another 5,500. "We don’t just house people at night and put them out on the street," says manager Al Mitchell in the modest lounge and dining room. Besides a couple of men sitting on sofas and some grizzled-looking types smoking out front, things are quiet. But, as always, by nightfall every bed will be occupied.

Lookout, founded in 1971, survives on a cocktail of federal, provincial, and private funding. Describing itself as "The housing safety net for the social-service system", it combines emergency accommodation with longer-term transitional housing. Looking in on one of his Spartan rooms, most of which sleep two, Mitchell tells the Georgia Straight that privacy for the homeless is a fairly new concept. "When this building was built in 1981, it was a radical departure," he recalls. "It took a lot of argument to get the government to agree to rooms. The idea was just put mats on the armoury floor."

Perversely, Mitchell relates, our mild winters mean the homeless die in hospital from exposure-related ailments rather than freezing outdoors, where they’d be counted as street deaths in other cities. Avoiding such tragedies takes much more than shelter.

"We have found that if all you do is give people a roof and a bed and some meals, in this community four percent will be dead the next year," Mitchell says. "Two people out of everyone staying here will be dead." But if his outreach team follows up with guests—getting them to their medical appointments, keeping them stabilized in their housing—that percentage drops to 0.4. "And that’s all I ask," he says of this 10-fold improvement. "I tell my staff, ‘Just keep ’em alive to be a problem next year.’"

Homelessness will be a problem in this city for years to come. But, sadly, it’s only the most visible sign that Vancouver is becoming a society of haves and have-nots. As well as causing pain and suffering for the very poor, that divide has left tens of thousands of other residents vulnerable to poverty too. So far, the provincial and federal governments have barely confronted the crisis, even though their policies help fuel it. Meanwhile, business groups say inequality makes Vancouver a less attractive place to live and to visit. It may also leave us a sicker city from top to bottom. International studies show that developed societies with a larger gap between rich and poor have worse overall health—even among the wealthy.

Throughout the region in 2005, the Greater Vancouver Homeless Count found 2,174 people living on the street and in shelters. That’s almost double the previous count in 2002, and the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C., which publishes the data, admits that it’s a conservative figure. The 2005 tally turned up more street than sheltered homeless: the former category swelled by 235 percent, or 800 people. One-third of those surveyed had been homeless for more than a year. Excluding transition houses, in October the GVRD had just 965 shelter spaces, 674 of them year-round.

Other grim statistics deflate Vancouver’s smug self-image as a land of opportunity. Yes, we’ve got solid economic growth, low unemployment, and the highest real-estate prices in the country. But in Canada’s least-affordable city for home ownership, the days of the cheap basement suite are long gone. In 2005, the average Vancouver two-bedroom apartment rented for roughly $1,200. The previous year, we topped all major Canadian cities for low-income earners: 17 percent of the workforce, versus 13.7 in second-place Montreal. The federal low-income cutoff for single residents in this group was $1,400 a month after taxes.

"If you can afford the latte lifestyle of a condominium on whatever floor, the West Coast is a great place to live," Mitchell says. At Lookout’s shelters, though, 20 percent of clients are working poor, many of them new in town. "We continually find people for whom moving out here has been a rude shock in terms of the expense, the difficulty of buying housing."

In other firsts, BC Stats reports that British Columbia—flogged by Premier Gordon Campbell as "The Best Place on Earth"—has the worst gap between rich and poor of any province. In 2004, the average market income (total income minus income from government programs) of poor families was $8,800, compared to $147,700 for rich ones. Topped up with government income, the poor still only earned 16 percent of what the rich did. Also in 2004—for the third year running—B.C. led the provinces in child poverty, according to a new ?report by BC Campaign 2000 and the First Call BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition. Nearly one in four kids was poor, versus one in six nationwide.

"The depth of poverty for people on income assistance, and particularly single moms, is just astoundingly shameful," First Call community-mobilization coordinator Adrienne Montani tells the Straight. In 2004, poor B.C. single-parent families headed by women were an average of $11,400 below the poverty line. Among the report’s recommendations: a 50-percent increase in welfare rates and an affordable public child-care system.

Want proof that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer? Between 1993 and 2004, Statistics Canada data reveals, the average annual wage of the poorest 10 percent of B.C. families with children fell from $14,824 to $14,475. The richest 10 percent got a big raise: their average wage jumped 47 percent, from $143,338 to $211,195.

The middle class is also taking a hit. In its recent 2007 budget submission to the provincial government, the local office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives noted that B.C. families had a 2004 median market income of $53,600. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $300 less than in 2000, right before the B.C. Liberals came to power.

With skeletal social spending, the B.C. Liberals have not only fuelled more homelessness but fallen out of step with concerned residents across the city.Politicians beware: average voters are anxious and resentful. Last month, the CCPA released the results of an Environics Research poll of 2,000 Canadians, half of whom said they’re always a paycheque or two away from poverty. Three-quarters of respondents believed the rich-poor gap has grown since a decade ago, and 65 percent said the benefits of Canada’s economic growth have gone mostly to the rich. Seventy-five percent worried that a widening gulf between rich and poor will lead to more crime and make Canada like the U.S., where gross inequality is entrenched.

As these troubling stats grab public attention, it’s tempting to regard the B.C. Liberals’ low profile as no coincidence. Campbell recently said the province will raise its welfare shelter allowance—now $325 a month for single recipients—for the first time since 1994. But he also cancelled the fall legislative assembly, curtailing debate over his government’s other welfare policies, which discourage the needy from seeking help.

City of Vancouver politicians haven’t escaped so easily. Mayor Sam Sullivan and his Non-Partisan Association are scorned by activists, who accuse the NPA of dragging its feet on poverty and homelessness. In a recent Web poll by the mayor’s office, 84 percent of some 2,500 respondents said public disorder—including people sleeping and defecating in the street—has become worse in Vancouver over the past five years.

On November 27, Sullivan announced Project Civil City, whose marquee pledges are minimum 50-percent reductions in homelessness, open drug-dealing, and so-called aggressive panhandling by 2010. "I believe that I’m the first mayor to actually set targets for homelessness," Sullivan tells the Straight. However, the Pivot Legal Society fears Vancouver will hit a different target in its Olympic year. Barring a plan that tackles root causes, Pivot says, a combination of scarce low-income housing, rising rents, and new immigration will push the city’s street-homeless population to 3,000, triple its 2005 number.

At its roots, Lookout’s Mitchell says, Vancouver inequality is a housing issue. Elsewhere in the province, people can still find accommodation for the welfare rate, meagre as it is. But here, where real-estate prices have doubled in five years, there’s no motivation for developers to build or maintain rental apartments when they can turn them into condos instead. Marc Lee, senior economist at the CCPA’s B.C. office, agrees with Mitchell. "The reality is that the private market doesn’t do a good job of building housing for low-income people and middle-income people," he tells the Straight.

Sam Sullivan has more faith in the marketplace. City Hall owns or has options on 19 vacant lots earmarked for social housing and plans to create 500 new units in the next two years. Sullivan notes that because of Vancouver’s small municipal tax base, funding must come from the provincial and federal governments. As far as overall affordability goes, he hopes residents will spur developers to build cheaper housing by embracing the city’s EcoDensity initiative. "The price of anything is related to supply and demand, and if we can dramatically increase the supply of housing, we will have downward pressure on the price," Sullivan says.

Still, the mayor doesn’t believe Vancouver should copy Richmond by banning the conversion of rental suites into condos. "It might be possible as a short-term solution, but you’ll drive away investment," he claims. "We need more housing, and if you simply prevent conversions in that way, you ensure that prices will go up even higher."

Greater Vancouver Regional District research shows that one-third of its households have trouble finding and keeping affordable housing. The 2001 census spotted more than 126,000 Greater Vancouver residents at risk of homelessness. Last month, the GVRD released a draft $250-million-a-year housing strategy that calls for $100 million each from the feds and the province.

How much the federal government will help is debatable. In 1993, then–?finance minister Paul Martin stopped all funding for new affordable housing, a move he followed by gutting social-service transfer payments to the provinces and eliminating national welfare standards. Ottawa stayed out of housing until 2002, when it began offering limited cash. Diane Finley, federal Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, did not respond to an interview request.

And Victoria? B.C. has no comprehensive, publicly accessible anti­poverty plan. After getting elected in 2001, the B.C. Liberals axed the Homes BC program, which used to construct new affordable housing annually. Since then, the provincial waiting list for available units has climbed from 10,000 to 14,000. It takes three to five years to reach the front of the line.

In October, Rich Coleman, the minister responsible for housing, announced another new strategy, the long-awaited Housing Matters BC. It will provide $40 million in rental assistance to working families who earn less than $20,000 a year, and it commits to building 450 more units of supportive housing provincewide.

NDP housing critic Diane Thorne admits that rent supplements will help some people, but she is disappointed by the strategy. "It falls far short of both what we need and what we expected," Thorne says, pointing out that in addition to its strict income rules, the subsidy is off-limits to people without children or a fixed address. Besides, she adds, this cash doesn’t address the real problem: long waits for shelter.

Thorne chastises the B.C. Liberals for diverting federal affordable-?housing cash into the health-care system, where it builds assisted-living units for seniors. She also refers to a June 2005 draft discussion paper by the Housing Ministry’s policy branch. It says that during the next decade, B.C. must build 3,150 new units of affordable housing a year to keep up with demand. In 2007–08, the provincial target is 925 units. "So the minister knows that the strategy is not going to do anything to address this issue," Thorne charges. Coleman did not reach the Straight by deadline.

Mitchell thinks the current system does little to break the cycle of homelessness. "Nobody on the street gets a place to live unless somebody else is kicked out," he says. And if Vancouver expects its vaunted economy to keep growing, Mitchell cautions, it must invest in affordable housing like it does in highways. "You’ve got to house your workers somewhere," he bellows. "My goodness, plantation slave owners understood this."

Cheryl Prepchuk, executive director of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society, has seen some revealing patterns emerge in Lower Mainland food lines. For one, the region’s overall food-bank use dipped slightly in 2005, but increased outside Vancouver proper. "So that tells us that people are moving out of the city if they can and trying to go to the suburbs, where housing is a little more affordable," Prepchuk tells the Straight.

She also says a drop in food-bank clients on welfare has coincided with an upswing in hungry working people. "In terms of that sector of the population growing, we could go further to say, ‘Yes, things are getting worse,’" Prepchuk ventures. "Because now people are no longer on social assistance: they’re working and they’re no further ahead." The Canadian Association of Food Banks reports that 81,248 British Columbians used its services in March 2006, up 7.7 percent from the previous March.

First Call’s Adrienne Montani ?accuses the B.C. labour market of failing to provide a whole underclass of workers with a living wage, enough hours, or both. "The line often is, ‘A job is better than welfare,’" says Montani, who wants the $8 provincial minimum wage raised to $10. "And that’s not true for some families, particularly for single-parent families, most of whom are women."

To make things even tougher, she says, working families with low annual incomes find themselves ineligible for child-care subsidies and other benefits. "They’re living in poverty compared to the actual expense of living here," Montani explains. B.C.’s Minister of Employment and Income Assistance, Claude Richmond, did not make himself available for comment.

Craig Meredith is the executive director of the Federation of Child and Family Services of B.C., and he believes the province is counting on cash-strapped charities to pick up the slack. In his opinion, the B.C. Liberals are hung up on fixing social problems like crime and drug addiction rather than preventing them in the first place.

On October 16 in Victoria, Meredith warned the government it must spend an extra $2 billion annually to rescue the social safety net from ?collapse. (B.C. had a $3.1-billion surplus last fiscal year.) He tells the Straight that in the 1980s, the conservative Socreds spent 20 percent of their budget on social services. When they left office in 2001, the NDP had pared that down to 15 percent. Today, under the B.C. Liberals, social spending is nine percent of the provincial budget.

Meredith’s group represents more than 100 social-service agencies, and he says most of those with provincial­-government contracts haven’t had their funding revisited in a decade. "These folks that are running these nonprofit agencies around the province are trying to do the same thing with 10-year-old dollars."

He adds that the B.C. Liberals are out of step with business, their biggest booster. "The government still believes that it’s the business community that’s pushing for more reduction in government spending," Meredith says. "The sense I get out there in the business community is that they still believe that they have social responsibility."

The Vancouver Board of Trade has repeatedly urged the Campbell government to be tightfisted, even as it decries homelessness, panhandling, and other unsightly problems made worse by social-service cuts. But the board’s chief economist, Dave Park, says both the province and the feds need to get more involved in affordable housing. He also tells the Straight that inequality is relative: when wealthier people see their incomes soar during prosperous times, those left behind feel worse off, even if that’s not the case.

"I think there will be more money for the social priorities," Park predicts of next February’s provincial budget. However, unlike Montani, he argues that hiking the minimum wage will increase unemployment. The B.C. wage is already Canada’s highest, Park says. "How far out in front of the crowd do you want to get?"

Another question: what far-reaching effects will the rich-poor divide have on our city? Richard Wilkinson is professor of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham medical school. His 2005 book, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (The New Press), gathers together a large number of public-health studies from developed countries. The evidence is overwhelming: no matter how wealthy a society is, even a small increase in inequality causes more social dysfunction. Worst-off is the United States, the richest and most unequal of all industrialized nations. It leads its counterparts in violent crime, obesity, and teenage pregnancy and ranks about 30th worldwide in life expectancy.

After hearing some statistics about inequality in this province, Wilkinson tells the Straight that if such conditions persist, the impact may be long-term. The one in four B.C. children who is poor will have a stress-plagued family life, which in turn affects school performance and carries lifelong health consequences. "I would be very surprised if as a result of this you don’t have more violence by the time these kids are in their 20s," Wilkinson adds. Although life expectancy will continue to rise, he anticipates that increased infant mortality will be among the first health effects.

Well-off Vancouverites could be putting themselves at risk too. This past May, Wilkinson’s colleague Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, coauthored a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It showed that the wealthiest Americans aged 55 to 64 had more diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure than the poorest Britons in the same age group.

Wilkinson has no doubt that inequality and its attendant "social pollution" are the main culprit. "It damages social relations right across society and seems to make the whole social structure more stressful," he says. "I think it leads to more status competition, more insecurity about your status and how you’re seen."

Wilkinson and Marmot challenge the cherished belief that big income disparities are okay if economic benefits trickle down the social ladder. And as B.C.’s stagnant median ?income and growing concentration of wealth show, the trickle-down part isn’t working either.

Bedeviled by the social and economic fallout of failed government policy, the NDP’s Diane Thorne says, groups like the Vancouver Board of Trade will start leaning on their B.C. Liberal pals. "Who’s going to go downtown?" asks the Coquitlam-Maillardville MLA. "I already know people who don’t want to go downtown because they don’t like what they see. And they don’t have to go downtown anymore. There’s plenty out in the suburbs now."

Cheryl Prepchuk reminds Lower Mainland taxpayers that they foot the policing, justice, and health-care bills that come with poverty, hunger, and homelessness. "We’ll be paying for the aftermath, when I think dollars are better spent to pay for the prevention."

And latte lifestyle or not, a frayed safety net puts many cash-strapped and house-poor residents of our growingly lopsided city that much closer to the street. "It could happen to anyone at any given time," Prepchuk says. "They could be a car accident or a loss of job away from being homeless." Not to mention being a problem next year.

ex-funeral home reborn as live venue

Ex-funeral home reborn as live venue

The Chapel, in the Downtown Eastside, makes its debut this Friday and Saturday with a concert from Barney Bentall

The Vancouver Sun

Thursday, December 7, 2006

By John Mackie

Everybody's always looking for something different. And boy, did Nathan Wiens ever find it.

Wiens is the proud owner of Vancouver's newest and most unique performing arts venue, The Chapel. What makes it so unique? It's located in an old art deco funeral home at 304 Dunlevy, smack dab in the middle of the Downtown Eastside.

Because it was a funeral home, the building came with (and was zoned for) a hall. So the entrepreneurial Wiens spent several months sprucing it up, and has opened it as a multi-purpose spot for most anything: art shows, live theatre, movie shoots and private parties.

This Friday and Saturday night, The Chapel will make its debut as a live concert venue, when Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts take the stage as part of the Grand Cariboo Opry, a Christmas benefit show for the Potluck Cafe Society, which provides meals to people in the Downtown Eastside.

Fourteen musicians will be taking part in the Opry, which has an old time country and western theme. The name and rotating singers concept were partly inspired by the Grand Old Opry, but the real genesis was some raucous shows that Bentall and the Legendary Hearts have played the last few years at the Clinton Rodeo, near a ranch he owns.

"We would have these big rehearsals at the kitchen or the ranch house the night before [the rodeo shows]," says Bentall.

"I thought, 'Why don't we do a series of charity events?' I came up with the name the Grand Cariboo Opry, because that was pretty central to it, the fact that it started in the Cariboo."

The Grand Cariboo Opry kicked off last weekend in Ashcroft at the Ashcroft Opera House, a gorgeous venue built way back in 1889.

"It's not an opera house with gilded ceilings, [but] it's wooden and it's old," says Bentall. "And all the musicians that have played there think it's about the nicest sounding room you could ever play in."

The gig was so much fun, they filmed and recorded it for a DVD. Now comes part two at The Chapel, which is small and intimate (125 seats) and is perfectly situated for a Downtown Eastside benefit show. Tickets are $40, and are available through the Potluck Cafe (call 604-609-7368 or e-mail info@potluckcatering.com).

The Chapel is quite unlike any other venue in Vancouver, maybe in Canada. The southern part of the building is believed to date back to 1892 or 1893, was added onto in 1911 or 1912, then finished in 1936, when the facade was given an art deco treatment to make it all seem like one structure. It started off as a house, then became Armstrong and Hotson Undertakers about 1912, when the building was expanded.

The interior is incredible, with high ceilings and all sorts of delightfully quirky spaces. The performing space is in the 1936 addition, which was formerly the funeral chapel. Next door to the chapel is a hidden interior driveway where the hearse would come in to pick up some poor soul for their final taxi.

On the other side of the chapel performing space is the original chapel for the 1912 addition, which features beautiful wood panelled walls. This is now used as a reception area between sets; a bar can be set up in either the 1936 chapel or the 1890s chapel (the bar is on wheels, so it's portable).

Upstairs is the former coffin showroom, which has been converted to an art gallery, where you will find stunning sculptural wooden pieces like a $25,000 bed made out of burled walnut.

The bed was made by Wiens, 43, who has done pieces for people like Diana Krall and her manager, Steve Macklam.

Wiens hails from Regina, where his father is the renowned prairie architect Clifford Wiens. He's a longtime friend of Regina products Colin James and New Pornographer Kurt Dahle; in fact, he used to play in a high school band with James.

"We were called Nick Danger," he laughs.

"I think we played as Free Beer and Pizza for a couple of shows. We had a huge draw, but people were totally disappointed [when there wasn't free beer and pizza].

"That was [Colin's] momentary punk and pop era. It lasted about a year, year and a half. We had lots of originals, and they were awful. They couldn't find a bass player, so they taught me to go klunk, klunk, klunk."

Weins put his musical career on hold to come to Vancouver during Expo 86, where he worked doing installations with Saskatchewan artist Edward Poitras. Since then he's worked as an artist and producer.

"I have been producing different forms of creative things, whether it be the movie business, the rock and roll business, or the construction business," Weins says.

His big break came when he bought a small building near the Seymour street exit off the Granville Bridge. He declines to give any figures, but basically he bought it for cheap, then sold it for a small fortune when a high-rise developer came knocking.

"I was by Carlos and Bud's, and made way for future high-rises," he says. "I refused a few [developers], then I got an offer that worked."

Weins went looking for a new studio, and found an amazing space in a former garage at Dunlevy and Cordova. It was huge (7,500 square feet) and had incredibly high ceilings (22 feet), but there was a catch: He had to buy the funeral home across Dunlevy, which was owned by the same company.

He wound up purchasing two buildings on five lots for $1.05 million, then spent several hundred thousand more fixing them up. It's a lot of money to invest in a neighbourhood infamous for its social and drug problems, but he's very optimistic about the Downtown Eastside's future. He notes that there are artists galore in the area and neighbouring Strathcona, and all sorts of cool old buildings are being converted into cultural venues.

"You've got the Chapel, you've got the Firehall theatre, you've got Bill Vince's [movie theatre on Main street]," he says.

"We'll soon have the Pantages theatre [on Hastings] and the Simon Fraser University performing centre, which is part of a huge development [at the Woodward's site]. That will make this kind of the cultural district. This neighbourhood has the potential to be a cultural hub."

He's doing his bit to make this happen. Eleven experimental theatre groups recently teamed up at The Chapel for a show called Hive, where different plays were put on in different areas of the building. The rock band 54-40 did some recording in the 1936 chapel space.

Three movies have filmed in the building. The skateboard company Skull Skates used The Chapel as the site of its 30th anniversary party, and it has also been the site of a couple of art shows.

"It's not a funeral home anymore, it's Vancouver's most unique venue slash gallery," Wiens says with a smile.