Login / RegisterDowntown Eastside residents take condo protest to Vancouver council chambers
A crowd of about 100 Downtown Eastside residents brought their continued campaign against a proposed condo development in the 100 block of East Hastings Street to city council chambers today (April 17).
The protesters filled the public gallery and dropped banners from the balcony just as city councillors were adjourning a meeting and leaving the chambers for a break before an afternoon committee session.
Councillors Adriane Carr and Andrea Reimer, as well as city manager Penny Ballem, listened to several speakers as they voiced their opposition to the Sequel 138 proposal going before the development permit board next week.
“Over the past year, we have got over 3,000 signatures in opposition to this project,” said Herb Varley, who said he represented the Downtown Eastside Not for Developers Coalition. “It is very damaging for our community.”
Reimer negotiated with the group for half an hour of councillors’ time in an unofficial meeting in the chambers. About six members of council listened as Downtown Eastside residents spoke against the mixed-use development project.
Protestors called for the application to go before city council and not the development permit board. The proposal does not require a rezoning under the development plan for the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District.
Reimer told reporters following the council meeting that once applications are on-stream, they can’t be changed retroactively.
“There’s a fairness of process that you have to respect as a city,” she said. “As to the things that they were putting forward about the development permit board and council interfering politically in a decision on an administrative body, that’s where I’d be looking for clarification from staff.”
The proposal for the former Pantages Theatre site is scheduled to go before the development permit board on Monday (April 23).
The second comment posted seems a bit uniformed (sorry). Using the phrase "special treatment" to refer to the way people living in the DTES are treated sounds like a sick joke. Displacing an already marginalized group of people and leaving them homeless isn't the answer to this issue, and that's what would happen. Where else can they afford to live? More importantly, what if that was your home?
a community of vibrant, artistic and self reliant working people living in condos and creating secondary jobs is not a bad thing.
DTES poverty pimps, ghettoization is not the answer.
The overwhelming majority of Vancouverites want the DTES gentrified and made safe for ordinary people ASAP. This development adds to social housing in the area, and significantly adds to the housing stock for ordinary people. It's also gone through democratic due process...something these jackboots from the DTES know nothing about!
By my math, there's no reason to protest. Pantages Theatre was a condemned building - in its place, almost 100 units of housing including 25% dedicated to low income. Talk about biting the hand that feeds.
The DTES will never improve as long as so many of the current residents feel ENTITlED to it...ALL of it.
Who's greedy now?
Toting their little man-purses to the nearest hip clip joint wifi zone, dressed as pristine woodsman, nothing about them speaks of the two worlds being a good fit.
Keep the illusion alive, Vancouver.
Affordable to who? Certainly not the DTES residents, and many others in Vancouver.
I guess it's what you get when you have people born with silver spoons in their mouths and never had to worry about paying bills trying to dictate policy for the non-wealthy.
No, the real problem is the lack of decent housing for the poor. The residents have made it very clear over and over that they are not seeking "revitalization", they are seeking clean, warm, safe places to live for poor people. And baby, the poor are always with us.
The bullshit about "revitialization" should stop and the real problem should be addressed. The city has lost one of it's most valuable heritage assets, the Pantages, and the poor still need housing. The city must address its housing problem as a public policy issue, not a real estate deal.
@ TrueConservative
Well stated.
I agree with all of your post. Actually anyone would. The controversy is whether the residents have the right to reside regardless of market forces. The Charter right to life implies a right to external support when needed, but does it guarantee a right to supported housing in area of preference? Can't see it. Warm, safe, clean housing for poor people seems to be a quite distinct issue from getting a guarantee that you'll never be priced out of the district where you currently live. Certainly Mrs. Kerrisdale Granny never got any protest face time when the westside prices ballooned crazily and raised her taxes to the point where it made no sense to keep living there.
That said, Vancouver has to look at rent control and the Feds have to look at builiding affordable housing because homelessness is pretty much persecution as far as I can see.
The DTES is part of Vancouver. It's not a special employment zone for drug dealers. Those guys belong in jail anyway. We need to be concerned about their victims. VANDU can worry about the dealers.
VANDU opposes this development because they want to protect their turf. The real need is to change the turf so that drug dealers don't keep ruling the roost down there.
Go to Hastings and Main 24/7 and you'll see what I mean. Time for a change.
No, the people who wage the drug war belong in jail---or possibly tried before ad hoc tribunals, similar to Nuremberg, with the death penalty being on the table, especially for commanding officers.
It is time for a change---time for reparations. Good reparations would include condos for historically oppressed drug users, as well as large cash payouts and pensions for life, to make up for the life-shattering consequences of intergenerational drug prohibition.
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