Artists “pushed out” of building meant to provide a permanent home

October 25, 2012October 27, 2012Maryse Zeidler

The Artist Resource Centre is one of few affordable live-work building for artists in Vancouver. Artists are claiming that expensive rent is squeezing them out of a building meant to provide affordable live-work space in Vancouver.

Originally published in The Thunderbird October 19, 2012

Artists say they’re being squeezed out of a building that was created specially to provide affordable live-work space for artists.

The Artist Resource Centre is one of few affordable live-work building for artists in Vancouver.

That’s something they say demonstrates a flaw in early efforts to create low-cost housing and work space for the city’s arts community — and that they hope won’t happen again.

Photographer Wendy D lived in the Artist Resource Centre building in Vancouver’s port-area industrial zone for 10 years. Last year, she was forced out because of rising rent, as well as what looked like management’s lack of concern for people trying to run art businesses. In her case, the landlord didn’t fix a broken elevator for weeks — a serious problem for someone in a seventh-floor unit who sells her art by having clients visit her studio.

She said most of the original group that moved into the 80-unit building in the late ’90s — attracted to one of the few places that allowed artists to both live and do work that is often loud or semi-industrial — left in the last five years as rents began to increase more than in the past.

“They didn’t care about artists any more,” she said, “it was all about the money.”

That’s a disturbing end to what was a laudable effort from the city to find space for artists as they were forced out of downtown warehouses in the post-Expo downtown boom, as city inspectors cracked down on fire and safety hazards in then-derelict buildings.

The ARC is zoned industrial and as a result does not fall under the purview of the B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch, which restricts rent increases for units that are used for residential purposes only.

Vancouver council granted special zoning for the ARC in 1993, as a way to create new affordable artist live-work spaces. The city continues to struggle with that issue.

In June, the city announced it would lease out 26,000 square feet of new creative space on two city-owned properties. The new studios will be rented out at $7.5 to $15 per square foot, but are only intended for work.

Those spaces will likely be managed by a non-profit, which should forestall drastic rent increases. But, says Vision Vancouver Coun. Heather Deal, that doesn’t give the city any power to dictate what happens in the earlier generation of private buildings that got zoning dispensations.

“There are a few different models of live-work and there are limits to how much the city can impose price controls in privately owned buildings,” said Deal. “We have made this a high priority so are working to use all of the limited tools available to us as a municipal government.”

The city tools include operating its own live-work studios, using community amenity contributions from developers to generate new spaces, and using zoning or taxation to encourage the construction of artist spaces.

The ARC, at Commercial Drive and Powell Street, is one the few live-work buildings in Vancouver that allows industrial activity like welding and woodworking, as well as amplified music and dance. It is one of five live-work buildings owned and operated by Reliance Holdings Ltd., which owns and manages a wide variety of commercial and residential properties in the city.

Roy Mackey, a current resident and former manager of the ARC, said when he first moved into the building over 10 years ago, “rents wouldn’t go up until tenants moved out.”

Over the past 10 years, studios similar to the one he first moved into have increased 65 per cent, rising to $1,300 a month from $850. The smallest and most affordable studios in the building now cost $1,000 a month, while some of the larger suites cost around $2,000.

Doris Siu, a staff member in accounts receivable at Reliance Holdings, said the company is “not aware of any prevailing pattern of complaints related to rents,” adding “the building remains full of artists.”

History of live-work studios

The ARC studios are part of almost 1,500 live-work spaces approved at a time when many Vancouver artists were being pushed out of the cheap warehouse spaces because of fire and safety violations. “In the mid ‘80s and early ‘90s, we were all being evicted from our studio spaces,” said Esther Rausenberg, former president of Artists for Creative Spaces, a group that came together to lobby the municipal government in response to the evictions.

The average artist in Vancouver makes $27,000 a year, compared to $36,123 for the average Vancouverite. Affordable housing is usually defined as housing that doesn’t cost more than about a third of household income. For the average artist, that would be $675 a month.

Erica Babins, an ARC resident, shares a studio with a roommate to keep her rent affordable.

Although live-work studios were meant to provide affordable space for artists, they have attracted other residents over the years, according to a University of Toronto report on creative spaces in Vancouver and other cities. As a result, artists say competition from other creative sectors is increasingly squeezing them out of these trendy spaces.

Rausenberg said it tried to work with the city to develop spaces specifically designated for artists, but instead it zoned studios as live-work, without specifying the type of creative work.

‘Economic necessity’

Erica Babins, an ARC resident.

Despite the rent increases, many artists still live in the building. Erica Babins, a 22-year-old actor and singer who has been living in the ARC for almost a year, shares a $1,300 open studio apartment with a roommate.

For privacy, the two roommates erected a plywood divider to separate their sleeping areas. Babins said that although she couldn’t afford to live in the space on her own, the arrangement is still cost-effective because her rent gives her access to the building’s shared workshops. “I rehearsed my entire Fringe Festival show here for free.”

Starting Small, Aiming Big

September 29, 2012Maryse Zeidler

Go Global student works for sustainable change
Originally published in UBC Reports, June 6 2012

In the haste to do good work, international development projects sometimes overlook the true needs and existing strengths of the communities they’re meant to assist. This summer, Trevor Hirsche will be serving a rural community in Bolivia, but not without first understanding local conditions.

Hirsche is one of two student recipients of the UBC-PFF Community Leadership Program, offered through UBC’s Go Global office which provides student opportunities to learn abroad. Trevor has received $30,0000 in funding thanks to the generosity of a family foundation. This one-time grant will help students implement and learn from projects they have developed themselves, instead of programs that send students on already established ventures.

For 12 months, Hirsche—a recent graduate of UBC’s masters program in geological sciences—will be working with the COBAGUAL, a small Bolivian water and sanitation organization, to help a rural community in Eastern Bolivia improve sanitation, access to water and food security. Although Hirsche and COBAGUAL have a broad idea of local needs, their first step is to consult with the community and get to know their social structures, their survival strategies and the resources they already have at their disposal. According to Hirsche, this is not a top-down process. “At the end of the day we’re going to define what it looks like to work with the community.”

At the heart of this process lies the hope to create sustainable change to alleviate poverty. The project is based on a community development model, which empowers people to define and attain their own goals. Enabling individuals and groups to obtain the skills they need enables them to become more self-reliant in the long term and are a large part of the long-term success of the project.

Hirsche and COBAGUAL have been working together since 2006 when Hirsche co-founded the Canadian-Bolivian Clean Water Network. They have already introduced biosand water filters supplying clean drinking water in that community.

While COBAGUAL was spending time in rural villages installing the filters, community members began telling them about other needs, like sanitation, irrigation, and malnutrition. Hirsche and COBAGUAL decided it would be better to involve the community from the early planning stages of the project. “We started to see the value in making the planning process with the communities as participatory as possible,” explains Hirsche. They hypothesized that a participatory process based on mutual respect would ensure the sustainability of the work they would undertake.

Hirsche’s interest in community development stems from his passion for environmental protection. He has wondered if there are ways people can sustain their livelihoods with minimal impact on the ecosystem. He was inspired by the social movements that were spreading across Latin America in countries like Bolivia, where indigenous people were striving to take leadership on these issues. “I started to become really interested in the idea that changes could be made at the community level that could later be scaled up and form the basis of more sustainable ways of living.“

Hirsche is hoping to make a difference, but this is a two-way process. “I also am going to learn a lot from implementing the project. I’m already learning so much through this program.”

On a more personal note, he is interested in the kind of society that fosters happiness. “Being in rural communities that aren’t as tied into the mainstream consumerist economy and values, you start to develop a different perspective about what’s important in life.”