The Athlete’s Village is Going to Smell Like Stinky Hockey Bags

Think City, a well-funded think tank dedicated to urban issues, thinks we should sell the 250 very expensive social housing units in the Athlete’s Village and use the money to buy more and cheaper social units in another part of town.

In my humble, inexpert and under-funded opinion there is a simpler, more responsible, and more cost-effective solution to this whole issue:

We should make the Athlete’s Village 100% social housing, and convert part of it to a satellite care hospital.

1.2 billion dollars – feds, province, city each in for $400 million – and voila! the epidemic homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues in Vancouver will be solved as soon as the torch gets snuffed.

Announced while the eyes of the world are upon us.

THINK about it.

Federal and provincial infrastructure funding budgets are in the Tens of Billions; an obscene amount of taxpayers’ money. But there is no plan that exists at any level that would accomplish anything close to this for a mere 1.2 billion dollars.

The current housing/health course set by the Province, and seconded by Think City, will surely take at least a decade, tens of billions of dollars, and exact a long, drawn-out toll of suffering while only accomplishing half as much.

But this way, the bang for our tax bucks would be both instantaneous and accrue over time (for starters, think: inflation + Chudnovsky’s estimate on the homeless health care savings over ten years + 15 additional development sites within City limits to recoup on + not having to pay Bob Rennie’s commission). The fact that it is luxury housing is irrelevant in the context of these kinds of numbers.

And if we are going to have any serious shot at becoming the Greenest City and solving homelessness anytime soon, it will take bold strokes like this, will it not? Going green means taking social responsibility, NOW.

The legacy left would be Olympian, the PR potential limitless. Knighthoods could even be in the offing.

Best of all, warm fuzzies would be felt around the world.

And did I mention that billions and billions of taxpayers dollars could be saved over the next ten years? Money that could be better spent on other things.

And that years of certain misery for thousands of people will be avoided?

That’s all the legs of the stool, folks. That’s walking the talk.

So, seriously, can anyone out there present a more sensible, ethical, efficient, health conscience and cost-effective plan?

What on earth could make Vancouver look better than this when the eyes of the world are upon us AND in ten years?

Across the Economic Divide: Gated Communities in the Inner City

In the 1990s, you could walk the BC Electric line that cuts diagonally across the Gastown grid from the Alexander Café (now a pumping station) to the Duck Ponds (International Village/Tinseltown) uninterrupted. I used to think these expansive unused spaces would be a perfect place for Vancouver to have farmer’s markets, festivals, etc. with shops and stoops and cafes opening along the angular sides of the old buildings. No cars, but maybe a street tram running through…

Now virtually every block and alley is gated off. The iron bars stretch across the expansive right-of-way between buildings, with combo locks and intercoms on every gate. There is rarely anyone sitting in these open spaces enjoying the sun, let alone barbequing, or chatting with their neighbours over a gin and tonic while the kids play.

(Top pic is the Koret courtyard, with the old rails still there. Next pic is the Van Horne courtyard, with a lone soul checking his PDA. Below is the alley on the other side of the Van Horne’s courtyard — perpetually busy.)

These courtyards are designed to keep people out, not bring them together. On one side, they say “Keep Out!” to the addicts in the always-busy alleys. On the other side they say, “I’m exclusive!” don’t talk to me.

Segregation is alive and well and living in Gastown’s gated communities.

Intellectual Property of the Urban Gentry

Art intersects with utility in many forms: chalk messages on sidewalks, public art in parks, graffiti on trains, and photo montages on real estate flyers. This glossy, uber-slick advertisement for the Woodwards development landed in my mailbox sometime in 2006. It is, I think, an interesting artefact of Vancouver’s recent building boom, and it is no coincidence that the man behind it is one of Vancouver’s best-known art collectors.

Bob Rennie, also known as The Condo King, has set the bar high for real estate promotion with a focus on hip, affluent and well-educated urbanites looking to get in on the market – a group more mundanely known in other cities as “first-time buyers”.

More than anyone else in the city, Rennie has promoted and sold the concept of Vancouverism – glass and steel residential towers built in the city centre to create a vibrant downtown core. Not content to inflate the price of real estate through slick advertising alone, Rennie personally contributes to the development of the so-called “creative class” he markets to by buying high-priced art pieces by local artists. The impeccable design and layout of this flyer suggests he has a well-trained eye.

The flyer folds out into a large poster of the city skyline basking in the glow of an impeccably Photoshopped brilliance. Your apartment even has its own logo: the retro red “W” puts a distinctive stamp on your abode – a cultural reference to the city’s past that you may or may not remember growing up in Hong Kong, Calgary or Abu Dhabi.

It has all the seductiveness of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue: gorgeous, airbrushed model (Vancouver, you hottie!) in a fantastic setting promising a lifestyle of excitement and fulfilment. The city skyline looks so hot it is literally glowing. As soon as I saw it, I wanted in! And I was ready to mortgage my future for 600 square feet of it. Well, OK, not really.

On the flip side, there is a montage of idyllic photos surrounding a map of Gastown and the hood. Noticeably absent from the photos are needles, crack pipes, homeless people, or derelict heritage buildings boarded up and crumbling from neglect. Hmmmn, is this really Gastown?

When folded up (top picture), the top of the flyer shows a yuppie with a latte next to the portrait of a laughing man who shows a hint of the neighbourhood’s, uh, colour. But hey, up in your glass tower, you’ll be above all that grittiness. And soon enough, with a few more towers in the area, the street life will all get pushed farther east. Vancouverism has come to the DTES. You are on the cutting edge.

The brochure must have cost a staggering amount of money to produce and mail out for free — full colour on both sides and poster size is not some cheap marketing campaign. And yet, you will notice there isn’t a word about floor space, design, cost per unit or features anywhere to be found. This is all about creating a buzz and selling a lifestyle that doesn’t exist: give yourself the illusion of street cred and show off your pioneer spirit by moving to the DTES. The brochure suggests that, if you don’t buy in on this, you are either stupid, cowardly, or totally uncool. Probably all three. In this day and age, that just won’t do. So, c’mon, catch the buzz. Get your ass branded already.

Rennie’s marketing campaign proved to be masterful. The opening day of pre-sales for Woodwards had people camped out overnight to buy in. There was a huge lineup down the block and every unit sold out within a few hours. It was, by all accounts, total insanity. A true work of art.