Why Vancouver’s “Vision” is short-sighted (and why there was a better housing model 40 years ago).

The City of Vancouver just announced that it will lease land to private developers in hopes of creating more affordable rental housing in the City.  This is part of a broader set of tax breaks and other incentives that aims to get developers to build more affordable housing in Vancouver.

Plans like these are pretty standard in North American cities: they aim to use municipal dollars and municipal policies (like tax regulations and zoning) in hopes of getting developers to create “below-market housing.”  Developers usually won’t build cheap rental housing themselves, because it’s more profitable to build expensive rental or condos.  In this case, the new units probably won’t be affordable to people living in poverty even if they’re “below market,” since past developments have cost as much as $2000 for a 2-bedroom apartment.  Worse, these new developments often promote gentrification, as existing tenants are forced out for renovations (known as renovictions) and the new, swanky, “affordable” units are affordable for yuppies.  Observers have complained that:

The city grants permits for renoviction and demolition almost every day and is giving no hint that it will change its “revitalization” agenda for the city’s most affordable areas… Vision has failed time and time again because they continue to call on the private development industry to solve the affordability crisis.

But Vancouver actually has a history of far more creative, grassroots, and affordable housing creation.  In the 1970s and 80s, East Vancouver residents organized to create housing that met the needs of existing residents.

In the 1960s, the Strathcona Area of Vancouver (in East Van) was slated for “redevelopment.”  The City of Vancouver had decided that the working-class, primarily Asian neighbourhood was a “blight” and that the City should create public housing projects.

So it began expropriating people’s houses and bulldozing them as part of its “Urban Renewal” plans.  In the first phase alone, an estimated 860 residents were displaced–the majority were of Chinese descent.  This wasn’t a coincidence, as Asian people and other people of colour were (and often still are) conceived as part of social and economic decay.  Nowadays, the City pays developers to “revitalize neighbourhoods” instead.  Developers usually won’t build anything unless they can expect a whopping 20% profit margin, so cities like Vancouver are basically paying developers to make huge profits evicting and displacing people.

Strathcona area residents organized themselves and fought back.  As part of a whole network of grassroots actions, campaigns, and institutions, they formed SPOTA, the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association, as a way to pressure the City to stop the evictions.  SPOTA also became a vehicle to propose and create alternative housing developments that were envisioned and developed by the residents themselves.  They created and disseminated their own literature, they had a structure of block captains to organize every city block of Strathcona, they held multilingual meetings with translators, and they used a whole array of protests, lobbying, direct actions, dinners, and other strategies to stop (many of) the evictions and create alternative models of affordable housing that would meet the needs of the people actually living in the neighbourhood.

In the 70s and 80s, SPOTA helped envision, fund and build projects like the Mau Dan Gardens Housing Cooperative, along with Strathcona Area Housing Society (SAHS).

These kinds of housing alternatives have major advantages over City-owned and privately-owned developments.  First of all, the cooperative structure means that residents themselves participate in the governance and decision-making of the housing.  Secondly, they’re insulated from the whims of developers and right-wing governments.  Even if a progressive municipality builds a bunch of City housing, it can be sold off by a right-wing regime a decade later (or leased out to private developers, like Vancouver is doing now).  Finally, when communities partner with non-profit developers, it cuts private developers (and their 20% margins) out of the picture.

This non-profit cooperative model was never perfect.  Some of these cooperatives have since closed down, for a variety of reasons.  And some of their major sources of money (such as funding and financing from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation) have dried up.  But grassroots cooperative housing had major advantages over both public and private developers, and they could be happening again in Vancouver.  Here are some concrete things the City could (and should) be doing differently:

– Provide funding for existing residents to create housing solutions that actually work for them.  SPOTA and SAHS were organized by residents themselves, and it would be easy for non-profit-sector housing to become a new force of gentrification if it isn’t directly accountable to marginalized communities.  Existing residents already know what kind of housing they need, and municipal governments can provide financial resources, technical expertise, and the same slew of incentives they’re currently offering to private developers.

– Create and strengthen non-profit developers, non-profit construction companies, and non-profit financing.  Here’s how the status quo of housing development works: if the City hires a private developer, they lose 20-30% to profit margins.  If they hire a construction company directly instead, they lose 10-15% to profit margins, and another 5-10% to banks (since they usually need financing).  At each step of the day, housing development (whether renovation or construction) is made way more expensive because all these private interests are profiting.  If the City helped create non-profit alternatives, they could collaborate with them without getting exploited, and cut private profit out of the picture.

– Help form housing co-operatives, lease City land to them, help them secure low-interest financing (and grants and funding from BC Housing), and help them build or renovate housing at low cost (non-profit construction).  The City already owns a bunch of land (which it’s about to hand over to private developers), and it could collaborate with residents instead of renovicting.

This might sound pretty grand, but these kinds of things can be pursued on a whole variety of different scales, in different places, with different timelines.  For example, the City could partner with credit unions like Vancity to get low-interest financing, use that money to buy houses that are already tenanted, and turn them over to a Community Land Trust (a non-profit housing entity).  In many cases, even given current over-inflated housing prices, the CLT would be able to lease the houses back to the tenants at the same price as they currently pay in rent (or rent them back for cheaper).  No big subsidies, no evictions, no new building.  How?  By cutting profit out of the picture: no private developers, landlords, or banks.

In fact, these non-profit housing initiatives don’t even need the City of Vancouver’s “Vision” to move forward, at least not necessarily: they could be spearheaded by existing community groups, as they initially were in Strathcona a few decades ago (although the municipality’s money, zoning power, tax breaks, and bureaucratic expertise would certainly help).

None of these alternatives require a ton of government money, so the City of Vancouver wouldn’t have to increase taxes on developers or property owners (not that they shouldn’t, but that’s a different story).  In the current neoliberal age, where cities are terrified of raising taxes and pander to private developers in an attempt to attract capital, these kinds of alternatives can help stem the tide of gentrification, privatization, and displacement that are sweeping cities all over the world.  These non-profit models won’t solve these problems, but they’re actually possible right now, without changes to legislation or policy, or a massive influx of money, or any other big obstacles that tend to stymie affordable housing.  But as the City has clearly shown, these alternatives won’t happen on their own: they’ll likely require creative, well-organized, grassroots action.  Otherwise, the City’s “Vision” is clear: public-private partnerships, renovictions, displacement, and gentrification.

Why anti-pipeline organizing isn’t just another protest

By now, the details of the proposed Enbridge pipeline (and its disastrous social and ecological implications) are well-documented, so I’ll spare you.  Most people reading this are probably convinced that the pipeline is a horrible idea that should be stopped.  This post is more about the ‘how’ than the ‘why’ of Enbridge organizing: how are communities responding to the pipeline, how they organizing themselves, and how do their strategies converge and diverge?  What constitutes effective resistance, and what’s being resisted?  How can pipeline organizing connect different communities and struggles?

The argument here is pretty simple: the creative, grassroots, solidarity-building efforts going on in pipeline organizing are different from conventional environmentalism, and that’s a great thing, because conventional environmentalism sucks.  The ‘how’ of anti-pipeline organizing looks much different when people move beyond traditional strategies of environmental organizing and campaigning.  I’m talking about organizing efforts in Victoria because that’s where I live and what I know about, but there are parallels everywhere.  Like all alternatives, the creative departures are partial and emergent, so there’s no way to talk about ‘all’ pipeline organizing.  So here are some examples of the exciting currents of anti-pipeline organizing that are creating and sustaining community resistance:

1) Pipeline organizing is about more than protest.  This Sunday, April 15^th there’s a rally and teach-in to contest the proposed Enbridge pipeline.  The rally is the conventional part, and it’s what usually happens after rallies that make them so sad: everyone goes home (Sunday will be different).  Everyone is familiar with protest conventions: everyone meets in front of a building, chants slogans, marches to a different building, there are some impassioned speeches, we chant at the building for a while… and then we all go home.

Protests can create excitement, a sense of unity, and they can be fun.  But they don’t create much space for people to think through problems together, or to figure out what to do next, and how: often that work is reserved for the ‘campaigners’ (the people who organize the rally and make all the decisions) and the rest of us are just a big mass to be mobilized and then dispersed.  April 15th will be different: after the rally, there’s a whole series of workshops and panel discussions on topics like alternative energy, direct action, anti-oppression, indigenous solidarity and much more.  Maybe most importantly, there will be space for people to form working groups, so that we can be more than just a momentarily-mobilized mass together.  These kinds of practices create space for people to get involved in meaningful ways.  This is the same thing that made the “#OCCUPY” movement so important (and so threatening): beyond the vague denunciations of the 1%, there was genuine space for people to come together and talk to each other, connect the ‘big’ political problems with everyday life, and figure out how to take action together.

2) Pipeline organizing is about more than Enbridge.  The diverse workshop themes reflect the insight that this is about much more than Enbridge, or other pipelines, or oil.  They help dispense with the fantasy that ‘we’ are all the same and that there’s a single enemy ‘out there’: they create space to talk about oppressions that divide communities, connecting everyday life to the pipeline and the institutions that support it.  They connect the pipeline to much longer historical processes like colonialism and enclosure that make the pipeline possible, and they remind us that these processes are ongoing rather than something that happened ‘back then’.  This unsettles conventional environmental narratives that ‘we’ are the good guys, often pointing to the embarrassing fact that this ‘we’ is often settlers who benefit from continuing colonization and resource extraction.  The implications of colonialism and our involvement in it is a problem to be worked through, which makes collective space and discussion all the more urgent.  Workshops include speakers who unpack colonialism and connect it to resource extraction.

This Sunday’s rally doesn’t seem to include your standard roster of speakers: the prominent politicians and environmental NGO directors are nowhere to be found.  Why?

3) Pipeline organizing is community-based and non-professionalized.  Centuries of capitalism, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy has left most Canadians pretty stunted in our politics, and mainstream environmentalism is no exception: it tends to funnel us back into practices that promote isolation, individualism, and dependence on government and politicians.  Plus it’s kind of boring.  Over the past 3-4 decades, environmentalism has become professionalized and institutionalized in NGOs that need to demonstrate quantifiable success through measurable goals (how many petition signatures?  Did you achieve your campaign objectives?  How many donations did your campaign receive?)

This kind of environmental politics can be effective, but in a very limited way: it’s great at generating a coherent and unified message, getting favourable coverage in mainstream media, and gathering a huge list of names for email updates.  Sometimes this can achieve short-term objectives: if a government thinks it will cost them too many votes, they might change their minds about a particular project.  Derrick Jensen is famous for mocking this kind of politics, where protests and press coverage can become ends in themselves, making it harder to imagine other forms of resistance…

Mainstream environmental politics is about the ‘masses’: mobilizing the masses, disseminating information to the masses, and often urging the masses to undertake discrete, individualized action (send a letter to your MP and tell them you oppose the pipeline!)  But that’s about it: the masses stay masses, with few opportunities to talk to each other, formulate problems collectively, and figure out how to do stuff together.  In contrast, (parts of) anti-pipeline organizing in Victoria is creating space for horizontal and diverse political responses.  It’s not focused on criticizing or dismissing more conventional environmentalism, but instead on creating space for other, more creative forms of environmentalism to take root.  The organizers behind the April 15th rally aren’t rejecting the conventions of rallies and protests: they’re making brilliant uses of them.  Hundreds (hopefully thousands) will be ‘mobilized’ later this week, but after the rally is over, the energy doesn’t have to dissipate: it can be channeled into the workshops and working groups to keep momentum going and open ways for people ways to stay involved.

These spaces aren’t just about building a group of people who oppose the pipeline in principle: they’re spaces for figuring out collectively how to organize, oppose, and stop the pipeline–and how to dismantle the institutions and structures that support and reinforce it.  And these spaces are way more inspiring and fun than protests and petitions.  Anyway, that’s why I’m showing up on April 15th: because after we’re done chanting slogans, there’s space to sit down together, learn from each other, and do politics collectively.  Hope to see you there!

Radical municipalism in Greater Victoria? On politics, flexibility, and the upcoming election

I’m new to municipal politics.  A few years ago, I would have dismissed it as a bunch of upper-middle-class people arguing about zoning variances and dog poop.  And anyone that has attended a council meeting can tell you that there’s plenty of that.  However, municipalities do have a lot of power to shape our communities.  They have a significant amount of authority on a broad range of issues.  Conservatives and business people have certainly figured this out.  That’s why they’re so involved with municipal politics: it helps them increase profits, get deals done, and make sure their interests are served.  This should matter to lefty radicals, progressives, feminists, anarchists and others: there’s no point in dismissing municipal politics as too bureaucratic, or hierarchical, or conservative, or whatever.  It is all of these things, but that’s not a reason to ignore it.  So what does it mean to engage with municipal politics as a radical?  What are the different ways radicals might engage, affirm, relate, oppose, infiltrate, sabotage, and transform municipal politics?

This year, I’m trying to learn more about municipal politics (and urban politics more generally).  I don’t have a lot of knowledge or answers; I just think it’s an important place to experiment.  What follows is some ideas and questions about what it might mean for radicals to engage in municipal politics.

I’m going to vote in the upcoming election on Nov 19th.  And you should too (gasp!)  Not because you are a good citizen and it’s your duty or some crap like that, but because you understand that municipal politics matters whether you like it or not, and (I’m assuming) if you’re reading this, you have some radical political views and you’re not OK with the status quo.  More on that later–I’ll tell you who I’m voting for too, and why.  But this isn’t a simple call to vote–it’s a call to think about municipal politics more generally, and the multiple ways radicals can engage these processes.

For instance, the recent Juan de Fuca controversy (where a developer wanted to pave over acres of forest in order to build a bunch of vacation cabins) would never have happened in the first place without the approval of the municipality and the CRD.  And it would never have been stopped without the work of activists (and councillors) fighting against it in, through, against, and outside city councils, the Capital Regional District, and the Band Council system.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying radical activists should stop the awesome grassroots, non-hierarchical stuff they’re doing (like the Peoples Assembly of Victoria) and get involved in municipal politics instead.  That would be a disaster.  What I am saying is that the more we know and understand municipal politics, the more options and tactics become available.  What I’m asking is this: how can radicals engage with municipal politics in multiple, overlapping, and maybe even contradictory ways?  Is it possible to be flexible enough to work within bureaucracies at some times, and challenge their legitimacy and get in their way at others?

Participating in municipal politics is not going to lead to some revolution or massive transformative change–not in Victoria, anyway.  It’s not a vehicle for creating horizontal relationships or unlearning oppressive behaviours.  Victoria–and increasingly all municipalities in North America–remains caught in a neoliberal race to the bottom with other municipalities: fighting to encourage more crappy tourism, more horrible development, more of the same.  A municipal election is not going to change this.  But it could create way more breathing space for alternatives to corporate capitalism.  It could help alleviate some of the worst excesses of surveillance, policing, sprawl, and corporatization.  And I don’t think we’ll get co-opted just by showing up to vote, or by campaigning in elections, or by participating in institutionalized, bureaucratic politics in other ways.  The more we understand municipal politics (and the severe limitations of them), the more we can start to engage with them pragmatically.

So what does this ‘pragmatic engagement’ look like?  Well, I dunno exactly, and that’s for you to decide, but to start with, I’d suggest that you consider voting in the upcoming municipal election on Nov 19th.  I have never urged people to vote before, and it still feels icky.  But there are good reasons!  You can vote for up to 8; I’m only voting for 4: Ben Isitt, Lisa Helps, Rose Henry, and Philippe Lucas.  There are probably other decent candidates too; I’m just pretty confident that these folks in particular would be useful allies to a lot of ongoing struggles in Victoria.

• Philippe Lucas (an incumbent) has been a constant voice against the gentrification of Pandora Green and the need for a fixed-site needle exchange.  He’s also been working lots on encouraging local food and farmers’ markets.
• Lisa Helps started a micro-credit lending scheme that provides loans to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get one from the banks.  This creates possibilities for incomes that aren’t reliant on corporations and big business.
• Ben Isitt has done tons of work on affordable housing in Victoria.  He’s also an academic with a wicked analysis that he makes accessible, rather than dumbing it down.
• Rose Henry has done loads of grassroots work on homelessness and she’s the only candidate I’ve ever heard talk about (and work on) colonialism and decolonization for more than a few seconds.

Don’t live in Victoria?  Well, other municipalities like Saanich, Central Saanich, Langford, etc are arguably just as important–sometimes more so.  There are lots of politicos, I’m sure, who can tell you the ins and outs of Victoria municipal elections: strategic voting, political influence, who has the best chance of being elected, blah blah blah.  My main reason for voting at all is that these elections are often decided by a margin of 100 votes, so voting actually means something.  Plus there aren’t hundreds of seats like the federal election, so it actually matters who gets elected where you live (sorry Elizabeth May).  It matters because crappy stripmalls, condos, and tourist traps all depend on the support of City council, and if the municipality had different priorities, things would be a little less destructive and messed up.

There are also ways to affect municipal politics beyond the election cycle. 

Here’s one example to consider: a new ‘Consensus Statement on Victoria’s Economic Development Strategy‘ has just been released by a loose network of policymakers, activists, politicians and other people in Victoria.  It talks about the need to support local businesses (rather than large corporations) and focus on projects that nurture community resilience and sustainability.

Many radicals will be ambivalent or outright hostile to this consensus statement: it leaves out any analysis or mention of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, or private property, and the way those processes reinforce economic inequality, big business, and unsustainable ways of life.  But there’s a difference between dismissal and engaging this effort strategically or critically.  The statement is interesting because it’s tuned to municipal politics in Victoria.  Based on who votes right now, no candidate is going to get elected on an anti-capitalist platform.  The City also depends on businesses and property owners for its revenue.  But an anti-corporate, community economics platform could help drive a wedge into municipal debates, where politicians actually have to start making choices between supporting corporations or supporting small businesses and local, community-based economic policy.  It could generate conversations and get people thinking critically about jobs, development, and investment.  Most of the time, municipal politicians just insist they like all business, big and small, and they pretend that corporations aren’t actively destroying alternatives.

Another example beyond election cycles: Neighbourhood Associations often have a lot of sway in determining Official Community Plans, rezoning, and bylaws, which has huge impacts for construction, policing, surveillance, taxation, social programs, and community events.  Neighbourhood Associations (and city councillors) claim to represent their whole neighbourhood, so you’re being spoken for, whether you like it or not.  For example, Neighbourhood Associations were key players in the gentrification of Pandora Green.  They have a lot of authority, and radicals can engage with this authority in multiple ways.

Anyways, municipal politics is not going to stop being bureaucratic, hierarchical, or business-friendly anytime soon in Victoria.  It tends to be dominated by older, white, policy-minded people.  There are lots of paradoxes and traps around co-optation, assimilation, and deradicalization.  But refusing to participate on principle is also a trap, I think.  It’s a conservative reaction to a messed-up system, rather than a creative engagement with it.  What that creative engagement means is an open-ended puzzle, and it will depend on who you are, what struggles you’re involved in, and what your objectives are.  But that puzzle is complex.  I think it’s worth thinking about and messing around with.

Pandora Green: Tactics and Questions

This post is about the recent bylaw that will criminalize camping on Pandora Green, leading to some more general questions about effective anti-poverty organizing in Victoria.

Watch the bchannel video for an overview of the Pandora Green context.

The City of Victoria recently finished their third reading of a new bylaw that will criminalize camping on Pandora Green.  The bylaw cites safety concerns about folks who camp there wandering into traffic.  On Thursday (Sept 23rd) the City held a public hearing on the bylaw, where over 100 people attended, mostly in opposition to the bylaw.  The meeting itself was a strange combination of bureaucratic civility, mundane issues, passionate and moving speeches, and the depressing feeling that the outcome would be the same no matter what was said: they’re gonna pass this bylaw.

It became pretty obvious that the bylaw wouldn’t address concerns about safety; it certainly won’t make homeless folks any safer, since it will push them into spaces where they’re more vulnerable to police harrassment and other forms of violence.  Some folks talked about the broader contexts of colonialism, racism, police violence, stigmatization and gentrification that are part of everyday life on the streets.  Others made arguments about democracy, and urged the City to consult with the folks who would actually be affected by the decision: the folks camping on Pandora Green.  Some situated this bylaw in the broader context of the City’s plans to beautify/gentrify Pandora Green.  Others urged the councillors to recognize that the bylaw simply wasn’t going to achieve its stated purpose: no one would be made safer.  Taken together, all of these arguments formed a pretty rock solid argument against the bylaw… but it’s going to be passed anyway.

The aim in this piece isn’t to argue against the bylaw; the folks who came to City Hall have made a pretty convincing case for that already.  Instead, the aim is to ask a question: what do we do, as people trying to be allies with the homeless community, in situations like these, where it’s pretty obvious to everyone that this bylaw doesn’t make any sense, but it’s going to get passed anyway?  When the decisions aren’t based on reasoned arguments, should we engage in reasoned debate ourselves?  What are the limits of this debate?  The point here isn’t to second-guess what folks did on Thursday night, but to ask some questions about the future of anti-poverty work around Victoria.  What tactics might we adopt and experiment with in this context?  How do we do radical politics in a context like Victoria, where we have a pretty reactionary/conservative majority, with a mix of liberal paternalism and straight-up hatred/violence/repression when it comes to issues of poverty and homelessness?  It’s pretty obvious that the ‘appropriate channels’ of consultation provided by the City are set up to co-opt dissent and legitimize the City’s authority.  But it’s also too simple to reject municipal politics: they’re making decisions with or without us, and these decisions have important impacts.

The Victoria Coalition Against Poverty is undertaking some pretty promising experiments in this context.  The group is working on a “People’s Plan” for Pandora Green, in order to counter the City’s own plan to ‘Beautify’ Pandora.  They’ve been serving food and interviewing the folks who spend time there, in order to develop a plan of how the City could take the $500,000 beautification funds, and spend them on things that would actually improve the conditions of life on Pandora Green.  A lot of the suggestions have been pretty simple and practical: public washrooms, clean water, a fixed consumption site, a needle exchange, better social services with less bureaucracy, and of course: housing.

How can we work to make these ideas a reality?  To be sure, we need direct actions, spectacular events, and other tactics that will show the City that people are fed up with their repressive policies and fiscal austerity when it come to poverty and homelessness.  We also need to find ways to get at the paternalism, xenophobia, and paranoia of the majority of Victorians.  How can we chip away at the NIMBYs (not-in-my-back-yard), the neighbourhood associations, and the other groups that buttress the City’s brutal policies?  VCAP is leading the way here, and the People’s Plan does double-duty.  Hopefully it helps develop a sense of community, creates solidarities between homeless and housed people, and it deepens everyone’s understanding of the connections between racism, colonialism, poverty, gentrification and bureaucracy.  But it also intervenes in municipal policy-oriented politics, by putting forward a feasible plan that makes a lot more sense than the status quo.  The plan is brilliant, but it takes a lot of work from some pretty overworked folks, and VCAP is still looking for new members. In this sense, maybe what’s needed is not so much a flash of brilliance or a revolutionary tactic, but ways to get more folks who will be committed to the more mundane and thankless parts of anti-pov organizing: flyering, press releases, long meetings, food prep, and so on. But of course, creativity and commitment to the nitty-gritty aren’t mutually exclusive.

How can we work to create the conditions where things like the People’s Plan won’t fall on the deaf ears of cynical bureaucrats and paternalistic, paranoid Victorians?  How can we create spaces where these folks might let down their guard and actually be able to hear about the problems of poverty, and see the connections between gentrification, beautification, stigmatization and police repression?  Is it even possible to create these spaces, and is it a good use of our time and energy?  What other actions, practices, and projects could we experiment with?