The award of the federal shipbuilding contract to Halifax’s Irving yard was announced at around 5pm on October 19. By 7pm that evening I received the first press release from a local realtor extolling the possibilities for profit from the decision. Over the next few days dozens more rolled in: “Now is the time to buy,” they said.
Sure enough, rents are already skyrocketing in the north end. Anecdotally I’m hearing of $100 and more in monthly increases, and there’s been a boom in sales and development proposals.
We’re told the shipbuilding contract will lift all boats, but it’s not likely many people in the struggling north end neighbourhood will be employed directly by the shipyard. These residents will, however, bear the brunt of the real estate boom.
But the city is doing nothing to help the neighbourhood. On the contrary— city council has pulled the legs out from the organizations that bring support and stability to the community, and city officials are frustrating and delaying the efforts to build affordable housing projects in the area.
The closure of St. Patrick’s-Alexandra school was a blow, but could have provided a wonderful opportunity for community organizations. The North End Community Health Clinic, the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre and other non-profits serving the area could have moved out of their collapsing Gottingen Street storefronts and into the school, reducing their property costs and taking advantage of the school’s gymnasium and additional space for child care, after-school and other programs.
As Mairin Prentiss reports this week, the city’s policy for handling surplus school properties calls for first offering the property available to community organizations, and only putting the property up for sale if the community organizations can’t make use of it. In the case of St. Pat’s-Alexandra, however, the city failed to notify community organizations and instead made a deal with developer Joe Metlege to tear down the school and put condos on the site.
Metlege and the city talk about committing maybe five percent of the site to “affordable” housing, but no one ever gets around to detailing what that means, exactly. The way “affordable” is currently defined in city hall, it means simply that housing costs less than a third of a resident’s income—so, a $2,000 monthly rent is “affordable housing,” so long as the renter makes $72,000 a year. That’s not much comfort to many north end residents.
Meanwhile, the organization that is trying to build actual affordable housing for working poor people in the neighbourhood is fighting tooth and nail against a city bureaucracy that won’t budge from outdated planning policies.
Last year, the Nova Scotia Housing Trust bought the dilapidated former Diamonds bar and Mitchell’s Environmental Treasures buildings on Gottingen Street and tore them down in preparation for building two apartment buildings. Each will have about 100 units, half at market rates, half with subsidized rents affordable to people working low-wage jobs.
Housing Trust president Ross Cantwell tells me that he’s faced nothing but frustration for 14 months from city hall, which insists on applying planning rules cobbled together in the 1990s and which contradict the regional plan adopted in 2006. City staff wanted the trust to wait three years for new plans to be adopted, but Cantwell is hopeful he can start construction —in the summer of 2013, maybe.
For Cantwell, true affordable housing in the north end is an economic development issue. The low-wage service workers necessary for a thriving downtown need to live close to work, otherwise taxpayers will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for increased transit and bigger roads necessary for the workers to commute, and businesses will have to pay higher wages to compensate for increased commuting costs and time.
Cantwell thinks talk of a “new Africville” is counterproductive and polarizing, but already people in the neighbourhood are saying as much. And why shouldn’t they? Their community institutions are being undermined, and wolfish realtors and developers are gnashing their teeth at the prospect of tearing down the neighbourhood to rebuild it as a high-rent district.
The bulldozers are revved up and ready to go. And just like 1964, the city appears content to watch a community get ripped apart and dispersed to the wind, solely for the crime of being poor.
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2011.
Simple nonsense, like so many of the other positions taken by this publication.
Comparing this to Africville is both factually incorrect and offensive. You are taking nothing away from the community – in fact the development will add to the area significantly. The existing structures are owned by the city, not the residents of the area. Nobody lives in them. They are a mishmash of unattractive, poorly designed, unmaintained structures that require hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual maintenance and millions of dollars in upgrades just to make them usable for a short period of time. The groups complaining do not have that kind of money and have no opportunity to obtain it without a major drain on ratepayers. It is interesting to see how they try to perpetuate the victim mentality and seem to want to ensure that the area is never improved.
The question that the Coast and others complaining about this have failed to ask is: where was the area councillor while all this was going on? Is she claiming ignorance of the process? Was it all done in secret by the evil HRM bureaucracy? Clearly not, since other proposals were received from interested parties. So why wasn’t the councillor out there either helping these groups prepare a viable alternative at the time, or working within city hall to change – or at least slow down – the process? Was she asleep? Rather than buying into her usual divisive and damaging rhetoric, it would behoove the Coast to ask these questions.
Freedom of Expression is a defining feature of Canada. But freedom of expression in Canada does not mean freedom from responsibility. It means we are free to do our duty as citizens and speak out where our conscience compels us.
Admiral HG Rickover said, “A certain measure of courage in the private citizen is necessary to the good conduct of the State. Otherwise men who have power through riches, intrigue, or office will administer the State at will and ultimately to their private advantage. For the citizen, this courage means a frank exposition of a problem and a decrying of the excess of power. It takes courage to do this, for in our polite society frank speech is discouraged. But when this attitude relates to questions involving the welfare or survival of the Nation, it is singularly unfitting to remain evasive. It is not only possible, but in fact the duty of everyone to state precisely what knowledge and conscience compel him to say.”
Let’s not remain evasive and anonymous.
If the Coast, the Herald and other social media sites wanted to do one thing to help in the 300 or so days left leading up to the next Municipal election they would stop the anonymous comments and ask people to find the courage to speak out.
Everyone knows it doesn’t take much thought or courage to lob one in there when you don’t sign your name. Our new digital culture permits a certain accepted wimpiness to masquerade as needed “privacy”. But it’s a ruse. Most of us can do better than that. Don’t buy it unless it is deserved.
If the Coast and Herald don’t change this we are facing 300 days of misinformation, unsourced bullshit, sniping ad hominem attacks and unhelpful spin from a half-real, anonymous, often drunk, world that is hurting Halifax.
With government our basic complaint is that elected officials and the bureaucrats are not being responsible. If we want that then we have to be responsible too. Anonymous commenting is the ultimate manifestation of personal irresponsibility.
As Walter Lippmann once reminded us, “cowardice” is a strong word, and you don’t throw it around. We dislike using it. It implies a certain moral superiority of the user. It generally furthers no discussions, and justifiably puts people on the defensive. But that word, unfortunately, may fit here.
Think about the anonymous haters, nameless “experts” and scores of prissy pundits and lemmings who won’t sign their real name to their rants and indictments. (I don’t know how much The Coast is paying Bousquet these days, but it’s not enough. Tim is a mensch, soldier, hero and lightning rod who is often himself targeted for abuse.)
But whatever the Coast and Herald do I’m calling on the commenters themselves, especially the people with hundreds and thousands of comments on these sites to stand up. It’s irresponsible and ultimately unethical to remain evasive. Don’t be a second-class citizen saying third-rate things. Stand up, stand out, speak out and help improve Nova Scotia.
Isn’t the only way to bring rents down in the marketplace, to build more capacity? I’m sorry I don’t get how being anti-development will help any of those people wither…
When do you figure JWC is gonna throw his hat in the ring?
“Tim is a mensch, soldier, hero and lightning rod “
There are 4 things wrong with this statement.
1) It’s spelled M-I-N-G-E
2)I doubt Tim considers the “S” word to be a compliment. The only people who would be more offended by the comparison would be EVERY MAN AND WOMAN WHO EVER WORE THE UNIFORM!
3)” A hero ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich”
4 )A Lightning Rod has an actual dollar value because it actually serves a useful purpose.
John – you seriously over-estimate the influence of people who anonymously post their bile on a fringe website. Rest assured, the feeling is not mutual.
Well, there you go Mr. Mr. Bean’s Christmas. I couldn’t have made the point better myself.
Mr. Cranky, no hat and no ring here – I am not running for any public office in the next 20 years – but I am intensely interested in putting the Local back in local government and I will work to help, and support as I can, anyone, and everyone, in the community who chooses to run for public office.
I’d like to help do the work required, over what I think will be a long time, to build respect for the offices and officeholders within our Local government. That’s why I spoke out on this commentor business.
I saw an interesting web site started this week.
http://www.ns-municipal-elections.ca/
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2007…
Just shakin’ your tree, JWC, we’re on the same page. Though, I don’t think you give people enough credit, even though people go off on these anonymous counter-culture fringe pages it doesn’t mean that a few of them aren’t active ‘out there’ in real life, getting shit done.
That’s just it, isn’t Mr. Cranky.
I think these are likely some of the most passionate, possibly intelligent, voices in our whole town. But they’re not making enough effort. It’s irresponsible to remain aloof and anonymous when so much is at stake and you have something to say.
I find reading the comments so frustrating. Most people I know won’t even look at them; they are held in that low regard. It’s a potion poured with salt for sure, but it’s powerful – don’t think it isn’t. I always read them. I have to. There’s nothing fringe about it. It’s one of the few local media outlets in our modern community that ever speaks out.
It’s such a potent opportunity for communication. I genuinely believe you are right – these commentors do have something to say – thousands of things – and there is no doubt they are passionate.
It’s like driving through the night and I’m reaching out with the radio to a really cool station that’s just out of range. I mess with the frequency and try to tune in the dial – a little left, a little right. I know it’s something good, but…
… but I can’t give them credit, because… well… you know… they are fuckin’ anonymous and talkin shit and it’s like they gotta get off that dope man.
(ironic conversation with anonymous poster)
Here is hoping that this project goes ahead as planned. All we need in this end of the city is another shooting gallery, another hide them find them game with the cops when they come to apprehend the shooters and the gang bangers. I have live in this city off and on for the last 40 years or so. I have seen it degrade from a charming safe city, into a ghetto existence because of a useless attempt of the political correct governments trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Get real, folks, there are people who were content to live in a garbage dump when Africville was in existence, the act of moving them up the road a few hundred yards does not remove the will to turn everything around them back into the dump from which they came.
http://xp.cm/p3 ……..
There’s a really important discussion to be had about balancing development with existing community interests here, but Bousquet would apparently prefer to wax hyperbolic. Cantwell is right. Talking about a new Africville is counterproductive and polarizing, and stupid to boot.
Africville was an economically and racially ghettoized neighbourhood in a time of major, misguided urban renewal projects. The North End, while overall a lower-income area than the rest of the city, is increasingly middle class and much more mixed, demographically, than Africville was. It is NOT going to fall to bulldozers in one fell swoop–that’s not how gentrification works nowadays.
In fact, renovation and preservation of older structures is gentrification’s hallmark. If anything, the North End will probably see its heritage architecture preserved and improved upon as it becomes a “high-rent” district. Of course we should be vigilant about heritage preservation in any case, but the notion that “bulldozers are revved up” for the task of “tearing down the neighbourhood” is really, really silly.
The real goal will be making sure redevelopment and wealthier residents don’t displace poorer ones. I get the sense, however, the Bousquet would rather see people with money stay the hell out. Well, shit changes Tim, and the north end is already more desirable, and will only become more so. It’s not our responsibility to stop people, of whatever income level, from moving there. It’s not even possible. But we can try to make the change work for all involved. Silly hyperbole and entrenched radicalism won’t do that.