With the 2010 Vancouver Olympics quick approaching, a lot of pressure is being put on the BC government and Vancouver municipality to clean up the Downtown East Side area.
For those not familiar, it's one of the worst cases of neighbourhood concentrated poverty in the country. The drug and prostitution markets thrive, and no one seems to know how to put the pieces back together. People in poverty seem to gravitate to the area because of the affordable housing, but it is certainly not an ideal place to live, and the sense of community is almost non-existant.
The Globe & Mail has been running an extensive series on the Downtown East Side (which can be found here). It offers suggestions on how to fix the problem, stats on what has been done so far, personal stories from residents of the neighbourhood, and lots more.
According to The Globe and Mail's estimates, $1.4 billion has been poured into the area since 2000. That's a lot of money for one neighbourhood. Yet, there seems to have been no significant change. Money has been spent largely on renovating housing (like old hotels that have long turned into drug dens), cracking down on crime, community health and outreach programs, etc.
Some say that a sense of community needs to be built to salvage the area. I think that's part of it. Giving people legitimate ways out of poverty and addiction would help too. Someone suggested turning it into a mixed income neighbourhood would help and I'd agree there too.
But there's obviously an issue if that's the only place the most vulnerable in the city can afford to live. You can't attract a wide range of incomes if the rest of the city doesn't offer anywhere for the poor to live because everyone low income will gravitate back to that area again. And why shouldn't they be entitled to a nice place to live in a safe, strong neighbourhood? They're people too. It should be somewhere that people of all walks of life can be proud of.
I'd strongly encourage people if anyone else is actually reading this to look up the subject, maybe find a documentary on the people who live there. Some of them have sad stories, some of them have amazing stories, some of them have horrible stories, but they've all got a story. They're all real people, and for one reason or another (by choice or not by choice), they found themselves on the Downtown East Side.
Until we humanize people in poverty and eradicate stereotypes and assumptions, it will never end. That's the first step to fixing the DTES and other vulnerable neighbourhoods.
"Grey skies and light fading/Headlamps making patterns on the wall/Uptown, it's dead now/But out here, no one seems to care at all."
-Take Me To The Riot, Stars.
Editor's Note: Since I've written this blog post, I have had the chance to dialogue with a couple of people leading the fight against poverty in the DTES for a feature I was working on originally for the Aquinian.
I said in this post that there is virtually no community in the neighbourhood, but that is one thing that I was wrong about. People in the neighbourhood look out for each other, and while many of them live lifestyles that are not condoned by most of us, they're still people. They still form bonds.
So, I just wanted to clear that up and say that I was wrong on that. The community in the DTES is thriving, but it can always be made stronger. The main challenge is to get the people off of the street and into safe housing and then to give them the resources to fight whatever other challenges they face.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Spectacular Views
So I'm taking a break (see: procrastinating) from doing useful things. Next week starting Friday is going to be hellish (see: 3-ish midterms and what should be an unpleasant Global Politics essay), so I guess I should enjoy some free time while I have it to procrastinate away.
This year has gone extremely fast, and this semester even faster than I expected. I'm not sure yet whether that is a good thing. I'm just kind of getting into my groove and I have mixed feelings about the summer. I will be glad to be in Saint John and see everyone and for it to actually be summer, but I know I will probably end up working all summer.
One thing that I will not miss is winter. I'm pretty sure I'm living on the wrong continent, partially because I always want to be up later than most of the rational population on the Atlantic timezone and also because I really, really hate winter and cold weather in general. I don't really love super hot summers either. That's why I like spring - I like for it to be nice enough out to not have to wear 50 zillion pounds of clothes but not die of humidity.
My friends and I had a conversation the other day about what else we want to major in or minor in aside from Journalism, and what we'd do if we didn't get in to the Journalism program next year.
I've never really considered many other career paths, but the fact that I may not succeed and have to pick something else is scary. I've always said Law was my backup, but to be honest, it doesn't interest me as something I'd want to get up for everyday. It's not exciting enough.
I really like politics, but I'm not sure how that could escalate into meaningful employment just yet. But I'll probably try to double major in it or maybe minor simply because of my strong interest in the subject. I've also always been really interested in anti-poverty initiatives. I guess I could mix Political Science with that if being a journalist didn't work out.
I'm also not really sure what exactly I want to do in Journalism. I want to tell random stories about people, like I mentioned in my last post, but I also want to travel, because I've never really been anywhere it seems. I don't want to live in a small city, and I want to leave New Brunswick, eventually. Yet, I want to give back to my community, maybe do something with an anti-poverty iniative, and dabble in political journalism.
I'm not sure what medium I want to do or even if I'd want to stick to just one. I know that I am pretty sure I want to do Journalism grad school, most likely at Ryerson, and that should hopefully open up doors (if I even get in, I'm looking pretty far ahead now).
But I kind of like the idea of seeing what comes up and not knowing where to go exactly. It's not at all what I am used to. I always have a plan and try to stick to it. Maybe I need to deviate away from planning out every aspect of my life? Who knows. But I hope it'll be exciting.
And that's my rambling for the evening.
Spectacular Views - Rilo Kiley
This year has gone extremely fast, and this semester even faster than I expected. I'm not sure yet whether that is a good thing. I'm just kind of getting into my groove and I have mixed feelings about the summer. I will be glad to be in Saint John and see everyone and for it to actually be summer, but I know I will probably end up working all summer.
One thing that I will not miss is winter. I'm pretty sure I'm living on the wrong continent, partially because I always want to be up later than most of the rational population on the Atlantic timezone and also because I really, really hate winter and cold weather in general. I don't really love super hot summers either. That's why I like spring - I like for it to be nice enough out to not have to wear 50 zillion pounds of clothes but not die of humidity.
My friends and I had a conversation the other day about what else we want to major in or minor in aside from Journalism, and what we'd do if we didn't get in to the Journalism program next year.
I've never really considered many other career paths, but the fact that I may not succeed and have to pick something else is scary. I've always said Law was my backup, but to be honest, it doesn't interest me as something I'd want to get up for everyday. It's not exciting enough.
I really like politics, but I'm not sure how that could escalate into meaningful employment just yet. But I'll probably try to double major in it or maybe minor simply because of my strong interest in the subject. I've also always been really interested in anti-poverty initiatives. I guess I could mix Political Science with that if being a journalist didn't work out.
I'm also not really sure what exactly I want to do in Journalism. I want to tell random stories about people, like I mentioned in my last post, but I also want to travel, because I've never really been anywhere it seems. I don't want to live in a small city, and I want to leave New Brunswick, eventually. Yet, I want to give back to my community, maybe do something with an anti-poverty iniative, and dabble in political journalism.
I'm not sure what medium I want to do or even if I'd want to stick to just one. I know that I am pretty sure I want to do Journalism grad school, most likely at Ryerson, and that should hopefully open up doors (if I even get in, I'm looking pretty far ahead now).
But I kind of like the idea of seeing what comes up and not knowing where to go exactly. It's not at all what I am used to. I always have a plan and try to stick to it. Maybe I need to deviate away from planning out every aspect of my life? Who knows. But I hope it'll be exciting.
And that's my rambling for the evening.
Spectacular Views - Rilo Kiley
Monday, February 9, 2009
Ain't No Reason
There are a lot of things I could be doing at 3:00 AM. There is one thing in particular I should be doing at 3:00 AM, and that is sleeping. Which I will do...really soon. But there are lots of things I potentially COULD do at this time of night/morning. Instead, I've chose to blog about something I've been thinking about lately.
When did it become weird to talk to strangers?
We're raised from a young age to not talk to strangers. As kids, we can't distinguish the sketchy from the potentially unsketchy, so parents tell us to stay away from strangers altogether. Makes sense enough.
But why as adults do we still find it weird to talk to strangers? And this isn't the case for all adults of course. In smaller towns or in some other countries, it's sometimes not the case at all. It also hasn't always been this way.
I was taking the bus back in September to the mall. An elderly man sat down beside me and started talking to me and being really friendly. Not in a creepy, perv way either; he was being genuinely nice and casually conversational. My friends and I thought this was a bit odd and amusing. Why would someone who I seemingly have nothing in common with and whom I do not know want to talk to me on a bus ride?
Now I'm thinking that maybe we were the weird ones.
As I get more and more into journalism, I find that I have to talk to strangers quite frequently. And I have a lot of trouble with this. It might be because I still have a bit of shyness to get over or because I think that I'm awkward sometimes, but I have a hard time approaching people I don't know to ask them for their opinions. I try to do it by phone or email as much as possible.
Which is foolish, because there is a lot more you can take from a personal conversation face-to-face with someone. Plus, you get to know them more, so you may get information you would not otherwise because they feel more comfortable with you.
And for everyday regular people, well, we're becoming disconnected. We're so busy and wrapped up in our lives that even the idea of talking to someone else we don't know and have no time for is too daunting of a task for us to handle. It's ridiculous, really.
My Global Politics professor mentioned in a lecture once about how society has become distrustful. We work so hard to get what we have and we are so personal, that we guard ourselves and our possessions. We're suspicious of people.
Our whole society is so much less trusting of each other and less connected that it's no wonder that we have a hard time understanding each other. And that's how conflict begins.
That's when I got to thinking that, even more than before, I want to be a journalist. I want to learn how to talk to more people, and types of people that I'm not used to associating with. I want to learn their stories and then tell them to other people, and then maybe they'll become interested too. I think it would be really cool just to travel around Canada (or maybe futher) someday and just do that, just tell average, not really newsworthy, random stories about people that no one else would.
And I think that if we started showing interest in the lives of seemingly random strangers, we'd all be a bit happier. Who doesn't feel comfort at the fact that someone cares about what's going in their lives?
Something to think about, I guess.
"There ain't no reason things are this way/It’s how they always been and they intend to stay/I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday."
- Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennen
When did it become weird to talk to strangers?
We're raised from a young age to not talk to strangers. As kids, we can't distinguish the sketchy from the potentially unsketchy, so parents tell us to stay away from strangers altogether. Makes sense enough.
But why as adults do we still find it weird to talk to strangers? And this isn't the case for all adults of course. In smaller towns or in some other countries, it's sometimes not the case at all. It also hasn't always been this way.
I was taking the bus back in September to the mall. An elderly man sat down beside me and started talking to me and being really friendly. Not in a creepy, perv way either; he was being genuinely nice and casually conversational. My friends and I thought this was a bit odd and amusing. Why would someone who I seemingly have nothing in common with and whom I do not know want to talk to me on a bus ride?
Now I'm thinking that maybe we were the weird ones.
As I get more and more into journalism, I find that I have to talk to strangers quite frequently. And I have a lot of trouble with this. It might be because I still have a bit of shyness to get over or because I think that I'm awkward sometimes, but I have a hard time approaching people I don't know to ask them for their opinions. I try to do it by phone or email as much as possible.
Which is foolish, because there is a lot more you can take from a personal conversation face-to-face with someone. Plus, you get to know them more, so you may get information you would not otherwise because they feel more comfortable with you.
And for everyday regular people, well, we're becoming disconnected. We're so busy and wrapped up in our lives that even the idea of talking to someone else we don't know and have no time for is too daunting of a task for us to handle. It's ridiculous, really.
My Global Politics professor mentioned in a lecture once about how society has become distrustful. We work so hard to get what we have and we are so personal, that we guard ourselves and our possessions. We're suspicious of people.
Our whole society is so much less trusting of each other and less connected that it's no wonder that we have a hard time understanding each other. And that's how conflict begins.
That's when I got to thinking that, even more than before, I want to be a journalist. I want to learn how to talk to more people, and types of people that I'm not used to associating with. I want to learn their stories and then tell them to other people, and then maybe they'll become interested too. I think it would be really cool just to travel around Canada (or maybe futher) someday and just do that, just tell average, not really newsworthy, random stories about people that no one else would.
And I think that if we started showing interest in the lives of seemingly random strangers, we'd all be a bit happier. Who doesn't feel comfort at the fact that someone cares about what's going in their lives?
Something to think about, I guess.
"There ain't no reason things are this way/It’s how they always been and they intend to stay/I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday."
- Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennen
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