{"id":15133,"date":"2015-10-16T00:10:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T07:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=15133"},"modified":"2019-05-16T14:30:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:30:46","slug":"housing-woes-in-vancouver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/10\/16\/housing-woes-in-vancouver\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing woes in Vancouver"},"content":{"rendered":"

As housing prices in Vancouver continue to rise, people will have to be creative about, and flexible in, their living arrangements. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Until recently, Naava Smolash was living in a collective house in East Vancouver with five roommates. The combined monthly rent for the 100-year-old character house, with high ceilings, fir floors and stained glass windows, was $2,700 and, though the inhabitants have changed over the past decade, Smolash has been a constant since she moved from Montreal 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a collective house? \u201cIt\u2019s people sharing spaces,\u201d she explained. \u201cWe cook together, share our food and have a house bank account to which we all contribute money. It\u2019s a small urban commune but the difference is that the members tend to be older, with families and professionals living together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smolash\u2019s fellow roomies, all in their 30s, included a scientist, a lawyer, an artist and a law student, while Smolash herself is a professor of English literature at Douglas College. In her spare time, she manages the Vancouver Collective House Network\u2019s Facebook page. She estimates hers was one of 50 collective houses in the city, and that the residents of at least 10 of them are being evicted. Hers included.<\/p>\n

Things changed this past summer when her house on Victoria Drive was sold for more than $2 million. A young family will be moving in and Smolash is stuck for a place to live. \u201cThere isn\u2019t anywhere else we can afford,\u201d she said. \u201cThis neighborhood is changing so quickly that only wealthy people can afford to live here, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been talking with the Waterfront Consumers\u2019 Cooperative, which suggested she and her roommates put in proposals for buying a house. \u201cThe problem is the co-op can\u2019t buy a million dollar house and, even if they could, the mortgage would be $5,000 a month, which would make it unaffordable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Smolash is feeling the panic. \u201cWe\u2019re older, we can\u2019t just keep moving,\u201d she lamented. \u201cAnd co-op houses tend to be rented to families, while a collective home has changing inhabitants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need is more cooperatively owned collective houses. We\u2019re hoping that people who bought houses in the 1970s or 1980s will step up and sell it to the co-op for an amount the organization can afford. In so doing, they could create a legacy of affordable collective housing that\u2019s cooperatively owned in East Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Geller, a Vancouver architect, planner and developer, is sympathetic to her plight. \u201cI think there\u2019s a need for collective housing, and there\u2019s a real problem here. But maybe this group should look at that $5,000 per month mortgage payment as a good way to go. While we\u2019d like to think there\u2019s some benevolent person in the community who might be willing to donate or reduce the price of a property, it\u2019s been very difficult to achieve that in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susana Cogan, housing development director at Tikva Housing Society, has a budget of $75,000 this year (down from $90,000 last year) to help subsidize the rent of those in the community who need it. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re helping 46 Jewish people,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing Jewish is not a condition \u2013 we house low-income people, giving preference to Jews, so if there are two families with the same need and one is Jewish, we\u2019d subsidize the Jewish family first.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February 2014, Adam M (not his real name), 57, and his wife moved to Vancouver from Montreal and the two, both shomer Shabbat, struggled to find jobs and affordable rental accommodation near the Jewish centre. Eventually, they found a one-bedroom apartment near Oak and 17th for $1,200. Tikva Housing is helping subsidize 38% of the monthly rent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t like to ask for help,\u201d Cogan said. \u201cBut, due to circumstances, they sometimes end up having to take it. Most of the needs arise because of unforeseen things \u2013 an illness, a divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Adam\u2019s case, the couple had arrived in Vancouver with some resources but depleted them before they were able to find affordable accommodation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur rent subsidy program is supposed to help people for the short term, while they bridge their problems,\u201d Cogan said, adding that each case is different, but one to one-and-a-half years is the average period of assistance.<\/p>\n

Adam is grateful for help from the Jewish community in Vancouver but said more resources from donors are necessary. \u201cI know a lot of religious people that would want to come and live in Vancouver with their families because of the lifestyle out west. The problem is, living close to the Jewish community is too expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cogan said we definitely should not be encouraging people to come and live in Vancouver if they cannot afford it. Subsidies are scarce, she stressed. \u201cWe can\u2019t assist everyone who comes here and we turn a lot of people away, only assisting those who have the most need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, there are at least 50 people waiting for Tikva Housing\u2019s help.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe next year we\u2019ll have even less resources,\u201d Cogan speculated. \u201cBut our goal is that if people come here and run out of resources, we don\u2019t want them to be living on the street. We\u2019ll help them find affordable accommodation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren Kramer<\/strong>, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As housing prices in Vancouver continue to rise, people will have to be creative about, and flexible in, their living arrangements. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay) Until recently, Naava Smolash was living in a collective house in East Vancouver with five roommates. The combined monthly rent for the 100-year-old character house, with high ceilings, fir floors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4665,2477,3159,2178,2259,4385],"class_list":["post-15133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-affordability","tag-housing","tag-michael-geller","tag-rent-subsidy","tag-susana-cogan","tag-tikva-housing-society"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}