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For example, says Yan, “What is the state of seniors and where are they concentrated? If you take a look at Chinatown and Gastown and the Downtown Eastside, where 71 per cent of seniors are living in low-income categories, you can ask, ‘How does this inform the fight for 105 Keefer,'” referring to the contentious rezoning application for a Chinatown site this past summer. The desire to build a 12-storey condo drew fiery opposition from advocates for seniors housing and was eventually rejected. There is currently a revised application filed at City Hall that doesn’t require rezoning and doesn’t include social housing units.

Yan said that, considering his information, we can ask, “What is reasonable to build? More generally, how do we deploy services or build infrastructure or plan for transit? It’s critical to understand where low-income people live … so we can understand if jobs are inaccessible. That kind of dynamic can lead to the crystallizing of poverty.”

Details in Yan’s study about low-income pockets in Surrey and Coquitlam fit with other research about poverty moving into suburban communities, said Penny Gurstein, a professor at the University of B.C.’s School of Community and Regional Planning who specializes in socio-cultural aspects of affordable housing, especially for marginalized groups.

“Everything is much more expensive, but incomes have not risen,” says Gurstein. “All of these things are contributing to more pronounced poverty and inequality. There is this assumption that poverty is concentrated in one area or certain areas, (but) it’s actually very dispersed. This puts pressure on communities not used to dealing with these kinds of issues.”

Yan asks: “Are these the beginnings of the bifurcation in Vancouver between the rich and poor? And how it’s on its way to being an exception in the world of real estate appreciation, but not an exception when it comes to levels of income equality in other cities in the world?

“This city has always been expensive, but the absurdities of the mismatch are growing.”

jlee-young@postmedia.com