Vancouver’s plan for Downtown Eastside squeezes in rental-only district

Vancouver is rolling out an ambitious plan to rehabilitate the benighted Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood where problems with poverty, drugs and crime have defied politicians and social agencies for decades.

The Downtown Eastside Local Area Plan calls the neighbourhood "the historic heart of the city," that despite having access to a plethora of social services and aid money continues to struggle with "many complex challenges including drug use, crime, homelessness, housing issues, unemployment and loss of businesses in the community."

The Globe and Mail reports that one key segment of the plan's initial draft is a special rental-only district to house the neighbourhood's poor and the opening of two grocery stores that would cater to low-income residents as gentrification encroaches on the area. Redevelopment has generated protests from activists and some residents who fear the neighbourhood will become unaffordable for them.

The plan, which has been tabled for public comment, stresses social housing for residents, many of whom now live in often seedy single-room occupancy hotels (SROs). But it also includes development of market housing in adjacent areas such as touristy Gastown, nearby Victory Square and Chinatown.

[ Relaed: Weighing in on future of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside ]

It would also green-light apartment towers of up to 120 feet in the area of Main Street and Hastings, the neighbourhood's notorious epicentre, with buildings of up to 150 feet allowed if developers promise to add social housing to their projects, the Globe said.

“We think we’ve come up with an approach that is innovative, aggressive and achievable,” Vancouver's assistant planning director Kevin McNaney told the Globe.

McNaney said the plan anticipates adding about 10,000 residents to the area, which now has a population of about 18,000 — almost two-thirds of them on welfare, disability or simply just very poor.

The draft plan calls for up to 60 per cent of units in the rental district devoted to low-cost accommodation, and touches on the importance of making sure the neighbourhood's poorer residents still fell at home as a wave more well-heeled people move into condos or establish upscale businesses.

It's somewhat different in approach from Toronto's revitalization of Regent Park, which aims to transition that neighbourhood from social housing to a mixed-use, mixed-income district.

Former Vancouver planning director Ray Spaxman said the plan is a major leap forward.

“This is the most complex plan I’ve seen,” Spaxman, planning director in the 1970s and early '80s, told the Globe. “It does identify the directions that people are agreeing on.

"And the program is very much a partnership between the city and community, which we haven’t seen before.”

But community activist Tami Starlight was less optimistic about the plan's prospects. She told the Globe it offers no guarantee how many of the promised housing units would be affordable for welfare recipients, who normally get a $375 monthly shelter allowance. It's also vague on the extent of plans for social housing, she said.

“The Downtown Eastside is an enormously complex area,” Brian Jackson, the city’s planning and development general manager, told CTV News. “It’s really a question of balancing all the people’s interests in the area, and it’s tough …and we think we’re at that right balance.”

[ Related: Voices rise up against anti-gentrification protesters ]

Jay Stewart, who works in the Downtown Eastside, didn't play down the challenge of fostering development of the neighbourhood while still making it affordable for existing residents to live there.

“If you’re going to put pressures on this neighbourhood to disperse people elsewhere, I don’t know where that elsewhere is,” he said. “You’re going to have a very contentious mix coming down the road if it’s just done simply for pro-development needs.”

But Downtown Eastside resident Herb Varley sees hope in the plan.

“We have an opportunity to change this neighbourhood from a perceived blight to a beacon of hope for every single low-income community,” Varley told CTV News.

“We can do that, but it’s gonna take some very bold maneuvers on everybody’s part. All anybody wants is a safe place to live.”