Dear Friends,
Please join us to oppose a significant proposal for Condo developments covering 6 lots at 58 W. Hastings in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. We need HUNDREDS of Vancouver RESIDENTS to each write a letter AND sign up to speak at the Development Permit Hearing to make an impact.
It is ESSENTIAL that our letters are in Friday, May 17, in order for the Planning Department to reference them for the report that the Development Permit Board will use to make their decision.
We need your letters of concern to help ensure:
-that development in the DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE works for the people living in the Community Already!
-that Condominium development does not proceed without consultations with the Communities directly concerned
-that the City of Vancouver acknowledge and respect what Vancouver Residents have to say about what’s going on in the City.
Your letters do not have to be long or profound. A few sentences objecting to the development as it stands will do just fine. Add any information that is relevant to you and your reasons for rejecting the proposal; elaborate wherever you feel it is important.
Feel free to use the information below and use the information in CCAP’s letter posted at: http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com.
Background:
The Concord Pacific development at 58 W. Hastings must be stopped. The rapid gentrification of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is overwhelming the low-income residents of this neighborhood, who make up 75% of its population. The current rate of new development, in which new condos outstrip social housing 3 to 1, is a grave threat to the neighborhood. The feverish planning, approval and construction of market condos is a destructive force accompanied by massive aftershocks to this community.
Rising real estate prices are already resulting in increased rents, conversions and closures of residential hotels (SRO’s), creating a constant flow of displacement and evictions of low-income residents, and consequent homelessness. Condo construction will be accompanied by a flood of upscale amenities catering to the new residents of the area, which will further marginalize the low-income residents who have make this neighborhood home for many years.
Unlike people with significant resources, whose lives are marked by independence and mobility, people living in poverty form communities of interdependence, located in a specific geographical area, and embedded in neighborly networks of support and assistance. The community of low-income residents who currently call the DTES home should not be displaced from their neighborhood and relocated somewhere else for the sake of condo development. This is their home, and they should be able to live here.
Poverty is not grounds for displacement.
Condo construction in the DTES must be halted until a community vision is formulated, planned and implemented. Like putting up a tent in a windstorm, rooting and securing housing for low-income people in a community experiencing the hurricane of condo development and massive gentrification is impossible.
Residents need time to determine their own community vision and support the implementation of that vision, before the green light is given to condo developers. What is at stake is the existence of a vibrant, amazing community of people.
The cessation of condo development for the sake of this community can begin here and now, with the rejection of a development permit to Concord Pacific for the 58 West Hastings site.
We believe there is an opening at City Hall to support our position. On Thursday, May 1 at the Planning and Environment counil meeting, Cameron Gray, Director of the City’s Housing Centre said the surge of condos in the DTES is “like a hurricane and is going twice as fast as predicted…[and] we need to address the rapidity of change in order to stay on track with the Downtown Eastside Housing Plan.” He also said that a strong mechanism to control condo development “could signal to the Province that no market housing will be built and landowners/developers may be off to Victoria to get more housing here.” And he said: “its time to do a community visioning because groups are more united and able to do it and because of the rapidity of change.” At the same meeting, Councilor Anton of the NPA stated “we have the horrendous challenge of 4000 more units” in terms of securing replacement housing in the area and that “as long as the SRO’s are in private hands, they are in jeopardy.” Councilor Anton said she was “very encouraged by the [visioning] work in the DTES.”
Please write your letters by Friday, May 17 to:
Alison.higginson@vancouver.ca
The Chair, Development Permit Board
c/o Alison Higginson, Project Facilitator,
Development Services
453 West 12th Avenue
Vancouver BC
V5Y 1V4
Please bcc your email letter to: wpedersen@look.ca or send us a quick note to let us know that you wrote a letter.
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To sign up to speak at the hearing on Monday June 23, call:
Lorna Harvey
Assistant to the Development Permit Board
Development Services
604. 873-7469
Sincerely,
Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP]
Streams of Justice
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Wendy Pedersen
Carnegie Community Action Project
Carnegie Association
604. 839-0379
http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/
The Fungus 