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Vancouver Sun
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Vancouver Sun
Sam Sullivan: Ending Vancouver's Downtown Eastside experiment
For 52 years, the City of Vancouver has facilitated a social experiment called the Downtown Eastside. The city shut down the most important kind of affordable housing, rental bedrooms in single-family neighbourhoods, leaving the main affordable option decrepit rooms in old, mostly empty buildings in the oldest part of the city. Moving people from dispersed housing in healthy neighbourhoods and concentrating them into inner-city substandard rooms was risky. Vancouver's first chief planner, Gerald Sutton Brown, had opposed efforts to concentrate people. Under his watch, 'rooming house' accommodations were available in every neighbourhood. The results are in, and they are disastrous. It's time to end the experiment. A daily roundup of Opinion pieces from the Sun and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Informed Opinion will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. In 1973, the Vancouver city legal department incorporated an organization called the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA). The public had never heard this name; it was a creation of city hall. DERA was created to manage a federal grant of 10 advocates for the newly named neighbourhood so these staff members could be moved off the city payroll. At the same time, city hall began shutting down hundreds of 'rooming houses' throughout the city, including in Shaughnessy, which had many of the affordable rooms. The people involved with the grant were motivated by counterculture ideologies opposed to free market principles. They wanted to prevent the natural processes of 'gentrification' from revitalizing the area. They wanted a community that could showcase alternative ideals. In March of that same year, city council committed to restricting population growth in Vancouver and redirecting it to the suburbs. Central planning, not market forces, would decide on growth even though it was widely understood that this would cause house prices to rise. Today, our single-family neighbourhoods have fewer people than in 1973. Thousands of small bungalows were demolished and replaced with large houses with more bedrooms and fewer people. A tragic misallocation of resources. For the first time, homeless people appeared on our streets. The first informal homeless counts in the 1990s revealed that most were on the street because their rooming-house accommodations in residential neighbourhoods had been shut down. In the new DTES, the natural processes that stabilize communities broke down as the concentration of vulnerable people increased. The worse things got, the more governments poured housing and services into the area. And the worse things got. A downward spiral. Research shows that most residents of the DTES came from communities throughout B.C. and Canada where they first experienced personal challenges. They were drawn or pushed toward Vancouver's new city-created neighbourhood. But despite the significant free housing and services, conditions of many worsened after they arrived: more emergency-room visits, more illness, more addiction, more arrests, more survival prostitution and more deaths. Studies reveal that most residents don't want to live in the DTES. The majority say they want to live in dispersed independent housing — like the kind they had been pushed out of — not special congregate housing. For those that succeed in moving away into healthy supportive relationships, the results are dramatic. Interactions with the justice system and the health system drop significantly. Switzerland once had the largest open drug scenes in Europe. They shut them down and ended their overdose crisis. When I asked one Swiss expert the optimal number of addicted people to live in one building, he answered: 'Absolutely no more than one per building. Any more than that and you are asking for trouble.' The DTES is a harm production policy, harming not only low-income people, but B.C. as a whole. Despite government rhetoric about reducing stigmatization, government policies are stigmatizing vulnerable people by incentivizing them to live in one area. The City of Vancouver has an opportunity to repeal its stigma zoning through its current DTES plan update process. The Global Civic think-tank has a five-point plan to end the DTES and return it the healthy neighbourhood it once was. First, governments must commit to never again concentrating low-income people. Next, help the residents who don't want to live there to move individually to where they want to live, with supportive relationships. Most importantly, we need to change government policies to enable employment, make tenants safer and housing more affordable for those with addictions. Every day, I watch fresh-faced, nicely dressed young people arrive in the DTES to begin their slow descent into tragedy. How has this become acceptable in Vancouver? Vancouver must end this cruel experiment called the Downtown Eastside and become once again like most normal cities in the world. Join our campaign. Sam Sullivan, a former Vancouver mayor and B.C. MLA, is founder of the Global Civic Policy Society.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Dirtier ports will hurt jobs, US maritime revival: AAPA
The American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) is urging the Senate to preserve funding for anti-pollution programs it says bolster U.S. manufacturing and maritime strength. In a letter Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Committee on Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito, the trade group emphasized the importance of preserving vital Environmental Protection Agency grant programs that it said support American ports and manufacturing. Currently, two critical EPA initiatives — the Clean Ports Program and the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) grant programs — face elimination under the House of Representatives' version of President Donald Trump's budget legislation. The AAPA said that if these cuts proceed without Senate intervention, they would undermine Trump's strategy to counter Chinese dominance in the maritime sector. The programs are designed to strengthen America's competitive position by supporting ports in acquiring next-generation equipment while boosting American manufacturers at a critical juncture in the global maritime EPA has awarded 54 grants totaling $3 billion to fund zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure as well as climate and air quality planning at U.S. ports. DERA grants totaled $147 million in 2024. In the letter to Senate leadership, AAPA President and Chief Executive Cary Davis highlighted the significant manufacturing benefits of the Clean Ports Program. Davis stressed that the program 'is creating jobs in America and giving American manufacturers new life in a sector long dominated by China: port cargo-handling equipment.' This initiative serves as a dual-purpose tool, simultaneously modernizing American port infrastructure while revitalizing domestic manufacturing capabilities in an industry where China has maintained a strong foothold. The DERA grant program represents another critical resource for the maritime industry, providing essential funding for ports to upgrade to more fuel-efficient diesel engines. Like the Clean Ports Program, DERA adheres to strict Build America, Buy America standards, ensuring that federal funds support domestic manufacturing. The potential elimination of DERA's $60 million funding would have far-reaching consequences — not only limiting ports' ability to reduce fuel costs and mitigate local emissions but also reducing orders for American truck and cargo-handling equipment manufacturers. The AAPA's advocacy underscores the strategic importance of these seemingly modest programs in a larger economic and national security budget legislation has run into opposition from Republican members of Congress who say it doesn't do enough to cut federal spending. Find more articles by Stuart Chirls port completes $625M ship channel deepening project 'Fear and uncertainty' driving up China-US container rates CMA CGM developing $600M Vietnam container terminals Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd partner on new Asia-Long Beach serviceThe post Dirtier ports will hurt jobs, US maritime revival: AAPA appeared first on FreightWaves.
