Just a spark away from personal housing crisis By: Rebecca Chambers Posted: 12:08 PM CST Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/02/2024 (569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s an apartment building down the street that’s popular with the squirrels and pigeons, owing to the endless supply of peanuts and sunflower seeds distributed by the tenants. They are neighbourhood fixtures, these older folks who feed the urban wildlife and greet those walking by, making small talk and sharing photos of grandchildren.

I know one of the women volunteers with the soup kitchen up the road, and one of the men is a self-declared champion of the claw machine at the corner store, winning stuffed animals and proffering them to the children that pass by. It’s obvious these people are as comfortable and at home as the pigeons and squirrels at their feet.

But this week, the building is empty, the stoop is bare. The tenants have been displaced by a fire, leaving the pigeons to strut about hungrily, tilting their vacuous little heads to stare uncomprehendingly at the barren ground. Five tenants were hospitalized, and most of those living in the building needed the city’s help in finding alternate accommodation.

City hall needs to make a housing plan that realizes the contributions and community in older neighbourhoods

With vacancy rates around 1.5 per cent, and low-rent options dwindling, I can only imagine the impossible choices that will have to be made after the fracturing of this little community. Dozens of housing units were lost in this one fire, and there aren’t many places to go. Seniors, immigrants, and Indigenous Winnipeggers face precarious living situations: according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, approximately one in five live in substandard housing.

Without addressing Winnipeg’s degrading older housing stock, there will be fewer options for those already teetering on the edge of stable housing. The loss of a building like the one that burned on Furby Street is a tragedy for those who lived there, not only because of the loss of community and property, but because of the dearth of available places to move into that can offer the same comfort at the same price.

Encouragingly, Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham made clear last week housing will be a priority in coming years. Specifically, plans were announced to approve up to 8,000 new units by Nov 30. Taking into account the soaring cost of real estate, above-guideline rental rates, unstable mortgage rates and the stagnation of wages, the addition of more options for renters and buyers is good news.

Included in the mayor’s announcement is $500,000 for CentreVenture to boost housing in the downtown area, specifically. Unfortunately, that’s peanuts. Developing housing in the inner city is risky and expensive, and usually the rents can’t finance the upkeep of older buildings, spiralling our city into backward real-estate values and further oppression of the precariously housed.

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Rehabilitating Winnipeg’s older inner-city housing is dependent on the city showing leadership around derelict and vacant properties. Citizens are bending over backward to get the city to pay attention and ameliorate derelict buildings and abandoned piles of rubble. Spence neighbourhood residents, for example, are marking two years of pleading with the city to enforce livability bylaws and common-sense maintenance.

While developing 8,000 housing units of all type is laudable, it would be refreshing to see some of those resources directed to specifically renewing and maintaining older housing stock and building new housing on the derelict or empty properties dotting our city. Landlords are tightening belts as much as any of us, and the result is fewer affordable places to live, and declining conditions in those still standing. We need real leadership, not more throwing open of the doors to unrestrained suburban development.

We cannot keep building outwards at the expense of the cohesiveness of our city. City hall needs to make a housing plan that realizes the contributions and community in older neighbourhoods, and do us the dignity of restoring streetscapes instead of forcing more of us to live with piles of rubble and false promises about how hard the city is working to resolve these problem properties.

Without solid commitments to restore older Winnipeg residential neighbourhoods, I worry that even a healthy, safe apartment block, like the one that burned last week, will be replaced by long-term hand-wringing and shrugging, leaving us like the pigeons, baffled and bereft of the sustenance provided by a strong community.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.

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