The Little Mountain Housing Development Story. A documentary project by David Vaisbord
Vancouver-based independent filmmaker and documentarian David Vaisbord has created a compelling crowdfunding campaign on indiegogo, a personal film project to document the story of, as CityHallWatch wrote last year …
The premature destruction of the Little Mountain social housing complex in Vancouver and the ongoing saga about the community and the site’s fate … offshore investors, egos, political influence and spin, bureaucratic bungling, mainstream media blindspots and incompetence, and more, are some of the factors determining the flow of the saga of the Little Mountain housing development.
Riley Park community activist Ned Jacobs weighed in recently, writing …
“Since 2009, when all but four of the 224 homes at Little Mountain Housing were demolished, the 15-acre site, which housed a well-functioning community in 2007, has sat fenced off and empty except for a scattering of trees. A single rowhouse building remains because several of the tenants courageously refused to be displaced by BC Housing (BCH).
Supportive housing is a core element of our social safety net. Former NDP MLA David Chudnovsky has pointed out that we don’t sell off our parks to cover social assistance and disability cheques; why then would we sell our social housing sites to fund supportive housing? It would make much more sense to fund supportive housing through general revenue, and redevelop Little Mountain and other appropriate social housing sites as rentals and cooperatives to house a broad range of incomes — and especially “first responders” and other essential service workers that have been frozen out of the Vancouver market.
For the City to allow the project to proceed without the crucial amenities would be irresponsible and a slap in the face to the entire community, as well, as would permitting greater height or density than set out in the Little Mountain Policy Statement (LMPS).
David Vaisbord’s powerful, revealing documentation of nearly five years of the Little Mountain saga has already helped move the tide of events in a positive direction. A feature-length documentary telling this important story through the spoken words and images of the people and the place could contribute to achieving a far happier outcome.
Donations to the Little Mountain Film Project may be made here.
As reported widely in the media, rogue Non-Partisan Association Vancouver Board of Education trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo (pictured above) were expelled from the NPA caucus this past Friday for having “chosen to follow their own course in various matters without consulting with the other members of Caucus,” a statement from the party read, relating to the adoption of an updated policy designed to better accommodate LGBTQ+ and Gender Variant persons enrolled in Vancouver schools.
In a statement issued yesterday by the NPA’s Board of Directors …
The NPA Vancouver Board of Directors has voted to support the recent expulsion of school trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo from the NPA Caucus.
The Board also decided that Denike and Woo will not receive the party’s endorsement as candidates in the upcoming municipal election.
NPA President Peter Armstrong said the Caucus’s decision to expel Denike and Woo was not unexpected.
“The Caucus has had ongoing issues with Ken and Sophia for a long time and the Board has been aware of this,” said Armstrong. “The raucous news conference called by Ken and Sophia last week was just one issue among many that forced the Caucus to take action.”
The NPA Caucus celebrates and supports the diversity of all of the people in our city and fully supports efforts to assist LGBTQ+ and Gender Variant persons in our community and in our schools. Fostering inclusion and understanding is central among the NPA’s guiding principles
For further background, read this story in the Vancouver Courier.
Tickets for the Vancouver Greens 2014 campaign kick-off are available here.
