| It’s the middle of the afternoon in the East Village and an emaciated young woman is talking to herself while pacing back and forth in what is locally known as "crack cul-de-sac."
A block and a half away is a boarded-up house, the yard strewn with garbage. Until it was shut down recently by the city, neighbours say the crackhouse was home to dozens of addicts who would regularly crash in the house or in a truck or trailer parked in the yard. Half hidden in the snow outside is a needle, and not far from that is a used red condom.
This scene is unfolding every day in city hall’s backyard. On one side of the municipal building are skyscrapers and streets full of affluent people in suits. On the other side is the poverty- and crime-plagued East Village.
LIVING IN LIMBO
The city currently owns 50 per cent of the land in the East Village and has come up with numerous schemes over the years to redevelop it. The most notorious debacle occurred in November 2002 when a joint venture between the city and a private developer collapsed and the city had to spend $2.8 million to exit the partnership.
Now Ald. Druh Farrell, who represents the neighbourhood, and Mayor Dave Bronconnier are vowing to kickstart redevelopment with a new area redevelopment plan (ARP) that emphasizes a high-density, pedestrian-friendly residential area with a restored connectivity to downtown. Bronconnier is also championing a controversial new financing scheme called tax incremental financing (TIF).
Farrell hoped the new ARP would be approved by council last month. But at a public meeting in December, both the Drop-In Centre and the Salvation Army expressed major concerns about the proposal, claiming the new plan would push out the homeless. The two shelters and city administration are currently consulting before the ARP comes back to council in March.
Meantime, local residents are becoming increasingly angry about how the city has let the area deteriorate. Many say it was bad city planning that led to the area’s problems in the first place.
The East Village is surrounded by the CP Rail train tracks and the Bow and Elbow rivers on three sides, but city council essentially cut the area off from the rest of downtown completely with the addition of C-train tracks on Third Street S.E. and the new municipal building to the west, which acts like a giant glass wall. And much of the city-owned land consists of abandoned sites or parking lots, which make ideal places for criminal activity. The city has also delayed necessary infrastructure upgrades such as raising the streets five feet above the 100-year flood plain, which would require replacing water and sewer lines.
ANYTHING GOES
Terry Hermon lives in a rooming house next to the former crackhouse. He says down and out people in the neighbourhood have just wandered into the place on more than one occasion – the most memorable being when he came home and found a woman washing her hair in the kitchen sink.
"They figure it’s an old fuckin’ house. Who gives a shit," says Hermon. "People just wander in off the street and figure they can use the facilities…What does city hall give a shit because they never look out their back windows."
Lawrence Braul, CEO of Trinity Place Foundation, which runs three high-rise apartments for low-income seniors in the East Village, says prostitutes or drug dealers in the neighbourhood often prey upon vulnerable seniors. He says on more than one occasion drug dealers or prostitutes have befriended a senior and then taken over their apartment to use it as a trick pad or for drug dealing.
"It becomes an absolute and total nightmare not just for the person, but that person’s neighbours and other people in the building," says Braul.
In the most notorious incident in recent months, a 63-year-old man was violently attacked after he tried to kick out a man who was sleeping in the hallway of his low-income apartment complex, George C. King Tower.
The senior suffered a stroke and is now paralyzed on one side.
Herman Wonta, a senior living in George C. King Tower, says things are getting worse all the time.
"It doesn’t make any difference where you go here, you find needles or you find some guy on the corner stoned out of his mind looking for his next fix – and seniors are afraid to go outside…. You look outside any time of the day and there are hookers," says Wonta.
"If they built it up, put some more condos or apartment buildings in, it would make a big difference. As far as I’m concerned it’s really important that they do something with this area."
Alex Batzer, another senior who lives in the high-rise, says two years ago he was knocked down and robbed just outside the local seniors’ centre. Now, he says, "I just go out in daylight."
Paul Thuillard, co-owner of Tillie’s Tap and Eatery in the East Village, says he’s "distraught" by what he sees on a daily basis – and he doesn’t sugarcoat it.
"This is crazy. The East Village is basically unrestricted. Anything goes. The cops come down and clean it up for a day and then more shit happens," he says. "You see a nice sweet 18-year-old come in with her backpack. The next thing you know they’re sucking cock for rock."
Thuillard says the neighbourhood is getting increasingly rough due to drug addiction. "For a $40 piece of rock they’ll stab you and take your life. I’ve seen it and I’m sick of it," he says.
THE DEAD ZONE
Morris Blitt has owned the St. Louis Hotel in the East Village, located in what is now known as crack cul-de-sac, for almost 30 years. He’s very cynical about the chances of redevelopment actually happening, and he’s angry about the state of the neighbourhood.
"Frankly, I think city hall, various administrations, from the beginning, created the blight we call the East Village," he says. "The city made ridiculous decisions in their planning department and then everything from city hall to Fort Calgary became a dead zone…. The city is the number one landowner and they’ve done nothing with it."
Blitt says the area used to be a fully functioning working-class community but "they created a Bermuda Triangle."
"They decided this was an area where souls disappeared," he says. "I think the two shelters were a huge mistake by city hall…. You can’t take an area and say this is where all the homeless and downtrodden are going to exist."
Blitt says when shelters close their doors to the homeless during the day, suddenly clientele are "smoking crack cocaine in the parking lot and drinking vanilla extract."
Blitt says he has seriously considered selling his bar, which used to cater to a mix of clients, such as oil and gas executives, blue-collar workers and city politicians (including former mayor Ralph Klein). But now, he says, those customers are "afraid to come into the area."
He’s skeptical any developer would be interested in building in a neighbourhood with so many social problems and he has no qualms stating that the city should move one of the two shelters out of the area.
"If I go around the neighbourhood… all I see are empty lots and people sleeping under bridges when there used to be homes, businesses and grocery stores and people living their lives…. It’s an area that’s been decimated by 20 years of chat and no action," he says.
BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME
Braul says the Trinity Place Foundation has been involved with consultations on redevelopment plans for the East Village for more than 20 years and he was disappointed and surprised that the two shelters opposed the latest ARP.
"Obviously a healthy community requires a mix and I don’t think at this point there’s any realistic fear (the shelters) will be boarded up and people will be sent away," says Braul.
He compares the neighbourhood to a vacant playground, and suggests that the void needs to be filled by a greater socio-economic mix of people that would result from high-density redevelopment.
"My biggest fear is that we create a kind of shelter population subculture that has its own values, commerce and enterprise, that has its own way of getting by, and they become estranged and alienated from the rest of society because they live in this void called the East Village."
Bill Nairn, who owns a condo in the trendy Orange Loft condominium, also thinks the argument that the homeless will be pushed out is "total bunk." He thinks if redevelopment occurs, people will buy or rent property in the neighbourhood knowing full well that there are two homeless shelters in the area and they won’t care.
"I moved here. I bought here….Homeless people aren’t a problem and when you get right down to it, the prostitutes aren’t a problem either. The problems are the druggies because you never know what they’re going to do," says Nairn.
He gets tears in his eyes when he talks about the potential he sees in the East Village. He envisions a lively, mixed income, high-density community where you can walk almost everywhere you need to go, or take the conveniently located C-train.
"The area redevelopment plan as proposed is phenomenal. If council gets off their butts and gives some sort of funding strategy to get the infrastructure done, as soon as the builders know that they will start coming in," says Nairn.
CONNECTED COMMUNITY
Dermot Baldwin, executive director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre, says he wants redevelopment to take place, but he’s concerned about the argument that there’s currently too much concentration of homelessness in the East Village.
"There’s a deliberate attempt to victimize the shelters and hold them responsible for things that haven’t worked in this area… criminal activity, prostitution, drug addiction," he says.
"In large part the people who are parts of gangs, and drug sellers and the pimps and the like, are people that don’t need this place and we don’t allow into this place, and we have as much worry and concern about their activity as anyone else, perhaps more so."
Baldwin looks out his window and points to all the vacant land across the street from the Drop-In Centre. He agrees with Braul that the area is rife with drugs and prostitution because there’s so little development.
"Where will they frequent in any city to do their business? In a place that’s unpopulated. It’s not because our shelter is there," he says.
He doesn’t see why a mix of socio-economic classes couldn’t work in the area.
"There’s no reason for it not to work. I like these people. These people are very intelligent in many ways and entitled to live some place.
"They need a little help to get out of a bind and trouble that they’re in and need to be supported and I think if you were to walk downstairs and really get to know the people you’d find that there’s more community connection here than there is in the vast majority of Calgary areas," he says.
Dwayne, a resident of Drop-In Centre who asked that his last name not be used, says redevelopment would be good as the homeless have a voice.
"This is our area. This is the homeless corridor so if they’re redeveloping it, they should keep that in mind. Maybe clean it up a little bit," he says. "I think the homeless are used as a scapegoat for a lot of things."
Bill Mayou, another shelter resident, says he doesn’t see why everyone couldn’t coexist in the community.
"It’s a beautiful part of town. Why don’t they put buildings up here? It’s not like the transients or homeless will be invading their space," he says.
"The public is largely misinformed about the homeless. We’re homeless, but that doesn’t mean we’re thieves and thugs and we’re going to rob some old lady on her way to the store."
Salvation Army CEO John Rook says his organization favours redevelopment, but experience in other cities has shown "any kind of redevelopment will drive low income and homeless people out because they become undesirable."
Rook says the city has to do some careful planning to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Alderman Druh Farrell is promising that existing shelters won’t be pushed out by redevelopment. Farrell, who is passionate about redevelopment, especially after spending a couple of months living in the Orange Loft condos, says the goal would be to integrate homeless people into a more functional community.
"Right now it’s OK to smoke crack with 40 of your closest friends in the street in the daytime," she says. "We’re allowing a lawless situation to evolve and somehow we’ve held the community to a lower standard."
She acknowledges that city councils have made some bad decisions in the past regarding the East Village, but she says now’s the time to try and fix them.
"The placement of the municipal building, the placement of the LRT were mistakes, but they’re there now," she says.
"When you look at the beauty of the land it’s easy to picture a community there. It will always have urban grit but I see it succeeding," says Farrell. "The East Village was the origin of Calgary. It’s where Calgary started and it deserves better than just being abandoned." |
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