Tannery Court
I don’t think I've ever attracted more comments (mostly angry) than when I suggested that Tannery Court may have some upside.
I met a few folks today that were pleased to be new tenants at the complex. While I certainly encourage housing advocates to fight for their ideals, I also wish all of Tannery Court’s new tenants well in their new homes.
9 comments:
Yes, we all want to wish them well, but the underlying tragedy, that will continue to unfold in the neighborhood of Tannery Court, is that the poverty level will continue to be over 60%, for a long time to come.
Avide officials stated that "they don't create ghettos," but you do see poverty "institutionalized" only in poor neighborhoods.
Poverty is a complicated issue, and it will take more than a 50 unit "warehouse" to deal with it.
Tannery Court is more than a "warehouse". These are 'hard-to-house' folks who deserve a place to live much like rest of us, but are unable (for various reasons) to live among the regular population. And they're not new residents adding to the low-income numbers cited above. They're mostly people from the area who currently live in sub-standard conditions; conditions that are unexceptable to anybody with a heartbeat and a functioning conscience.
'Hard to house' folks (i.e. mental issues, recovering addicts) are unfortunately not easy to co-locate with others in the same building. That's not do to their own set of issues; on the contrary research shows that this sector of the population care more about their communities than most people. But they are stigmatized by the rest of us who like to judge, which makes renting apartments in the same complex quite challenging.
Tannery Court is an important gesture to that community that demonstrates that the city cares. It's unfortunate that some people in the city see it simply as a storage unit for the less fortunate. Apparently the complications of poverty have them a bit confused as well.
Re: Anonymous February 16, 2011 6:45 PM
Why is it a good thing to force all of the "hard to house" people to live in the same building?
Will it make it easier for the "hard to house" to be surrounded by only those who are "hard to house"?
- Different Anonymous than February 14, 2011 5:22 AM
"Stigmatized!"... how about the discriminatory practice of only putting low income housing in high poverty areas?
The script for "Crescent Valley" has been changing the housing to a "mixed" model... with much fanfare and back-patting... meanwhile the plethora of low income units continue to grow in the area...SJ Non-Profit, NB Housing, TC,Queen St. Co-Op and your Abbey project.
Are you saying it's ok to have a nieghbourhood of highly concentrated poverty? In perpetuity?
Is that your idea of "Urban Planning??"
Dig your head out and look at the numbers... look at the schools, look at teen pregnancy rates, look at the crime and family violence ...look at the families and the children of the neighbourhood... are these "outcomes" acceptable?
I personally know of children who are impacted severely by their neighbourhood, and parents tell me that they would like to move to a better area, but the low income housing isn't available.
Yes, with TC many get to stay in a high poverty neighbourhood... +47% for the Peninsula... that's a great accomplishment.
TC is a "gesture" for sure, but not one I'd make... to a friend.
"We're entrapping people in poverty, we're not getting them out of poverty."
"We're spending billions of dollars and we're only treating the symptoms, we're not treating the disease."
- Senator Art Eggleton
...
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/city/article/1381545
"we're only treating the symptoms, we're not treating the disease."
We should treat the disease.
We should also treat the symptoms, until the big cure is in play.
"We should also treat the symptoms, until the big cure is in play."
This is what Senator Eggleton cites, when he talks about our approaches to poverty as being in "silos."
We fool ourselves, by saying "well, it not perfect, but we have to do something..." and unfortunately we never do!
We compound, concentrate and perpetuate poverty.
Even the "Housing Group" of bCAPI/Vibrant Communities recommended against this approach two years ago.
The neighborhood will live with the consequences of this approach, for many years to come.
I find it discouraging that there has been so much posted about Tannery Court, and so little celebration posted about housing being done right.
Are there no working models?
Is the only way to advance this discussion through the broken record on Tannery Court?
"Celebrate" when we stop making the same mistakes over & over again.
I find it "discouraging" when civic "rooting" and denial walk hand-in-hand on SJ sidewalks.
"When we make mistakes, and we have made many, they stand as grim monuments to past theories about how people should behave rather than how they do behave. Doctors bury their mistakes. We foreclose ours. Sometimes we implode them, level them and start from scratch."*
"Good housing incubates good families, and good families incubate good citizens. Bad housing incubates bad families, and bad families incubate bad citizens."*
"the private market makes housing 'affordable' by eliminating maintenance to lower costs and squashing people together to raise their rent-paying ability until the economics balance. For more than two thousand years, ever since human beings came together in cities, the private market has been ruthlessly effective in making this. It is called a slum. And slums not only breed disease, they breed misery, violence, and eventually riots.
We can do better."*
* http://www.affordablehousinginstitute.org/
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