The Downtown Eastside is Vancouver’s most historically significant area as it was the city’s center throughout the 20th century and it currently holds the highest concentration of heritage buildings built between 1886 & 1920. The Downtown Eastside as defined by the City of Vancouver, borders Richards St. and Gore Ave. and runs as far south as Union St. from downtown’s water front.
The stock of heritage structures in the Downtown Eastside area display ghost-like indications of decades past – giving urbanites like myself the opportunity to appreciate a building that has undergone centuries of living, decades of physical augmentation and endured the social changes of its inhabitants over the years.
The Downtown Eastside flourished until the end of the 1980′s where it fell victim to the blight of urban decay. Now known as Canada’s poorest postal code, the area has succumb to its numerous cheap hotels, pubs and addictions. The Province and the Municipality are slow to understand that the most urgent needs for the DTES are mental health and addiction resources but instead have chosen to make eradication of homelessness and creation of housing the focus for the next 3 years. Currently the DTES residents are calling the the area’s stock of heritage buildings home. The majority of the area’s historic hotels are being used as single-room-occupancy units that City Councilor Tony Tang describes as “ones last resort before taking to the street but also ones first step of getting into housing”. In return, this eroding stock of heritage buildings are becoming casualties of neglect by both their afflicted inhabitants and their indifferent landlords.
As a heritage advocate, it pains me to see Vancouver’s structural history crumbling to pieces or infested with bedbugs but I realize the vast importance of providing housing for the City’s most vulnerable in their Downtown Eastside community. Last week there was an announcement made on behalf of the Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments that addressed these very concerns.
It was announced that the Federal and Provincial Governments are partnering up in collaboration with the City of Vancouver to renovate and restore 13 historic buildings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Cleaning up these 13 hotels is supposed create safe and healthy places for Downtown Eastside residents to live affordably. The government of Canada will contribute $29.1 million through the P3 Canada Fund and the Province will contribute $87.3 million toward the project.
The Vancouver Province newspaper quoted Rich Coleman, B.C.’s minister responsible for housing as saying, “he expects the major renovation should create approximately 900 single-room-occupancy units and should be complete in about three-years time”. He also stated that this is the first phase of improvements, as the Province has “bought 24 buildings”.
The 13 buildings that are slated for restoration are listed below, photos are from the BC Housing website – keep your eyes on the street and watch for changes as these restorations get underway in the near future.
