Will Vancouver meet Olympic promise of helping the poor?

VANCOUVER, B.C. — When the Winter Olympics kick off next month, visitors will see the snow-capped mountains, sparkling coastline and international culture that elevated this city to the ranks of the most livable cities on Earth.

But local activists are planning to showcase another side of Vancouver: chronic homelessness, open drug dealing, mental illness and prostitution that mar the neighborhood only blocks from some Olympic venues.

A few days before the official Games begin, advocates for the poor will stage a "Poverty Olympics," aiming to push the city's social problems into the global spotlight. The parody, which claims to "reflect the unique local flavor of the host city," has a cockroach, a bedbug and a rat as mascots.

"In the Downtown Eastside, the street scene isn't so pretty," said longtime community activist Jean Swanson, referring to the neighborhood that a U.N. official called one of the worst slums of a wealthy city. "We have the same HIV rate as Botswana, and we're a developed country."

An element of Vancouver's Olympic bid was a four-page statement of social goals pledging the Games would be used to benefit the inner city.

Organizers promised to employ neighborhood residents, build affordable housing, prevent existing residents from being displaced and protect civil liberties.

Those promises helped win passage in 2003 of a citywide vote for approval of Vancouver's Olympic bid. An Olympics-related housing committee later said eliminating homelessness was to be the lasting legacy of the Games.

Supporters argue that the Games have brought tangible improvements to the Downtown Eastside: building renovations, construction jobs, temporary shelters for the homeless and new low-income housing.

Yet, many critics say the neighborhood's problems have worsened and that the $6 billion Olympics-related spending spree has yielded scant social benefits for the poor.

The number of homeless people more than doubled from 2002 to 2008, and those living on the street nearly quadrupled, according to a regional report.

Some low-income housing — in the form of cheap, single-room occupancy hotels — has been lost to new condos and other private development driven by pre-Olympics property speculation and lack of available land elsewhere.

Low-income housing

Even though the government moved to buy up properties to preserve low-income housing, it has not kept pace with conversions to pricier developments, according to Jenny Kwan, a provincial legislator who represents the area.

The Olympic Village built for athletes was to include 250 units of affordable housing, but massive overruns nearly doubled the expected costs to about $600,000 per unit. So the fate of those apartments after the Games remains unclear.

"If we do not keep those 250 units, we've broken our promise to the people of Vancouver and the world," said Jim Green, a former City Council member who was hired to help the troubled development.

The Impact on Communities Coalition, a community group, has become increasingly critical of the Games.

"We've been going through the issues a long time, but the Olympics exacerbate and accelerate them," said Am Johal, the group's chairman. "When you bring in large-scale events like this, it's like having the economy on steroids."

But provincial legislator Mary McNeil, a former nonprofit executive who was appointed minister of state for the Olympics, said the Games simply are "an easy target to get on right now. I don't believe it's justified."

McNeil said federal, provincial and local government agencies are collaborating to build more than 2,500 low-income-housing units. The province also has acquired 24 of Vancouver's decrepit hotels and is spending $57 million to renovate and preserve them for low-income tenants.

One of the biggest projects has been redevelopment of the iconic Woodward's department store, which went bankrupt in 1993, into a mix of housing and commercial, retail and arts spaces.

Green, who led its transformation, grappled with a central question: how to attract new residents and businesses while keeping it affordable for people already there.

The new city-owned building, which opened in December, contains 200 units designed for low-income housing, and 536 market-priced condos that help subsidize them.

Woodward's proves that the new mixed model can work, Green said.

"We had 500 units of market housing in the poorest community in Canada, the heroin, AIDS and TB capital of the industrial world, and they sold out in eight hours," he said.

Drugs, mental illness

Just outside the historic Carnegie Library building, now a community center known as the Downtown Eastside's living room, the complexity of the neighborhood's problems are on full display.

Visitors approaching the front door pass through a gantlet of people peddling drugs. Across the street, North America's first legal injection site provides addicts with sterile syringes, supervision and access to treatment and counseling. An estimated 4,700 intravenous drug users live in the Downtown Eastside, according to Vancouver Coastal Health. It's estimated that 40 percent of drug addicts in the neighborhood are mentally ill.

The surrounding blocks are filled with aging hotels and storefronts with barred windows. A steady stream of people push belongings down the sidewalks in shopping carts, part of the estimated 2,700 homeless in the city. But steps by the government to clean up the streets in recent years have met resistance.

In 2008, police issued citations to hundreds of homeless and low-income people for infractions such as jaywalking. That triggered angry protests at City Hall.

The new Assistance to Shelter Act grants police authority to force homeless people into shelters during extreme weather. While the government said its intent was to prevent people sleeping on the street from freezing to death or burning themselves as they try to keep warm, critics saw it as a violation of civil liberties and dubbed it the "Kidnap the Homeless Act."

The issue isn't limited to Vancouver. The Vancouver Sun reported that homeless people in Whistler, where most skiing events will be held, were being relocated to a shelter 36 miles away in Squamish, as security officials closed off parking lots and other spaces in the village to prepare for the Games.

No hiding troubles

McNeil said nothing is being done to hide the area's problems — or the protests — from the world.

"This is Canada," she said. "People are allowed to give their impressions and their feelings. That's what makes us so cool."

She said she believes the Olympics can help stem poverty over time by boosting tourism and investment.

"That is going to help our economy get back on track more than anything else," she said. "We should use that opportunity to get our economy strong so we have the money to help with housing and health and the Downtown Eastside."

Two blocks from the community center, a line forms every morning outside United We Can, where local "binners" collect cans and other recyclables from streets and garbage bins, pile them into shopping carts and turn them in for cash.

United We Can won a $50,000 grant from the city to provide services during the Games, allowing it to hire about 60 people at $10 an hour to collect recyclables from 200 locations. Combined with its collections from downtown hotels and restaurants, United We Can expects to double the amount of business it usually does this time of year.

United We Can's founder, Ken Lyotier, a former Dumpster diver turned community leader, was supportive of the Olympics bid and helped draft the commitments to the inner city.

He isn't expecting miracles, but he hopes the city's efforts can offer a model for future Olympics to strive for social and environmental goals as much as athletic goals.

"How we come to grips with these social issues, which are not unique to Vancouver, is important to try and do," he said.

As for Vancouver, Lyotier added, "how far we've moved in terms of measuring up to that bar will be up to historians to decide."

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com