By Gary Lim
Petter initiates and wins and staring contest between himself and a koi fish in the AQ pond.
Gentrification: The Changing Demographic of the Downtown Eastside
“Hey, do you like Earl’s?” asks a man with a ragged and unkempt appearance, offering me a $25 gift card to Earl’s that he had gotten while panhandling: he tells me how he had gone to an Earl’s restaurant to try and use it, but they wouldn’t serve him because he was homeless.
“It’s of no use to me”, he shrugs. “I’d rather sleep indoors tonight than eat at fucking Earl’s.”
This juxtaposition of poverty and higher-end living is common in Vancouver, especially in the Downtown Eastside area, where the border between the poorest postal code in North America and Gastown is a vague one. This border is arbitrary, more upheld by social biases and stigmas, than by any physical or geographic markers.
The area that is now considered the shame of Vancouver was once a vibrant center, housing the central library, City Hall, and a streetcar terminal. In 1958, however, streetcars ceased to run through that area, followed by the central library’s move to Burrard and Robson. This, in combination with many companies also moving their head offices from the area, led to a drastic decrease in traffic. Other parts of the city — including Kitsilano — were seeing a gradual reduction in low-income housing, which brought more people to live in the Downtown Eastside, which was becoming more and more affordable. Another blow to the neighbourhood came when the Eaton’s department store moved to Granville St. from its location on Hastings Street — where SFU Harbour Center is located today.
The 1970s saw a turning point in the neighborhood’s history: due to funding cuts, thousands of psychiatric patients were de-institutionalized and left to fend for themselves. Many ended up in the Downtown Eastside, looking for low-income housing. The area has since become known for the high rates of drug addiction and abuse. This stems from the late 1980s when cocaine gained popularity over heroin, and consequently, the cheaper, lower quality crack cocaine became widespread. The rise in addiction came hand-in-hand with a rise in crime. As the demand rose, more and more pawn shops opened in the area, which made it harder for other types of businesses to stay successful. The final blow came in 1993, when Woodward’s closed down, bringing down with it what remained of businesses and restaurants in the area.
Last year, the annual Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) reported that 328 new units of social housing opened in the area, but also noted that high end restaurants are opening up in the area, causing real estate to skyrocket. “While this has been a good year for social housing, it has also been a year of gentrification,” reads the report. “Speculators are buying hotels and turning them into money-making investments.”
The theme of the annual report was the gentrification of the area.
Gentrification is the process by which businesses and investors build their projects in low-income neighbourhoods, thereby changing the face of the demographic, and usually pushing out the current inhabitants from the area. This is a rising concern in the Downtown Eastside as the trendy feel of neighbouring Gastown starts to bleed into Hastings St.
The CCAP reported at least 700 people that are currently homeless or living in shelters in the concentrated several blocks that the Downtown Eastside consists of, not including those that are living on the street or couch surfing. Thousands more live in privately owned single resident occupancies (SROs), which provide their occupants with little more than a small bed and a hotplate. These places are infested with cockroaches and rats, and are unsafe for vulnerable groups such as women. There are another 1,500 SR’s in the downtown eastside that are government-owned, or run by non-profit organizations. While the hygiene standards are higher in these than in privately-owned SROs, there is nonetheless little room, and no private kitchens or washrooms. Furthermore, many of these SROs do not meet earthquake safety standards. The report found that it is getting increasingly more difficult for low-income residents of the Downtown Eastside — many of whom survive on welfare or disability pay — to stay in even the squalor of privately owned SROs: the rent is growing, and the clerks at the front desk often profile potential occupants based on health issues and race. In 2011, only seven per cent of these hotels had rents of $375 or less, down from 29 per cent in 2009. There are occurrences of people double-bunking in these rooms, which are already too small for even one person to live somewhat comfortably. Most of these SROs are not allowed to rent by the night or the week, but some do so illegally, which also affects the vacancy of these places.
A staggering number of Downtown Eastside inhabitants are receiving welfare, with a majority on disability pay. According to the National Council of Welfare’s website, a single person on disability welfare in BC receives an annual $11,559, which calculates to $963.25 per month. A single employable person receives $7947 in welfare, which leaves these individuals to live on about $662.25 per month. While rent in SROs can be as low as $375, these are decreasing as real estate prices in the area rise, and vacancies are rare. Some of these SROs can cost upwards of $600 per month, which leaves those living on welfare with little choice regarding where and how they live. I spoke to a man living on disability welfare in the Downtown Eastside whose only choice of a place (based on finances and vacancy) was on the fourth floor — his lung problems made it almost impossible for him to go up that many flights of stairs, so he scheduled his day so as to only have to go up the stairs once each day.
The area is subject not only to deplorable living conditions, but also to corruption and stigmatization of its inhabitants. The 2011 Carnegie Community Action Project noted this as an issue, and provided a case study to paint a picture of the level of exploitation:
“At the Lotus Hotel . . . the lowest rent in the summer of 2010 was $440. In the summer of 2011, CAPP researchers got two different rent prices. A low-income Aboriginal DTES resident was told rent was $800 a month, and that there were no vacancies. A white university student was told by the same manager on the same day that rent was $675 and that the room would be available by the end of the month. The manager said they’re ‘not supposed’ to accept walk-ins, they are supposed to only accept new tenants through Craigslist applications for ‘quality control’ reasons.”
“As a generalized urban strategy, gentrification weaves together the interests of city managers, developers and landlords, corporate employers and cultural and educational institutions,” writes urban theorist Neil Smith. “Gentrification has become a strategy within globalization itself; the effort to create a global city is the effort to attract capital and tourists, and gentrification is a central means for doing so.”
The western area of the Downtown Eastside was among the first parts to experience gentrification: the historic Woodward’s site now houses over 500 condominiums, and the SFU campus at Woodward’s was controversially funded by mining giant Goldcorp. This sparked four more condo developments in the span of several blocks, not to mention restaurants and bars along the lines of Bitter Tasting Room. With the new condo developments, new restaurants and stores had to be built to meet the needs of the new demographic moving into the condos. Many of the restaurants along Carrall Street, as well as some of the condo developers in the area, have advertised as being in neighboring Gastown, which regard as an insult to the Downtown Eastside’s rich identity and history. Closer to the south, even more condo projects were established (V6A, Ginger, Strathcona East, Keefer Suites), and in April 2011, the city of Vancouver approved the Historic Area Heights Review, with new building allowances that approve a 17-storey condo and retail project, and a Rezoning Policy for Chinatown South.
The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were met with opposition for this very reason: the fear that a surge in development would further the process of gentrification. In 2008, after the initial bid for the Olympics went through, Pivot Legal Society — in association with the Carnegie Community Action Project and the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition — complained to the UN about the living conditions in SROs in the Downtown Eastside.
“We’re concerned about the 4,000 people living in privately owned residential hotels and rooming houses in Vancouver,” said David Eby of Pivot Legal Society. “They are being illegally evicted, they live in terrible conditions, and they are afraid to speak up because they need that housing.”
These fears, and the consequent protests, did nothing to deter the building and growth that came with the Olympics.
It is not only the Downtown Eastside that is experiencing gentrification: other areas, such as Mount Pleasant and Grandview Woodlands are seeing a surge in rent prices, forcing the inhabitants — mostly seniors and working-class families — to move to more affordable housing. The outrage surrounding the gentrification in Vancouver is further fuelled by the growing socio-economic gap between the residents of the Downtown Eastside and those at the top of the chain.
For example, Brandt Louie and Jim Pattison — both B.C. billionaires — received tax exemptions for their investments in Woodward’s. Another example shows a glimpse into the politics behind gentrification: for the past two municipal elections — both successful — Vision Vancouver allegedly got significant funding from real estate developers. Many see the gentrification not only as a logistical problem — that of where the current low-income residents will go — but also a moral one, even an attack on those that are already downtrodden.
“Approaching the isabella I expect to see an upscale enterprise has erased the old hotel & displaced all the misfit inhabitants & wonder what new monstrosity of redevelopment looms amid toronto’s global city agenda driving people into every doorway along bloor street after dark”
“Gentrification” -Bud Osborn, Downtown Eastside poet and activist
Confessions of a Playboy subscriber
By Blair Woynarski — The Sheaf (CUP)
A little over a year ago, I decided to buy an issue of Playboy.
The precise reason for this decision is a little fuzzy, but I believe it had something to do with viewing it as a rite of passage. At 21 years old, I had never flipped through a Playboy in my life, and it seemed that I was missing out on a big aspect of popular culture.
The weeks spent waiting for it to arrive in the mail were characterized by strange emotion. I went out to check the mailbox every day — not because I was dying with anticipation, but rather because I didn’t want my roommate to bring it in first. I felt like I was carrying around a weird, dark secret, or that I had crossed some sort of unforgivable line into a world of perversion. But then one day it arrived, and it is hard to say what my reaction was. It wasn’t excitement, nor was it disappointment; it was a neutral, calculating sense of, “So this is Playboy. Huh.”
One of my first thoughts was, “Wow, this really is just like a normal magazine.” It had advertisements, advice columns, whatever. But as I looked a bit more closely, I discovered something much more shocking. I discovered that it had more literary merit than most of what I could find on the magazine racks.
Don’t believe me? That’s fine. But let me ask you this: who was the most talked-about woman in Playboy last year? While you might not have a specific answer, chances are you are forming a vague mental impression. I can guarantee you are not thinking of the 89-year-old former dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, who was the subject of a Playboy interview last April and ignited controversy with her anti-Zionist comments. But that, in fact, is the correct answer.
The time-honoured Playboy interview has, over the years, dealt with many notable figures, including Bill Cosby, Robert De Niro, Barbra Streisand, George Carlin, Anne Rice, John Lennon, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Betty Friedan, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Fidel Castro (twice). Even vitriolic conservatives Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have deigned to be interviewed.
On top of that, I’ve read articles on the Arab Spring, asteroid mining, shark attacks, the making of Scarface, and the meth empire created by actor Tom Arnold’s sister. Playboy’s journalists not only produce great content, but they also track down intriguing stories that are not picked up anywhere else. So the question is: why does it still come delivered in a blacked-out plastic bag?
Criticism seems to come from two sources. One is an old, conservative generation that feels the need to stamp out boobs wherever they arise, but is still content to let the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition fly off newsstands across the continent. The other criticism is from a younger generation that finds buying Playboy to be the most ridiculous thing in the world when it’s so easy to find pictures of naked women online. And this group elucidates my point perfectly: Playboy lost its “dirty pictures” niche a long time ago, and it keeps going simply because of its strength as a publication.
I am not defending Playboy against any and all criticism. There is plenty you could write about “bunny culture” and its effect on women, though I do not feel competent to weigh in here. I am concerned primarily with the magazine, and the magazine is certainly no more damaging to women than the plethora of publications specifically directed at them.
I find myself staring at a Cosmopolitan cover every time I get my haircut, and frankly, it embarrasses me. They all run together in my memory, but I can recall tags like, “10 Things Guys Crave in Bed,” “9 Times You Won’t Burn in Hell for Being Bitchy,” “‘My Gyno Talked to my Vagina’ and Other Doc Shockers” and countless hard-hitting “Sex Surveys.” Of course, none sticks out more prominently in my memory than “The Butt Facial.” Any woman could read that in public without attracting a sideways glance, yet I would be a pervert for reading an interview with Jon Hamm just because of a partially obscured title printed across the top of the cover.
None of this will change, obviously. I will still furtively ferry my magazine back to my apartment when no one else is around, and I will still peruse deep and thought-provoking articles about solar energy or North Korea while kitschy nude cartoons smile from the opposite page.
I make the following confession: I read Playboy for the articles. Judge me as you will.
Word on the Street: Canada Day
Q: Gosh, how aboot that Canada Day, eh?
“I spen’it pah-troling the border. Can’t have any of those dern space-needling fixed-gear-bicycling coffee beaners sneaking up here to take our jobs”
Avery Clements
Shotgun enthusiast
“You really think I’d trust the Canadians? It’s always the quiet ones you need to watch out for.”
Gregory Barnett
Man in tin foil hat
“I celebrated my 366th birthday. Alone. Oh yeah, why pay any attention to Gottfried. It’s not like he ever did anything important, like invent fucking calculus!”
Gottfried Leibnez
Dead math guy
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I completely forgot to ask you how your Canada Day was. How rude of me.”
Shelly Spears
Average Canadian
“His birthday is next we — shit. Sweden! Hey Sweden! You know if the drugstore still open?”
England
Land of the English
By Gary Lim
SFU introduces tiered pricing for naming things
By Gary Lim
BURNABY — Following the recent economic downturn, SFU administration announced a new revenue-bolstering program that is planned for 2013 earlier this week. The program, hailed as “groundbreaking” and “innovative” by early testers, would create a tiered pricing list or “menu” for the privilege of having one of the university’s fixtures, programs or buildings named after yourself.
The bold new initiative, spearheaded by director of media relations Jillian Wiseman, is the first of its kind in the country. The Peak sat down with Wiseman to discuss the program.
“Naming buildings in honour of alumni and companies who have pledged large sums of money to SFU isn’t new by any stretch. Look at the Beedies, the Shrums, and the West Malls. Each of these families has been very generous to SFU in the past and each are now left with a legacy. Something their future generations can look back on with a sense of pride, and that’s something money can’t buy. This is what we aim to change.
“Normally the charitable amounts needed for SFU to affix you or your company’s name on a piece of its iconic architecture are well out of reach of the average person. But with the new tiered pricing plan, we now offer several very affordable payment plans. Now, for the price of a tank of gas, future students can admire the official Benedict Reiners water stain.”
Preliminary research shows the pricing will range from just under 50 dollars to over several million, with the former affording a modest 1’ by 1’ section of linoleum in the AQ and the latter changing the name of the mountain on which the campus is built.
Professor of Psychology, Edwin Krause, writes about the program while speaking on the nature of eponymy in his new book Professor of Psychology, Edwin Krause.
“Throughout the ages people have sought to immortalize themselves in great works. But no one really has the time for any great works in this day and age, so instead we try to leave a physical mark on the world. Tombstones for instance, are little more than a rock with one’s name engraved on it, yet they’ve become a fixture of western burial rites.”
“To these people it doesn’t even matter that what they’re so proudly leaving their name turns out to be little more than poorly ventilated storage room. Because this is how they plan to live on. Just look at history, and all the terrible things that people to this day have attributed their names to. Alois Alzheimer, Lou Gehrig, Jeffery Double-murder.”
Interestingly enough, despite the infancy of the program it is already seeing some success, with keen investors lining up to bid for choice lots. Anyone with concerns or questions relating to the project is advised to attend the consultations on Wednesday July 11 in the Jim’s Pattison’s Pepsi-Cola Genocide Awareness Project Annex.
Intern-al Relations
TORONTO (CUP) – Internships can put some real world experience on your resume and even land you a job, but some employers see them as an opportunity to get cheap labour. With students desperate to build their portfolios, working for little or no money can seem like a viable option.
The problem arises from the vagueness of laws surrounding internships, and their lack of enforcement. In the case of unpaid internships, many students end up working in illegal environments without realizing it.
“Unpaid internships are being used as a proxy for entry-level positions and they’re allowing companies to not hire people, but to use a revolving door of unpaid interns to sustain the business and the operations,” says Andrew Langille, a labour and employment lawyer in Toronto.
The Employment Standards Act (ESA) — relevant in both Ontario and British Columbia — states that in order for a position to be exempt from the ESA and from minimum wage laws, it must be “‘hands-on’ training that is required by the curriculum, and will result in a certificate or diploma.” This means that co-op programs can be exempt, but that it is illegal for recent graduates — no longer students — to work at a free internship.
Langille says that internships fall under precarious employment.
“Precarious employment is where you don’t have a lot of ties to the employer; it’s generally on a short-term basis on a contract with the employer. You may not get benefits,” he said. “If you’re making coffee, filing papers, photocopying, inputting data and so on and so forth, it’s probably not a training program, it’s probably illegal and it probably violates the ESA.”
Bruno Quarless* is a senior journalism student who had a summer internship at a well-known Toronto sports network.
“That’s one of the reasons I moved to Toronto, I wanted to work for them,” he said. “Then I found out it would be unpaid, which was OK. Most are, which sucks.”
Quarless was working on search engine optimization content for the network two days per week. During his shifts he would write five to six 500-word stories on major sports, but said he received very little feedback on his work in the four months he was working for the network and didn’t feel that he had benefited at all from his time there.
“Basically I spent two days a week for four months cranking out 2,000 to 2,500 words of useless bullshit that no one saw, with no byline, no money, and not even something that I would put in my portfolio,” he says. “I worked at a place that I always wanted to work at — and hated it and became completely disillusioned.”
Although the laws are vague and the risk of exploitation is always a factor, internships can be an extremely effective means of gaining real world experience before graduation.
“The thing that’s so good about intern programs is that it gives people a relatively simple way to find out if they want to do this stuff, whether they enjoy it, and whether they are good at it,” said Roger Gillespie, the man in charge of hiring student interns for the Toronto Star, which pays its interns.
Gillespie explains that student internships also serve as a way for employers to see potential hires in action before offering a job. He makes it clear that interns should not expect full-time jobs.
“Don’t rely on some notion that you are going to get hired here, because that’s a stupid thing to do,” warns Gillespie.
Last year, the Star employed 22 interns for their three programs, none of whom were hired full-time. The interns themselves often set the pace of competition for scarce positions.
“Almost no one gets into our program who isn’t prepared to give up a chunk of their life,” says Gillespie.
Outworking your peers isn’t always the challenge, especially if you’re a business student. Sometimes staying focused on monotonous yet important tasks is the most difficult part.
Fourth-year business technology management student Paul Benton interned with CIBC World Markets for four months. After a rigorous three-part interview process, he found himself spending hours in front of an Excel spreadsheet filing reports for traders.
“I would say we were being exploited, but we were paid quite well. Twenty-two dollars per hour is at the higher end of the scale,” says Benton.
As boring as it was, the experience paid off.
“Getting a job is a lot easier if you have an internship on your resume. It’s a big part of landing a position after you finish school,” he admits.
Practical work experience is an important part of a resume, but arts industries are less likely to pay for your time.
Louis Calabro is a manager of the Genie and Gemini awards for the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television (ACCT). The ACCT hires unpaid interns for six-month internships. The workers are required to come in for 12 hours per week.
“We’re a not-for-profit organization so we don’t have a lot of excess cash floating around,” explains Calabro. “The internship is a way to provide experience for somebody who’s maybe just coming out of school or who may be in school at the same time. It’s not really meant to be a situation where you’re going to be making tons of money.”
The ACCT generally hires interns from arts and science programs. The interns’ responsibilities range from labeling, filing, and boxing things up, to putting together screener packages for nominating committee members and organizing information for the nominating committee. “We function like any production company would on the office side of things. So I truly believe that does provide a lot of experience,” he says.
While internships provide real-world experience before graduation, there are other ways to build a resume and break into your chosen profession, argues Ivor Shapiro, chair of Ryerson’s journalism program.
“There are other ways to gain professional experience,” he says. “I find that increasingly many students in the journalism program are working at a professional level almost from day one and keep on doing so even if it’s as a freelancer, part-time, or contract, in their summers or spare time.”
Despite this, the job market’s demand for practical workplace experience is a reality for most Ryerson students.
“This has a wider impact on society because people are putting off life milestones, such as getting married, moving out of their parents’ home, entering into relationships, having kids, buying a house, saving for retirement,” says Langille.“This is a phenomenon that is affecting [current] generations and will affect the coming generations that are entering the labour market.”
*NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED
Don’t let classes get in the way of your sexy summer
By Ms. X
“To me, summer is usually full of parties, beaches and, most importantly, hook-ups, but as a summer student, I spend so much time up on the freaking mountain. How am I supposed to meet a hottie while I’m stuck in classes all day?”
Summer and fling are two words that seem to fit naturally together. With the sun out, bare skin is finally back in style. It can be hard to keep our focus in class, and being stuck in labs all day can definitely interfere with our potential to meet our July and August lover. As summer students, there are definitely ways to work around our credit hours and even use them to our advantage to ensure we don’t miss out on any sexy summer adventures.
First off, we are all in the same boat. Though campus may look a tad sparse compared to other times, it is still thriving with students looking for some kind of distraction. We’ve all zoned out while our prof explains the difference between covalent and ionic bonds, instead focusing on the eye candy ahead of us and wondering whether they’re already bonded to someone for the summer. Take the first step: find a seat nearby them in the next lecture and strike up a conversation. The good news is that being in the same class you already have something in common and an easy first line. Not only will sitting next to them give you a reason to go to class on sunny days, it may also lead to some free lessons in anatomy.
Who said the library is strictly for studying? Being stranded on top of Burnaby Mountain can have its advantages, you just have to think creatively. The library and AQ are full of empty corners perfect for a steamy study break. After all, they say taking breaks are key to getting As.
Another plus of SFU in summer is that the AQ pond is in its prime, always filled with students taking advantage of the sun. This area seems to be our campus’s equivalent to the beach, with under-clothed hotties and groups of tanned beauties throwing around Frisbees. I say, there is no better place to finish up those readings before class.
If you have lucked out and found a fling to spend time with on campus, take advantage of the beautiful surroundings SFU places you in. Take a walk over to Burnaby Mountain Park for a cute date. The view is instant romance and if you two are up for it look for a patch of isolated woods and really get in touch with nature.
Though it seems that being stuck in classes over summer would limit your hookup and fling potential, in reality, it can work in your favour. Don’t be afraid to strike up conversation with a cutie in class, or explore areas of campus deemed “off limits.” The sun and surroundings at the Burnaby campus make the perfect combination for great distractions while studying. So enjoy your summer and don’t worry about missing out on flings; with some creativity, SFU can be just where you need to be.
Dim Sum the Magnificent
SFU’s magician emeritus. A profile piece on a unique character who loves to spread joy through magic and putting a smile on people’s faces.
Created by: Julian Giordano, Jeremy Mamisao, San Aung
Starring: Dim Sum the Magnificent (Eric Chan)
