From the Lab Rat’s Desk – November 7, 2007

Are my Neighbours really heartless fascists?

I am tired of all the negativity projected onto my building by a residents association I had never heard of until reading and article interviewing them on the building I live in, brought on by the mass evictions at 2100 block of Pandora Street. That building, which after a flood brought on by a despicable lack on maintenance had the city mass evict the tenants. Those tenants are having a very rough time finding housing, mostly because there is none, none that would approach the level of housing they had in that fated building. They had their own place, their own kitchen and bathroom. Most of the housing out there at their level of income will have neither.

The arguments goes, well they won’t have bed bugs and mice, and floods at least. No one can guarantee that. Bedbugs have no notion of what is and what is not the appropriate building to infest. It takes on traveller on a coat to start and infestation. The bug doesn’t suddenly realize he’s in the Hyatt and immdiately packs up and leaves to the Lower East Side. I’ve seen mice and rats on Granville Island, well fed. Lots of expensive, yet leaky condos sport molds, fungus and floods, every bit as noxious. If it was so much worse at the building at 2100 Pandora it was for one reason, the tenants were poor and the landlord knew he would have tenants whether he spent money on the building or not. The landlord has no competition, he doesn’t have to try. If there were sufficient units for people in low income groups to rent they would choose the best for their money and this slumlord would soon find himself with a largely vacant building. With more buildings to choose from tenants could be choosier as to hygiene, upkeep and other tenants. Most of us would, given the choice choose to live somewhere safe from the criminal element.

Apparently this residents association has a problem with tenants who have no choice but to live where they do, and have the expectation that by moving out some of these tenants everything will change. It wasn’t mentioned that often the trouble comes from drug trafficking done in the park opposite. It would also seem obvious that people using drugs in the alleys haven’t got apartments here or they’d be using their drugs indoors. The laws should have more teeth and a police presence by way of patrolling the park and area regularly might help a lot. It might help also if the city had a less lax attitude to drug use. It sends mixed messages by providing safe injection sites and at the same time complaining that people use drugs. No one bats and eye when marijuana is smoked on public streets and in the park. It may be “only” marijuana, but it is illegal and with that comes drug trade, and whom easier to recruit to sell than the poorest who need to scrape by. What the residents association really wants is to get rid of the unsightly poor which is keeping their property values from skyrocketing as in other neighbourhoods in Vancouver.

The attack is on the victims of poverty, and it should be on poverty itself. If you have people living in conditions not even suitable for a dog, you cannot expect them to live with the same civility as those who live in comfort with no worries where the next meal comes from with no certainly one day to the next of having shelter. Give the poor the basics of a dignified and life and the tools to maintain and improve their standing in society and many of the crime typically associated with the poor will go away, there will be no need for self-medicating or panhandling for a meal and some shelter,

Build sufficient housing, not SROs which have all the same problems of no dignity, no security, no privacy. How can someone who’s been victimised in the sex trade or in domestic violence heal in an environment where they have to share washroom facilities? Can a paranoid personality do well in such an environment? Will depression cease when all you have is a small room and live with people you don’t know in such close quarters? These are nothing more than poorhouses, we’re taking a giant step back as a society.

Sufficient housing, apartments, the same size as anyone else would have not the Major’s eco-density which is a spectacularly bad idea, we’ve done all those experiments with rats in our social psychology classes, you deprive rats of private space and they will turn on each other, there will be mahem, chaos and all that comes with it. Give them more space and all settles down. Everyone should have a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a balcony. Safe, Clean with communal space for socialising. The best example I have seen of this is the PAL building for performing artists in coal harbour.

If you put the poor exclusively in SROs what becomes of the children, are they put in foster care while the parents try to find against all odds a place to live together? Living in illegal suites, dealing with yet another unscrupulous landlord (of which there seem to be plenty). Better they have dignified suitably sized apartments, safe play space for the kids. Surly providing this kind of housing ultimately saves lost of money. Instead of spending lots of money on emergency shelter in hotels, crisis funds for resettlement, and foster care. Health will improve, hopelessness will be replaced by a sense of dignity a sense that we are a part of the community not the target for jibes by the upwardly mobile. Build sufficient rental housing to ensure a market which allows a tenant to make choices about where they would like to live instead of being relocated to places they have no support, no history. Charge them what is fair, on a sliding scale, as they have more they pay more, but always as a percentage to leave them also with enough for food. The subsidy can be paid directly to the landlord. All tenants pay but what they pay is between them and the landlord and social workers, they can be part of a community no more or less worthy than the next.

Do the sick, elderly and disabled have to share bathroom facilities? Are we not allowed some dignity and privacy, at minimum a self contained rental unit with bathroom and kitchen facilities. For the past few years I feel constantly under threat of losing what little I have. Obviously it is not paranoia, it is happening. The extra stress is having impact on my health, I cannot imagine coping with having to relocate with little time and a near 0 vacancy rate. What further will I be asked or expected to give up? I take some joy from living with my son, and my pets. I need the pets, they give me reason to get up. I need my son, he helps me when my illness requires someone help me and goodness knows there is no home care of any kind, without him I face living in a home. So I would lose my independence, the relationships that are therapeutic and provide me with love and dignity, I would lose (well have lost this already) security and safety. Probably it ould mean living with fewer and fewer of my belongings as the living spaces available become smaller and smaller and less and less private.

Once upon a time I felt like a human being who mattered, and I was convinced that paying high rates of taxation which left my paycheck smaller even when I received raises, well it provided for a safety net for those folks who were left disabled, or ill, unable to manage, and, I reasoned, it might one day even be me. Well it is me, the tax rates are still high, and there is no safety net, no kindness and no dignity.

My fellow human being, the ones having the face to once introduce themselves to me as their “neighbours” now have a residency association, one to which I was never invited. Their little group manage a newspaper article calling my building and affront to their sensibilities. Yes, there have been and may still be a drug dealer or two here, I see strange people going in and out of my building. Pretty much as it has been in any large building with many suites which I’ve lived in, most of those in far more “upscale” areas. What they did not mention were the tenants who lives here who use a wheelchair, walk with a cane, walk with difficulty, are elderly, are new to this country, young families with little children, middle aged ladies who found themselves single, poor and wanting to have a pet. Many of us are pet owners. Many of us are former victims of crime, some are recovering alcoholics or drug users.

The neighbours complain of whistling to get the attention of “drug dealers”. Purely an assumption. I’ve whistled to get my son’s attention if he’s on the Internet and I foolishly forgot my key. I’ve seen people do it behind the more upscale building of condos at the corner of Garden and Pandora, and someone then threw him a key. The neighbours assume we are poor so must be up to no good and wouldn’t the property values just go up is we were gone. Some neighbours. They can’t see that they have at least 50 neighbours in this building. I’ve been nothing but friendly to my neighbours and their two-faced-ness hurts me. Thanks to them I might find myself homeless, disabled, losing for the last months or (hopefully) years of my life privacy, dignity, freedom, not because I am a criminal, but because I am now poor. Regardless all the tax I have paid, decades of working in the not for profit sector, raising good kids to adulthood, being a grandma. None of it matters, I am poor, no one cares, and the landlord, well he might choose to take advantage of the moment, my neighbours have set me and 50 neighbours up for being homeless with no place to go. I love my little apartment, I’ve lived here seven years and it is my home. There are no modern conveniences such as dishwashers, or in suite washer/dryers, no thermostats no thermal glass windows, the rugs are very old, but it is my home. It took months to get this apartment, landlords don’t like renting to the poor, disabled or welfare makes no difference to them. I am happy here, and the building manager is doing an amazing job considering she has to manage 56 suites by herself with no help. If I need a new washer for a tap, or if a board breaks on my balcony, they fix it right away.

this is my home of seven years

Today we were given notices, shoved under the door, I’ll keep it simple and just post the scan right here for you to read. I feel intimidated. I am terribly sad. It is making me more ill, I’ve been in bed for days with worsening of my symptoms, emotionally my son and I are both wound tight and unable to enjoy much of anything. I am not sure I can live through being evicted and relocated, or worse endlessly being jockeyed from a night here in one shelter or someone’s couch for goodness knows how long. These fear raising tactics are cruel. You can’t threaten a rich person by doing this, the rich have options, choices, we only have fear.

Some related articles, follow these links:

The Evictor – Vancouver Eviction Services
http://www.lestwarog.com/newspaper/theevictor.html

Tenants fighting mad over eviction notices
http://www.gregorbc.ca/node/89
http://anarchocyclist.ca/2004/09/08/quick-humourous-landlord-update/
http://www.realestatetalks.com/viewtopic.php?p=85259

why are the neighbours so unfriendly?

From the Lab Rat’s Desk Novermber 1, 2007

Still have the same bloody headache so the last few weeks have not been terribly productive. Nontheless there has been movement. In another week I can pick up my passport after which I can get the local Identification (which required a passport or local birth certificate, hence the passport first. Yesterday I finally got my replacement bus pass, so that means I can get about, and it won’;t cost me every time.

Unfortunately my knee isn’t getting better as I would like and it caused me grief, in time it might get better. The police are closing my file, or rather it is now inactive as nothing new has happened or come up (nothing found, and the only likely suspect cannot be called in on what they have currently), sigh. I still find myself not quite as resolute of step and am still looking over my shoulder far too much.

I still have a lot of paperwork to do, much of it futile. The victim’s assistance will only help with medical and counselling costs but not with replacing stolen goods, maybe with added transportations costs (stolen bus pass), but for that alone it is a lot of paperwork. That 20 dollar cheque that social services had agreed to add in for those emergency funds, never materialised, something they said to get me out of the building. I expected it, they take joy in the misery of others (shadenfreude).

I’ll be back to my jolly self if I can get a break from this headache. Certainly I know who values me, friends and family, and devalues me, the government and agencies designed to help out those in need (throwing the helpless on the compost heap). I’ve passed through the worst of my nightmare, but if I have an ounce of spare energy here and there it will be spent screaming at the people in charge over their utter failure to help the needy, and that includes the media, who failed to do any kind of follow up when the people a block away from me suddenly found themselves homeless, quite a few now wander all day long with their few possessions, shelter to shelter. It sickens me to see the sanctimonious lot fawning over the 2010 Olympics and the surplus of tax monies in this province.

no dignity when money runs out

_____________ a bit more reading on topic if interested _________

this time about my building:

Drugs, noise anger neighbours
City loath to close low-income housing despite drugs and crime
Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun

Published: Tuesday, October 23, 2007

VANCOUVER – Paul Sahota isn’t the only landlord with an east Vancouver apartment building that has been a longtime source of woe for neighbours, police and city inspectors.

Giovanni Zen’s apartment complex at 2255 Pandora has been the subject of allegations of rampant drug-dealing and other criminal activities…
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=440c823e-4cd9-47ba-b6b3-ce6c200c6b03&k=90331

The building one block down:
http://www.streamsofjustice.org/2007/10/audit-of-slumlords-pushed.html

http://www.cknw.com/news/news_local.cfm?cat=7428872912&rem=77839&red=80187223aPBIny&wids=242&gi=1&gm=news_local.cfm

More time for residents forced out of their homes in East Vancouver
Oct, 25 2007 – 8:40 AM

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) – People forced out of a rundown East Vancouver apartment building last week are getting more time to find a new place to live.
http://www.straight.com/article-76686/harper-government-ignores-housing-crisis
http://www.euro.who.int/Housing/Activities/20041012_1

Living a block away from an apartment building closed due to despicable lack of maintenance on the landlord’s part, and read in various publications where this is blamed as much on the tenants as the landlord. My building is another dangerously close to being closed thanks to neighbourhood obsession with goings on, the age of the building, the socio economic state of the tenants and the desirability of something more upscale in it’s place.

While there are tenants I would not approve of and rather not live in the same building as, this would make me homeless, and living on the street with a progressive illness terrifies me more than any of my neighbours. Frankly I’ve never lived in a building anywhere on any income level which did not have problem tenants, or mice, but don’t the poor make for a handy target. Retroactive NIMBY.

So while my neighbours cheerily wish me a good day they are also busy-bodying doing all they can to see me homeless, doubtless no more than a shrug and an expression of too bad there has to be some collateral damage. That collateral damage consists of people – families, elderly, disabled, people recovering from years of tortuous life on the street, just barely scraping by spending more than half their income on basic housing only to have their housing security threatened by the “well-intentioned” neighbours? I would offer my wishes for a good day to these “neighbours” the upwardly mobile who bought fixer uppers next to our building, thinking what nice people, but noticing more and more that they were on fishing expeditions. I’m not stupid, the driving force of the local economy is the brisk trade in real estate, there is no room for those whose incomes do not let them play.

as they take my sky away with hi-priced living