Now that the federal election is out of the way, British Columbians can turn their attention to more pressing matters. Like the civic election taking place next month.
Oy vey.
The race generating the most interest is the one for mayor of Vancouver. Because the winner gets to preside over the Olympics, the stakes are even higher.
Up to now, the story line has been how similar the two main candidates are on major policy issues. Besides sharing a passion for cycling, Peter Ladner of the centre-right Non-Partisan Association and Gregor Robertson of the centre-left Vision Vancouver party have been cast as ideological soulmates you can barely tell apart.
But at a mayoral debate this week the two differed dramatically on a matter that concerns not just people living in Vancouver, but the entire country. That is the future of the Downtown Eastside - or the DTES, as it's commonly known. The candidates' starkly different visions for the area were expressed in response to a question from the moderator - me.
The DTES is an international embarrassment and has been for decades. Despite hundreds of studies, dozens of plans and the best efforts of thousands of people, the situation there remains horrible. It attracts people with addiction and mental-health problems from across the province and country, making it a cesspool that exacerbates the troubles of those living there.
In other words, the biggest problem with the DTES is the DTES itself.
My question was this: What if it ceased to exist in its present form? What if the metamorphosis happening on the outskirts of the DTES - a transformation occurring through new residential complexes that include low-income housing as well as smart retail - ultimately included the DTES?
Wouldn't this be better for all concerned?
Now, for most people reading this, the answer might appear obvious: Yes, of course it would be better. And the country would no longer be shamed by a neighbourhood that has been our shame for far too long. Yet to express this approach in Vancouver is considered heresy. Instead, the attitude has been: Let's try to help the thousands living in and pouring into the neighbourhood by building facilities such as Insite, the safe injection site, and other treatment centres.
A noble philosophy, to be sure, but one that has been ineffective overall in fundamentally changing the neighbourhood for the better.
So when Peter Ladner told the debate audience that the dramatic change occurring in the area had to sweep through the DTES as well, I nearly fell out of my chair. He wasn't proposing the neighbourhood be bulldozed. Rather, he said, the city has to look after the low-income people and make sure they have a place to stay, but in new or rebuilt residential buildings and not the rundown, rat-and-cockroach-infested single-room-occupancy hotels that exist there.
Mr. Ladner said the city needs to "normalize" the neighbourhood, a term his opponent was quick to seize on. But what Mr. Ladner meant by the term - and I checked with him later - was make the DTES look and feel like the kind of safe, healthy neighbourhoods we expect in Canada. And you do this by mixing in different kinds of housing and retail and infusing the neighbourhood with social capital - residents who have a stake in making sure it's clean and safe.
Again, he wasn't talking about booting all the poor people out and making room for rich yuppies. He was saying: Make the neighbourhood something we can all be proud of, while looking after low-income residents at the same time. Those with severe mental-health problems living on the street should be moved to facilities where they can get the help they need. Some would move to supportive housing being built elsewhere in the city. In the process, the DTES would be transformed from the repository of filth, crime and disease that it currently is, to something of which we can all be proud. Mr. Ladner's opponent winced at much of what he had to say. Gregor Robertson worried about what the term "normalize" implied. He said the DTES is already a community and it doesn't need to be transformed into some "shiny, happy new neighbourhood." He suggested that if city hall tries to impose the vision Mr. Ladner was suggesting, the place will become a "war zone."
He said policy makers needed to come up with a plan for the neighbourhood "that everyone can agree on."
Good luck.
To my mind, this will be the defining issue of the campaign, not homelessness. Homelessness is important, unquestionably, but largely a provincial responsibility. The city has direct control over what happens in the DTES.
Mr. Ladner has taken a huge gamble here. The last NPA mayoralty candidate who suggested the DTES needed to be cleaned up because it was a "ghetto" met with a swift electoral death. Most have taken a more cautious I-want-to-get-elected position of the type Mr. Robertson is advocating.
Suddenly, the two candidates for mayor have never seemed more different.