Province

Name: Tania Tompson

Business: Rover’s Makeovers Mobile Pet Grooming, Vancouver

Contact: 778-834-3649; www.roversmakeovers.com

Number of employees: One

Time in business: Four years

What is your business? I have a mobile pet-grooming business across the North Shore, Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. I provide all services from a simple bath and blow dry, nail trimming and ear cleaning to full pet styling. I bring all my own equipment and set up in my clients’ homes, then clean up everything. I even bring my own vacuum cleaner.

How did you get started? I was working at a doggie daycare and the owner had a mobile pet-grooming service come to bathe his dogs. After a couple of years, I called and asked the groomer if she would train me. I worked in the van for five years, then the business closed. When I was calling clients to tell them the service was closing, they begged me not to go away — it’s kind of like having a hairdresser you like decide to leave town.

Are the dogs happy to see you? Some of them run, but most of them are torn — they want to hang out with me, get the pats and attention, but as soon as I start heading for the bathroom, they head for the back door. But they know the routine — they recognize the different steps and they get really happy when we’re almost done. They are much more relaxed being in their own home.

What do you like best? I get to spend my time with dogs, and the people I spend time with are dog people.

Hardest learned lesson? Pace yourself. I spent years working 10- and 12-hour days trying to help everyone I could, but you can’t keep it up. It becomes work and your passion for it goes out the window.

Future plans? Just keeping going. The good thing about this business is, there’s always another dirty dog.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Get good medical insurance before you go south

Paul Luke
Province

The greens loved your putting that morning. In the evening, you sipped tea and listened to classic Meat Puppets on your iPod as the Arizona twilight swallowed the desert.

You’d been having one of the best days of your life until your chest started to hurt.

Funny how an emergency quadruple bypass operation can ruin a snowbird’s day.

Funny how a $250,000 bypass procedure at a U.S. hospital can ruin an underinsured snowbird’s finances.

Canadians stoked with an absurdly ebullient loonie will likely stay longer and spend more as their annual migration to U.S. and Mexican sunspots begins, Vancouver author Doug Gray says.

Gray, an inveterate traveller himself, has no problem with sybaritic whims.

But a big-leisure lifestyle carries big responsibilities, says Gray, who has just released a fourth, updated edition of his book The Canadian Snowbird Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Living Part-time in the USA & Mexico (John Wiley & Sons, $26.99).

Snowbirders who want to keep dreams from becoming nightmares will pay close attention to customs and immigration laws, tax issues, estate planning and money management before taking flight, Gray says.

Arranging adequate insurance — medical, car and home — should be a top priority, he says in an interview.

“People face a huge risk in this area,” Gray says. “Without supplemental coverage for out-of-country medical emergencies, you could be financially devastated.”

At best, provincial health plans will cover only a small chunk of the bills if you get hurt or sick while you’re abroad.

B.C.’s medical plan, for example, will pay a cap of $75 a day for a hospital stay, Gray says. But the daily cost for a stay in a U.S. intensive-care unit can be $10,000 US.

A quadruple bypass could ding you a quarter of a million dollars, he says.

Frost fowl should comparison-shop for out-of-country coverage, looking at features and benefits.

They must also do their best to ensure any claims they do make will be accepted. That means thoroughly explaining pre-existing medical conditions. Changes to your condition or medications must be submitted in writing before leaving Canada, Gray says.

“Not fully disclosing pre-existing ailments or changes to medical condition are two big reasons why claims are denied,” Gray says.

Car insurance is another area where snowbirds may stumble.

Gray urges Canadians heading to the litigation-minded U.S. to boost their third-party liability coverage to between $5 million and $10 million.

“If you have, say, $1 million or $2 million in coverage, that may not cut it if you’re responsible for an accident and there’s a judgment against you,” he warns.

Getting covered for accidents with

uninsured or underinsured motorists is also critical, Gray says.

If a person in either category causes an accident, then your insurance covers a claim up to the limit of your own third-party

liability coverage.

Snowbirding, despite its growing appeal to bewrinkled boomers, is not for everybody. Canadians wintering abroad may be

surprised by the cultural isolation they experience, Gray warns.

Those curious about the lifestyle should take it step-by-step, starting by renting for about a month, Gray advises in his book.

If the experience meets your expectations, you should then do a risk-reward analysis to ensure out-of-country ownership keeps your financial security intact.

For those who plan sensibly, snowbirding can enhance the quality of their retirement. The strong loonie, coupled with the lower cost of living in the U.S. or Mexico, means snowbirds may come out ahead financially, Gray says.

You can buy a used mobile home in a park that meets all your needs for about $5,000 to $8,000 at the end of snowbird season in April. Rents for mobile-home/RV pads start at $250 a month.

Amortize that over 10 years and it starts getting affordable, he says.

“Even taking into account the cost of your out-of-country emergency medical insurance, you could be breaking even or paying just a bit more than if you stayed at home in Canada all winter,” Gray writes.

– – –

FIELD GUIDE TO SNOWBIRDS

– Doug Gray, author of The Canadian Snowbird Guide, defines a snowbird as a person who spends more than a month each year in a sunny southern location.

– Western Canadian fowl prefer California and Arizona; for Central and Atlantic Canadians, it’s Florida and Texas.

– About two-thirds of Canada’s snowbirds will head south over the next three or four weeks, Gray says. The remaining third will take flight in early January.

Both groups typically return before the end of April.

– Numbers are on the rise. Last year, 517,000 Canadians spent at least 30 nights in the U.S., up from 415,600 in 2003, Statistics Canada says.

– Mexico is heating up as a snowbird destination. About 700,000 Americans and Canadians live in Mexico year-round or part-time, according to the Mexico Tourism Board.

Popular retirement havens for Canadian and American birds are Guadalajara, Lake Chapala, San Miguel de Allende, Cuernavaca, Oaxaca and Guanajuato.

– An updated edition of Gray’s Snowbird Guide hits bookstores around the end of the month but can be ordered online now.

– More information on out-of-country issues is available at snowbird.ca.

— Paul Luke

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Scott Simpson
Sun

Startling new research from the Geological Survey of Canada shows that Vancouver International Airport and other large facilities along the lower reaches of the Fraser River delta are falling below sea level much faster than previously imagined.

The airport could find itself more than 130 centimetres below the high-tide mark in the Strait of Georgia by the end of the century — and research indicates that low-lying land along the Fraser as far upstream as Maple Ridge and Langley are also sinking.

Studies this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict a sea-level rise of about 16 centimetres by the end of the century due to global warming — water expands as it gets warmer.

The difference for communities along the Fraser delta — and a handful of coastal venues in Canada — is that they sit on soft land that is sinking under its own weight.

When you couple rising seas with sinking land, you get a double whammy in terms of future threats to urban development as the ocean’s high tides creep farther inland.

The data shows that the weight of a building is the critical factor — single-family homes aren’t facing the same kind of impacts, according to Stephane Mazzotti, a Sidney-based researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada.

In a telephone interview, Mazzotti said the Fraser delta is “subsiding” at a “background rate” of one to two millimetres per year — compounding a global average sea level rise of 1.6 millimetres per year, or 16 centimetres by 2100.

But Mazzotti said the average number belies greater impacts in some areas of the delta that bear a heavy load of human activity — even where methods such as preloading construction sites with large amounts of earth are expected to settle them prior to construction.

“Some areas are experiencing faster subsidence — up to five millimetres per year and higher — due in part to heavy construction loads,” he said.

Mazzotti and his research group base their findings on several measurement techniques including laser surveys, global positioning measurements and radar satellite images.

They’ve singled out the airport as a site of greatest impact because it’s big and easy to pick out on a radar image, and have similar findings for BC Ferries’ Tsawwassen terminal and the Roberts Bank coal port.

Mazzotti said the group has results for “most buildings in Richmond and Delta” — but hasn’t identified them individually.

The subsidence phenomenon is restricted to low-lying areas along the lower Fraser that are young in geological terms — less than 10,000 years of age — and rely on dikes for protection.

They’re sinking because they are cut off from the nourishing loads of sand and gravel that the Fraser used to deposit on them each year before the river’s edges were bordered with dikes.

Areas with older geology, in the Fraser uplands, aren’t affected by subsidence, Mazzotti said.

“In an untouched delta the surface of the delta is going down but at the same time there are floods that will bring in more sediment so that the average level is kept about the same [in relation to] sea level,” he said.

“Once you put some dikes around it’s still compacting but you don’t provide the extra sediments so that the actual surface is going down.”

He said the group is planning to submit its work for publication in a scientific journal, and has already discussed its findings with Delta, Richmond and Metro Vancouver.

Municipal officials have known for many decades that the Fraser delta is sinking — the Geological Survey released a report in 1973 saying that Richmond was “slowly sinking into the sea,” according to Vancouver Sun archives.

That report suggested the island city was subsiding at the rate of about 30 centimetres per century — and did not foresee rising oceans or local impacts such as a faster rate of sinking at the airport.

The next phase of the survey’s new project will be to examine the behaviour of dikes along the Fraser and the Strait of Georgia foreshore to determine if they are also sinking relative to sea level.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Bob Ransford
Sun

Public transit infrastructure should follow dense urban growth. Public transit infrastructure should be in place to attract more dense growth.

Density or urban infill growth and transit infrastructure need to be planned simultaneously and are dependent on each other.

Which of the foregoing three statements is correct when it comes to managing growth in a rapidly growing urban region?

Hopefully, common sense would tell you that we should plan density, or urban infill growth, at the same time we are planning the expansion of our integrated transit network in Metro Vancouver.

Unfortunately, there’s a shortage of common sense when it comes to our governing institutions and their decision-makers.

Mayor Sam Sullivan says that today, transit ridership in the Broadway corridor tops 60,000 people a day. He says this justifies the need to extend the Millennium SkyTrain system from Clark Drive all the way west to UBC.

I recall a similar argument being made when politicians were attempting to justify a $1-billion-plus expenditure on the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line a few years ago.

That project, now topping $2 billion as it approaches completion, runs through a continuous corridor of low-to medium-density development in Vancouver. There are a number of nodes south of the downtown peninsula where significant growth could occur along the Cambie Street-Canada Line corridor, but “could” is the operative word. Whether or not growth does occur along the Cambie corridor is up to Mayor Sullivan and Vancouver city council.

One small developer has been working for at least two years trying to get approval to build six fee-simple townhomes on a single-family lot that fronts directly on Cambie, not far from one of the Canada Line stations.

Not only will it be a model development for the kind of row-housing developments that don’t yet exist in this city, it is a form of modest density in an area that should welcome even more density.

Plans have been drafted for some modest new infill development around one of the more important Canada Line stations — Oakridge — at 41st Avenue. There are four other stations south of the density that will occur near the Olympic Village station on the southeast corner of False Creek. Density needs to occur around each of these stations, just as it is being planned around at least three of Richmond‘s four Canada Line stations.

We can’t afford to build a $2-billion transit system and have it serve an under-built corridor. The Canada Line was supposed to serve a corridor with existing density. It was also supposed to attract new density. Many would argue that the density it served was primarily commercial and institutional density, and not residential density. If the Oakridge plan is any indicator of the type of density increases we can expect to see around the other Canada Line stations, the whole project has failed.

There are already two transit corridors that run east-west through the eastern part of the city where growth has yet to live up to the potential that rapid transit was meant to spur. One line has been in place for more than two decades.

The other, about a decade. There are at least five transit stations along these two lines where the predominant form of residential development within walking distance of the station is still single-family residential.

What is an appropriate density along these transit lines and around their stations? Look at how Burnaby has planned growth around most of the 11 stations in that municipality. Infill development around the Patterson, Metrotown and Edmonds stations has now matured and is a good example of the kind of medium- to high-density development that should be developed around transit stations.

Similar growth is underway around at least three or four other SkyTrain stations in Burnaby.

the potential for infill growth around its SkyTrain stations. That city has the potential of developing an entire new downtown around the Surrey Central station.

It seems as though decision-makers and developers in Surrey are beginning to realize that potential.

That leaves Vancouver. Before the mayor talks a lot more about extending the rapid transit system along Broadway, perhaps he can demonstrate what the city is prepared to accommodate in terms of new growth around Vancouver‘s existing SkyTrain stations.

– – –

Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with CounterPoint Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. E-mail: [email protected]

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Sun

Privacy experts often advise people that, in order to avoid having their identities stolen, they must take control and be extremely careful about how and to whom they reveal personal information.

That’s good advice, but if you keep a bank account, or buy anything from clothing to health care services, you will inevitably have to give up some control, to divulge certain personal information.

That means the businesses that possess your personal information should also be subject to stringent regulations and should take all possible measures to prevent your information from falling into the wrong hands.

And to be sure, most businesses do take their responsibilities seriously, and are subject to various legislation, from the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to British Columbia‘s Personal Information Protection Act.

Yet security breaches do occur: Several high-profile incidents — involving Winners, HomeSense and CIBC’s Talvest Mutual Funds — have occurred in recent months.

When such breaches happen, the primary concern is whether the organizations that suffer the breach should be required to notify individuals who might be affected. While more than half of U.S. states require mandatory disclosure in such cases, and include financial penalties for failure to do so, the only Canadian legislation with a similar provision is Ontario‘s Personal Health Information Protection Act.

Consequently, Industry Canada, which is conducting a review of PIPEDA, has launched public consultations. Industry Canada itself has advocated a requirement to disclose certain breaches of privacy, but only those where there is “a high risk of significant harm to individuals or organizations.”

Many privacy experts and consumer advocates consider this problematic because it could set the bar for disclosure too low. Further, it could give organizations considerable discretion to decide when to disclose breaches, which is worrying given that organizations will naturally be reluctant to publicize the fact that their security measures have failed.

The consequence of this position, warn privacy experts, is that individuals might never know that they’re at risk of identity theft despite taking considerable precautions to protect themselves.

On the other hand, some privacy experts, including B.C. Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis, have argued that there is no evidence that the strict mandatory disclosure requirements in U.S. legislation have proven to be cost-effective in reducing the risk of identity theft.

There are, after all, a variety of models that could be followed. Legislation could require disclosure whenever an unauthorized person has accessed databases containing personal information, or only if there is reason to believe the unauthorized person has actually acquired personal information, or only if there is a significant threat of identity theft.

Similarly, there are several models concerning to whom disclosure ought to be made. Some experts suggest that organizations ought to disclose all breaches to their clients, while others suggest that organizations should notify a provincial or federal privacy commissioner if a relatively insignificant breach occurs, with the privacy commissioner determining if individuals ought to be informed.

Clearly, this is an issue about which there are many different views. But just as clearly, virtually everyone seems to agree on a few basic points, points that should be included in any amendment to privacy legislation.

First, it’s essential that Canadian privacy legislation include some provisions for mandatory disclosure of security breaches. Second, the requirements must be backed up by the ability to levy significant financial penalties against the businesses that fail to disclose the information.

Third, whatever threshold is chosen for disclosure, it must at least be an objective standard, so that organizations aren’t given so much discretion that they can effectively exempt themselves from the requirements.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Don’t expect to see the new convention centre on postcards any time soon

Miro Cernetig
Sun

It’s often said God was Vancouver‘s architect-in-chief, creating the sea, the snowcapped mountains and backdrop of deep, green rain forest that make this city stunning. But good gosh, isn’t it time the mere mortals on the ground started pulling their weight, too?

I raise this suggestion after spending the last few years watching, with great expectation, the rise of our latest addition to the waterfront: the expanded Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre.

There’s been a raging debate over the fact the near $1-billion price tag of this new edifice far exceeds planners’ — and taxpayers’ — expectations. But less talked about is that this “signature building” falls far short of another expectation: great architecture.

To be fair, it’s no outright disaster. It seems well-engineered, something you’d expect given the cost overrun. And as a building designed to attract conventions and offer visitors an impressive view of the water and mountains once they get here, this mostly glass structure, with its six-acre roof garden, will do the trick.

But don’t expect anyone to be sticking this building on postcards or Architectural Digest to be putting it on the cover.

From a design perspective, the convention centre is esthetically underwhelming, more a triumph of engineering than architecture. The word mediocre comes up repeatedly whenever I ask people who watch these sort of things in the city.

“It’s not a terrible building,” says Gordon Price, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. “But it’s not a great building, either. We could and should do better.”

Aside from its roof garden, expected to be covered in West Coast flora, and its promise to be the most environmentally sensitive convention centre yet, the structure cuts, well, a conventional profile on the skyline.

In fact, at this stage it seems to fall short of two of the key principles city planners set out in 2003 in a Vancouver Sun article: The building’s profile wasn’t supposed to compete with the sails of the Pan Pacific, one of the city’s true architectural icons, and it wasn’t supposed to look like a big box on the waterfront.

Well, walk around the site and see for yourself what’s going up on the shores of Coal Harbour.

The glass skin that is now being put over the skeleton of concrete and steel girders is clear, thankfully. But this is definitely a massive box we’re getting, albeit one with a few graceful curves engineered in.

It is also very high — in fact it seems monolithic in the context of the buildings around it — and it does detract from the majesty of the Pan Pacific’s white sails. As for that cool roof-top garden we hear so much about, it’s going to be inaccessible from the ground and most of it will be difficult to see unless you happen to be flying over in a float plane or are gazing down from your hotel room’s window.

There’s not much you can do to change a building that’s mostly up and is hopelessly overbudget, of course. But there’s a lesson to be learned here in the future development of the city: Put architects back in control of how our major buildings, both public and private, will look.

We need the engineers, planners and politicians to keep the costs in line and keep things real, but don’t let them water down the great designs, as so often happens behind the scenes.

The reason is that great architecture doesn’t just make a city a nice place to live — it can build your economy.

It can be risky, as Montrealers who spent a generation paying off Olympic Stadium found out, if you don’t do it right. But it can also put you on the map.

Consider Bilbao, Spain. Once a nondescript town that seemed to be sliding into oblivion, its city leaders decided to build a branch of the Guggenheim Museum and gave a cutting-edge architect the job: Canadian-born Frank Gehry.

He came up with the swirling titanium museum that cost about $120 million. It has transformed Bilbao into a world destination and revived the city’s economy. I wonder what he would have done with a billion dollars?

The point here isn’t for Vancouver to copy Bilbao. But it is an encouragement to start thinking their way when it comes to how this city’s skyline will look in the years to come.

In the run-up to the Olympics and beyond, Vancouver has some big development decisions to make that could put us on the cutting edge of architecture.

Large sections of the waterfront are up for development. The city seems to have opened the door for taller buildings, even skyscrapers. And the provincial and city governments are going to be grappling with the construction of a new stadium on the waterfront, the building of a new art gallery and perhaps even the creation of a concert hall, something all great cities need.

So, who do we want to do the dreaming up of how these buildings will look?

A committee or an architect? Let’s hope it’s the latter.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Calling all shy, awkward guys: You can score by just being you — just drop the ‘hey baby’

Cheryl Chan
Province

It isn’t easy to be single in Vancouver.

Plenty of beautiful, smart, attractive women say Vancouver is a hard place to meet men: They’re cute, but sadly, mute.

Ronald Lee is determined to change all that — one guy at a time.

“Some of these guys don’t know how to communicate with women, how to approach them,” he says. “It’s a learned skill. No one is born knowing this automatically.”

With his stocky build, casually mussed hair, and a round, friendly face, Lee doesn’t look like a Casanova, Don Juan or even a George Clooney.

But clad in a navy blue hoodie at a Yaletown coffee shop on a Thursday afternoon, he exudes confidence.

Lee, 32, is head coach and founder of Man Meets Woman, a Vancouver company that teaches shy, socially awkward men the finer points of attraction and seduction.

To seduce means “to win over, attract, entice, and charm.” But in today’s hook-up dating society, seduction can be a dirty word.

“There’s a stereotype of a shady, manipulative type of guy,” says Lee.

And that’s clearly not his style.

Lee’s coaching philosophy is “about honesty and authenticity, just being yourself.”

He doesn’t teach a magic line or sure-fire trick. “It’s a lot of hard work,” he says. “It’s about improving yourself as a person.”

Lee’s background is in kinesiology and communications at SFU. He has no formal credentials in psychology and counselling but bases his lessons on popular psychology, scientific studies and first-hand experience.

“I’m very flirtatious and very social,” he says. “It’s easy for me to talk to people.” (He met his girlfriend of 14 months at a wedding, where he chatted her up in the hallway).

He got his start about a decade ago when he joined the online subculture of pick-up artists dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of the opposite sex — sometimes with dubious tactics.

It is a world with its own lingo, where an AFC (Average Frustrated Chump) learns how to become a PUA or Pick-Up Artist, as chronicled in Neil Strauss’ book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists.

It has spawned legendary lotharios, MPUAs or Master Pick-Up Artists, who go by pseudonyms like Juggler, Mystery or Twotimer, and tour the international circuit teaching men how to score and snag beautiful women.

Lee points out that he has distanced himself from that scene. “Some of the tactics are low-level and, frankly, just wrong.”

He’s ditching the canned pick-up lines, stock stories and choreographed come-ons in favour of a more natural, direct method.

“Be social, or learn how to be social,” he says. “You could say I’m teaching guys basic social skills.”

To train his students, he uses lectures, videos, role-playing and “in the field” experiences at the mall or during a night on the town to practise what they’ve learned in the classroom.

So far, about 250 men from the Lower Mainland, Seattle, Portland and cities across Canada have taken his courses. Costs range from $60 for a 90-minute How to Flirt course to $1,400 for a three-day “foundation” course.

Man Meets Woman will be holding a one-day workshop at the downtown YWCA today — billed as “An Audience with Zan! The World’s Greatest Seducer!”

Over the phone from Montreal airport, Zan Perrion points out that the nickname came from a reporter.

“I wouldn’t call myself that,” he says. “I’m just a guy interested in a dialogue.”

In seduction terminology, the 43-year old Vancouver-based coach is a “rake” — someone who loves and appreciates women.

He teaches men the secrets of attraction, but his real fans, he says, are the women themselves.

“Men talk about the notion that they’re not sure how to react in the dating world, and what their role is supposed to be,” he says.

“And women say to me everywhere, ‘Where are the real men who don’t apologize for being a real man?'”

Perrion says men should state their intentions clearly and approach women without what he calls “the beer shield.”

“Women are craving men who don’t dial themselves down and who are not afraid to be our true selves,” he says.

After travelling the world giving seminars in cities such as Cape Town, Panama City, Frankfurt and San Francisco, he agrees that his hometown is a big challenge for singles of both sexes.

“In other cities . . . people really mingle,” says Perrion. “Here, we go out in little groups, we sit in little groups, mingle in our group and then go home. There’s no spirit of celebration.”

Perhaps that’s why business is booming.

On Nov. 30, Perrion will hold a three-day intensive workshop on the Way of Attraction at the Sutton Place Hotel.

Lee has a whole slew of courses scheduled for the month, and will be launching a new coaching company for women next week called Happy Sexy You.

For women to meet guys, he says, they need to “let go of the fear of rejection, make it easier on the poor guy and give him some signals.”

But back to men. Here is what I learned from these two seduction masters on how best to approach potential girlfriends:

Say “Hello,” not “Hey, baby.” Be confident but respectful. Be direct but not presumptuous. Be sincere but not a wuss.

Be alpha-male masculine, but not caveman-like.

Be yourself, just with better communication skills.

RONALD LEE SUGGESTS THESE FIVE OPENING LINES

1. Ask for their opinion. “Can I ask you for a quick female perspective?”

2. If you find them attractive, say so. “You’re really cute/beautiful.”

3. “You have a very interesting energy. What”s your thing?”

4. “You have a beautiful smile.”

5. Say something spontaneous and relevant to the situation, such as “I love your top,” or “How’s your coffee?”

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Province picks non-profits for role in Downtown Eastside

Frances Bula
Sun

Eleven Downtown Eastside hotels will be turned over to non-profit social agencies to run as of Dec. 1, in a move the province and the agencies say will mean more and better rooms for the homeless and hardest to house.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman is set to announce today the 10 non-profit agencies that have been chosen to run them.

A wide variety of agencies will be named, including one that specializes in native housing, another that deals with women’s housing and two that handle housing specifically for the mentally ill. One agency will operate two hotels.

run other buildings targeted to particular groups of people who are the most vulnerable to homelessness, will gradually add new tenants who are part of their target group to the existing mix.

Two hotels, the Park and the Marble Arch, will be added to the stock of “dry” housing that City Centre Care Society offers for people trying to live without drugs and alcohol after they’ve come out of a detox program.

Most of the others are not like that, instead providing safe and supportive homes to women, aboriginals with HIV, the mentally ill, the addicted or a mix of any of those categories.

Coleman said having non-profit operators, instead of the private ones who ran them before the province bought the hotels last February, means the hotels will be run by people “who have a record of helping people” and who will work to connect their tenants with other kinds of support in the neighbourhood.

For Janice Abbott, the director of Atira Women’s Resource Society, allowing non-profits to run the hotels will make an immediate difference for people living on the street or in precarious situations.

“It will mean that women down here will be far less likely to be evicted. And they’ll be far less likely to be assaulted, raped or harmed in their homes, which means they’re far less likely to leave,” said Abbott, whose group has been given the 43-room Rice Block at Hastings and Hawks to manage.

Atira already runs two buildings in the Downtown Eastside for women and has a waiting list of 400 women for the 36 rooms at Bridge Housing, so the possibility of having more rooms to offer is welcome, she said.

All current tenants in the 11 hotels are being guaranteed they will allowed to stay, so the non-profit groups will only rent rooms to the group they are targeting when vacancies occur.

BC Housing is planning to provide enough money so each operator has at least one person on shift at all times — which operators say is the minimum staffing needed just to keep a lid on difficult situations — and possibly more.

The province bought 10 of the hotels from private owners early this year, in a secret massive two-month buying campaign that no one knew about until Coleman announced it in March.

The city of Vancouver also bought a hotel, the Hells Angels-owned Drake Hotel, later in the year and that is included in the announcement.

Some of the agencies getting hotels to run already have large portfolios, like the Lookout Emergency Aid Society, while others are small. The City Centre Care Society is getting the 145-room Marble Arch and the 56-room Park Hotel to run, which will double the number of rooms it manages.

In the past, critics have said too much low-income housing is concentrated in the Downtown Eastside and the neighbourhood has become a self-perpetuating system of poverty agencies that are more interested in building their empires than solving problems. Coleman rejected that characterization. “The non-profits selected here have a pretty strong track record. They’re groups that have shown they can be successful. I would never characterize them as empire-builders.”

And, he said, the new housing doesn’t concentrate any more housing in the area. It just puts it in the hands of better managers, who can make it work better as a form of transitional housing while the province works to build new social housing throughout the region for the groups of people — mentally ill, drug addicted or both — who tend to end up homeless.

“This allows us to stabilize the housing and give us some stuff now.”

Several housing projects are now under construction in Vancouver, including 200 units that will be part of the Woodward’s complex, a building at 55 West Hastings, and a residence that will be part of the luxury Hermitage project on Richards near Robson.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Francis Bula
Sun

Vancouver is about to see a radical new experiment in low-cost housing — the 21st-century version of residential hotels and rooming houses.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman is announcing today — along with who will run the older hotels the province bought in March — a new project for the Downtown Eastside that will consist of 120 rooms each between 200 and 250 square feet.

That’s far smaller than the 350 square feet now allowed by city bylaws, but it’s bigger than the 100 square feet of many of the older hotel rooms called SROs (single-room occupancy) in Vancouver.

It’s just a pilot project for now.

“But I think we’ll do more. We believe they’ll work,” said Coleman. “If you can house three people in the square footage that usually goes to one, we’ve housed two more people.”

The head of the agency that’s been chosen to manage that new project, which will be at 337 West Pender, says it’s not the kind of housing that is meant for people to live in for years, although perhaps some might choose to.

“But it is the size of a really good hotel room and we see it as a stepping stone up from an SRO,” said Darrell Burnham, the executive director of Coast Foundation, which focuses on housing, education and support for the mentally ill.

Burnham said the rooms, each with their own bathroom, will be a dramatic improvement over where many people are living now. “For long-term housing, it’s too small. For transitional housing, it will be quite nice.”

In the past, many poor people lived in rooming houses and hotel rooms throughout North America, but that form of housing was gradually eroded as cities tore them down in slum-clearance projects or condemned them for safety violations. Changes in city building codes made it impossible to build new ones.

San Diego experimented two decades ago with “new” residential hotels and built several designed by a prominent local architect.

They attracted a lot of praise, but very few were built after the early 1990s, after downtown businesses and residents complained they were attracting too many undesirables.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Don Henley: ‘We are a band that knows how to bide its time, and how to wait,’ he says

Ray Waddell
Province

“I’ve been biding time with crows and sparrows while peacocks prance and strut upon the stage,”‘ Don Henley sings on “Waiting in the Weeds,” one of several powerful set pieces from the Eagles’ new Long Road out of Eden, the band’s first studio album since 1979.

The line is pretty descriptive of the Eagles, Henley believes. “We are a band that knows how to bide its time, and how to wait,” he says. “We’ve just been sort of waiting for some of this bad music to die down, for certain trends to go away, so we can get out there on the dance floor again.”

Henley takes Billboard through the making of Eden, due out Tuesday exclusively at Wal-Mart stores.

Can you talk about how the songwriting and recording processes have changed?

The songwriting process hasn’t really changed that much. The thing that has changed somewhat is the recording process, and that’s because of technology. We’ve recorded a few songs here and there since the turn of the century, but we haven’t done a whole album, and the changes in the technology are amazing.

There is a lot of social commentary on this record, but there is also a focus on personal relationships and the human condition, as well.

We’ve always had love songs and we’ve always had social commentary. I think we’ve gotten a little bit better at both ends of the spectrum. In fact, I think our love songs have matured a little bit and the social commentary has matured, as well, and gotten maybe a little bolder. But, it’s an Eagles album, it’s all over the map, both musically and subject-wise. I guess there are more love songs on it than anything else. The last two songs on the record in particular are both messages from Glenn (Frey) and I to our children.

Those are more about “big-picture love” than “I love you tonight.”

It’s not just a boy/girl thing. We both have young children. We are both trying really hard to be good parents. That’s one reason it took so long to make an album, because we are so busy trying to be good parents.

There’s a question in the song “Do Something” that kind of struck me as, in many ways, central to the theme of this album: “How did we get on this road we are travelling?”

“Do Something“‘ is an interesting song because it starts out like a love song, but then it takes on larger implications. And that line that you pointed out could pertain to a relationship between a man and a woman or it could be a statement about the country as a whole.

Is this an optimistic album?

I think it’s basically an optimistic album, with the possible exception of “Long Road Out of Eden.” Of course, that’s about the war, and it’s also about the human condition. The point of the song is (that) we may think we are civilized, but we have a way to go yet.

But I think the point of the whole album is summed up on the last song that Glenn wrote with Jack Tempchin, “Your World Now.” The crux of the whole thing for me is those two lines: “Be part of something good, leave something good behind.” If there was one message to this album that I want to impart, that would be it.

There’s another line that hit home for me on “Business as Usual”: “I thought that I would be above it all by now, in some country garden in the shade” and, yet, here you are with a new record.

That’s right. Here I am, just turned 60. I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled and delighted. None of us ever thought it would go on this long. But we are a determined bunch of guys. We take our time, we are not afraid of the passage of time, necessarily, and we’ve been sitting one out for a long time. That is kind of what “Waiting in the Weeds” implies. Again, on the surface that’s a love song, but it’s also about this band. We’ve just been sort of waiting for some of this bad music to die down, for certain trends to go away, so that we can get out there on the dance floor again.

“Long Road out of Eden” has an interesting line: “Weaving down the American highway, through the litter and the wreckage and the cultural junk.” Is that what we are doing now?

I think so. I was originally going to write “weaving down the information highway” because I get on my computer every day and there is so much crap on the Internet. In the end I decided that it wouldn’t make a lot of sense with the rest of the song just to suddenly go over and start talking about computers and the Internet. So I changed it back to American highway just to make it broader in scope. I think with the words “cultural junk” I got my point across. I think we’ve cornered the market on cultural junk, pretty much.

You guys have been playing together since 1994. Why a new album now?

We were never a band that was able to record and write and tour at the same. When you go on tour at this age there is a lot of recovery time involved.

Plus, as I’ve said before, we all have young children, our priorities are different. Not that this album and our music isn’t important, but my kids are more important to me than anything, and that’s where I put most of my energy these days.

There are some people who seem to think that this is some sort of comeback, or we’ve been away, but, if I might say so, we’ve been breaking records all over the world since ’94 and we’ve been touring quite a bit. It just took us a while to get on a roll again, to get into writing mode and learning how to work with each other again in a studio.

This is still very much a band effort. There is co-writing and there is a lot of intermingling of vocals, a lot of harmonies.

At the end of the day, we agonized for two or three years how we were going to make an album that was going to be modern and cool and cutting edge, and finally we said, “To hell with it, we are just going to be the Eagles. We are just going to do what we do.”

EAGLES

Long Road Out of Eden (Eagles Recording Co.)

How is it possible to live up to 28 years of expectations?

In short, Long Road Out of Eden doesn’t, nor does the double disc completely tarnish the group’s legacy.

It’s pleasant, slick, and safe — like a bunch of millionaires hanging out on a sunny California day.

It also borders on hokey — like a bunch of millionaires reminiscing about their loves, lives and lamenting the current state of the world.

Yet Long Road Out of Eden still manages to draw listeners in, thanks to several strong numbers and at least one sparkling gem, “Waiting in the Weeds,” resplendent with heavenly harmonies, mandolins, pianos and lyrics about second chances.

“I Don’t Want To Hear Anymore,” written by non-Eagle Paul Carrack, is a low point.

plucks, and Timothy B. Schmit’s syrupy vocals, it sounds more like a naive boy-band ballad than a song performed by worldly men in their 50s and 60s.

Joe Walsh and his raw, Ozzy-like vocals counter the sap with “Last Good Time In Town” and “Guilty of the Crime.” Not only are they two of the most soulful tracks, they’re two of the more offbeat numbers.

Editing is obviously not a concept the Eagles are familiar with — Long Road out of Eden rambles on for 20 songs and 90 minutes.

Perhaps the Eagles felt the need to overcompensate for making fans wait 28 years, but as is the case with most double discs, this one would be much better as a shorter single album. D+

— Sandra Sperounes, CNS

© The Vancouver Province 2007