Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/4/2015 (1971 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

The folks behind the latest trendy apartment building planned for Osborne Village are doing something crazy.

They're earmarking 30 units in the co-op for the poor. That includes a handful of units for teenagers who got a rough start in life, survived the child-welfare system and are ready to live on their own, with the help of Macdonald Youth Services.

That means poor people will live next door to middle-class residents and even the relatively wealthy, the hipsters and retired artists and Village yuppies who will likely live in the Gas Station Arts Centre's proposed theatre and apartment complex at the corner of River Avenue and Osborne Street. MYS, which helps some of the city's most troubled teens, is partnering with the Gas Station to ensure spaces for some of their clients.

Mixing the rich and poor sounds like no big deal. In fact, it's almost never done these days, despite a barrage of buzzwords and feel-good planning policies.

Winnipeg has been talking about housing a lot lately, especially in the midst of federal and provincial budget hype and the recent murders of three Winnipeg men who were homeless, or flirted with life on the street. Meanwhile, hundreds of housing advocates are gathering this week in Winnipeg for the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association's national meeting, which will focus mostly on how to stem the loss of thousands of affordable units whose federal mortgage subsidies are running out.

And, last week, local researchers mapped new child poverty data and found some surprising pockets of need along south Pembina Highway and off St. Anne's Road. To anyone who knows the enclave between St. Anne's and the Seine River, the dark blue poverty patch on the maps was no surprise. It's where a clump of Manitoba Housing townhouses were built several decades ago. The idea then was to knit the poor into middle-class neighbourhoods instead of ghettoizing them downtown, but many now think that was a misguided attempt at social engineering.

But was it? Since then, virtually no housing for low income people has been built outside the inner city. New developments -- Sage Creek, Amber Trails, River Park South -- have no Manitoba Housing units or even many "affordable" ones.

The $17 million in profits the province has made so far from developing Waverley West have been funnelled back into inner city housing. That was the province's sop to urban advocates who thought Waverley West was little more than provincially mandated sprawl. But the sop perpetuated the concentration of the poor in the inner city, and not one affordable unit has yet been built in Waverley West, let alone the kind of rent-geared-to-income units the poor really need.

We're also not doing inclusionary zoning. There's new legislation that lets Winnipeg force or cajole developers into building a certain number of affordable units when a new condo tower or subdivision is proposed. But it hasn't been used yet and there's no telling when it will.

Instead, community groups cobble together funding to build most of the housing, a dozen units here, a four-plex there, their yeoman's work making only a marginal impact on the acute shortage.

Many argue that it makes sense to build housing where the need is, where services already exist for poor people trying to get back on their feet -- job training, food banks, walk-in clinics, parenting classes. Plus, transit peters out the further from downtown you get. It may be impractical, little more than idealism, to suggest folks with social networks around Maryland Street or Euclid Avenue move out to Bridgewater Forrest.

NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- is also part of the problem. It's shocking how often neighbours balk at even the fanciest apartment complex, because of the perception that renters are white-trash party-animals who will harm surrounding property values. If people who can afford $1,200 monthly rents are seen that way, a Manitoba Housing infill is barely worth floating. The stigma is so great that even a smattering of "affordable" units in a new condo building are no-gos for many developers.

That's despite a new planning buzzword heard daily -- "complete communities." Those are neighbourhoods with diversity, with bike paths and transit, where jobs, schools and recreation are close to home. It's not clear poor people are seen as part of complete communities.

As two veterans of Winnipeg's 1960s suburban housing projects said at Tuesday's CHRA gathering, having poor people integrated into wealthier neighbourhoods helps the middle class understand a little better the grind of poverty. It helps poor kids see a future that might include a professional career like the one their friend's mom has. Poor kids also benefit from vibrant, well-funded community clubs with lots of volunteers, from parents able to work the PTA, from a little less crime and many stable places to turn.

That's the idea at the Gas Station Art Centre's proposed housing co-op. Young people out on their own for the first time or poor folks trying to improve their lives will be bolstered by friends and neighbours in their building who will offer a vision for their future.

But it's just 30 units. It's barely a start.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca