Bring on the funky bistros, tapas bars, Starbucks patios and happening Thai food places. Damn the torpedoes and don't worry too much about displacing low-income residents and affordable rental units.
Yes, we all love it when a dumpy old neighbourhood is transformed to cool, like Gastown or upper Main Street.
Gentrification is defined as the process of affluent people moving into a traditionally disadvantaged urban area, thereby changing its character.
In short, the displacement of low-income people is not a side effect of gentrification, it is gentrification.
And so, although I like a funky bistro as much as the next guy, when I hear my let-'em-eat-cake colleague suggest that those displaced by gentrification should simply get a job, I forget my love for the funky bistro and remember the callous political treatment of low-income renters in gentrified neighbourhoods.
The political process of gentrification is dishonest and inherently unfair. By way of example, imagine if we proposed building a drug recovery centre in Kitsilano or a treatment centre in Kerrisdale.
How many social impact studies would we have to discuss the effects on NIMBY neighbourhood residents? As many as it takes.
Yet when it comes to gentrification of East Van neighbourhoods, there are few meetings or impact studies on effects on residents. In fact, resident displacement statistics are manipulated.
We claim there are more low-income rental units available than ever but we're counting units that aren't low-rent anymore.
Only 24% of rental units are available at welfare level, a drop of over 3,000 low rental units since 1993.
An entrepreneur buys a multi-floor low-rent building and, after a reno, leases out the main floor to a trendy restaurant, while on the floors above, renters live in squalor.
An upscale crowd is soon attracted to the restaurant and the building owner sees the opportunity for higher rents and - voila! - a rent hike, a reno, and low-income residents are displaced.
The protesters at the Pidgin restaurant on Carrall and Cuchillo restaurant on Powell justifiably express frustration over years of displacement of low-rent residents of gentrified neighbourhoods.
I don't know what the answer is. We can't halt all gentrification. Unfortunately, as usual, our pat answer seems to be to blame the poor.
