75 search results for
Tenants/renters
Recommendation 27:
Ensure that immigration status is not a barrier to social housing
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Recommendation 5:
Engage in proactive education with municipalities to ensure that zoning and regulatory bylaws, and related public consultation processes, do not discriminate based on social condition.
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Recommendation 183:
End the health risks associated with living in the DTES by ensuring healthy environments and built-environments in all buildings, residences, and outdoors. This includes the right to:
- Clean air and clean streets.
- Green space and urban ecological systems.
- Sanitation.
- Accessible and clean public washrooms.
- Potable water.
- Functioning water fountains and more access to water sources.
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Recommendation 11:
Embrace a women-centred philosophy in hotels with policies and practices that ensure women’s access and safety in all spaces, especially for Indigenous women and women of colour.
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Recommendation 73:
Eliminate the prohibition on accessing Rental Assistance Program (RAP) and Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters (SAFER) housing subsidies for people on income and disability assistance.
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Recommendation 7:
Do not provide incentives to profit or non-profit SRO owners to upgrade their units unless rents in upgraded units are guaranteed to not exceed the welfare/pension rate.
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Recommendation 5:
Designate enough land for 6,000 units of social housing in the Downtown Eastside to show senior levels of government that the City is serious about solving the housing crisis.
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Recommendation 17:
Chinatown Economic Revitalization Plan and Chinatown Neighbourhood Plan
In the Memorandum issued on June 22, 2018 from General Manager of Planning, Urban Design & Sustainability, Gil Kelley, to Mayor and Council, an update was provided as to the status of implementation of the Economic Revitalization Strategy Actions in the Chinatown Neighbourhood Plan and Economic Revitalization Strategy (2012). While it was recognized that “many actions were completed or are underway,” there are key actions that have yet to be implemented that would support and alleviate some of the challenges identified within our research.
Specifically for Chinatown’s food retail environment, we recommend refinement of several of the strategic actions:
In the Memorandum issued on June 22, 2018 from General Manager of Planning, Urban Design & Sustainability, Gil Kelley, to Mayor and Council, an update was provided as to the status of implementation of the Economic Revitalization Strategy Actions in the Chinatown Neighbourhood Plan and Economic Revitalization Strategy (2012). While it was recognized that “many actions were completed or are underway,” there are key actions that have yet to be implemented that would support and alleviate some of the challenges identified within our research.
Specifically for Chinatown’s food retail environment, we recommend refinement of several of the strategic actions:
- “Tenant recruitment strategy” could benefit from selective recruitment of businesses that would contribute to the Chinatown character that many of our business interviewees and consumers have identified as ideal additions to the neighbourhood. These were often described as “Chinese businesses” but further work would need to be completed to assess neighbourhood fit in regards to socio-economics and accessibility of these business.
- “Tenant retention strategy.” As with the experience of the BIA, the “lack of succession planning makes retention challenging.” Due to the contributions that traditional businesses make to the neighbourhood character, through intangible values with the social and cultural connections they hold, we recommend that a working group be formed to come up with options that the City, other levels of government, as well as other stakeholders can implement to assist with succession planning of these businesses. Namely, to explore how traditional businesses can succeed in becoming community- and membership- owned entities. Applying cooperative values can serve the community/membership as well as democratizing ownership and economics of the business.
- “Tourism and Marketing Strategy.” More specifically for Chinatown’s Marketing Strategy, we recommend actions including measures to build social and cultural relationships between traditional and non-traditional businesses. As our research has shown, there are missed intra-neighbourhood economic opportunities due to parallel and segregated economic and social systems. Marketing opportunities within the neighbourhood to businesses across cultural lines would contribute to neighbourhood connectivity. The external aspects of the Tourism and Marketing Strategy would also benefit from a more socially cohesive business environment in Chinatown.
- From our findings, there is also a desire from business operators for further “clean-up of public spaces with local business”. Current actions are not satisfactory based on our interview findings. This ongoing challenge can be attributed to larger systemic issues. We stress that ‘clean-up’ does not mean increasing police presence in the neighbourhood.
- Include a Community Economic Development strategy that is based entirely from a culturally and community specific lens. This recommendation includes legitimizing and uplifting the survival economy, informal economy, and other systems that have been pushed to the margins, with measures to increase opportunities for more equitable and inclusive employment.
While housing was not specifically researched for this report, housing has significant impacts on neighbourhood food retail and social environment. Market-based development in Chinatown and its surrounding areas have created and reinforced actors in parallel systems, economically and socially, for both businesses and consumers. These systems draw out the social distance between community members and limits the potential of socially cohesive communities to thrive. It is recommended that housing be addressed with culturally specific needs in mind, including culturally specific seniors housing. Development guidelines such as frontage, use, size of retail units, and other zoning and permitting should be explored as ways to direct the types of businesses and ownership that will end up occupying retail spaces in the neighbourhood.
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- Accessibility ,
- Accessible services and technology ,
- Alternative solutions ,
- Classism ,
- Discrimination and hate ,
- Economic inequality ,
- Food insecurity ,
- Housing and homelessness ,
- Policing and the criminal justice system ,
- Poverty and economic inequality ,
- Public services ,
- Racism ,
- Tenancy rights ,
- Workers’ rights
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Recommendation 13:
Change the City’s definition of social housing so that low income people are not excluded from any social housing.
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Recommendation 13:
Change government definitions of social housing and affordable housing to mean rates that are affordable to people on social assistance, and rents that are income-geared not market-geared.
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