I don’t attend a lot of conferences — particularly at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. But, after some grumbling about the ungodly hour, I did make an exception and took in some of the Housing Central Conference held last weekend in Richmond.
Two people I’m particularly close to, my partner and my sister, are both in the business of helping provide affordable housing, so I tagged along.
(It also occurred to me that I could use the event as fodder for this column.)
Selina Robinson, B.C. Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, was the main speaker of the morning plenary. I was curious to hear what she had to say. My sister speaks well of Robinson, whom she’s worked with in the past as both are trained family therapists. That in itself I find curious and somewhat hopeful — family therapist turned housing minister.
I was also inspired by the opportunity to hear about what’s going right in the sector, to focus on solutions. We’ve been deluged (and the Richmond News is as responsible as others) with fretful stories about land speculation, prohibitive real estate prices and the destruction of neighbourhoods — not to mention the gaping tax loopholes that allow it all to happen.
While that’s all true, so is the fact some people are working hard to create alternatives, to give people options, to make adequate and affordable housing a right, not a privilege.
Well, indeed, the focus of Robinson’s speech, and those of the conference hosts, was about hope and possibility. In particular, it was about the hope generated from coming together, breaking down silos and leveraging resources.
Even the name Housing Central has significance. For decades, BC Non-profit Housing Association, Cooperative Housing Federation of BC and Aboriginal Housing Management Association, have worked in their respective areas. Just over a year ago, they came together to form Housing Central with the belief in the strength in numbers (with 1,300 attending the conference, this is the largest housing conference in Canada).
But the connections extend well beyond housing advocates. As Johann Hari (also a conference speaker) said in our Wednesday story, you can’t separate housing from drug addiction. As Diane Sugars said in our story about child welfare, you can’t separate housing from domestic violence. And as KPU professor John Rose said in today’s paper, you can’t separate housing from economic policies that foster land speculation.
But no one said it better than Shane Koyczan who, in a remarkably powerful spoken word performance, showed how you can’t separate housing from life.
Koyczan is best known for his performance at the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, and was the after-lunch “entertainment.”
I can’t even begin to describe the impact of his 35-minute monologue, but I will admit I was fishing around for Kleenex more than once.
Suffice it to say, housing, health and happiness are one and leave it to the artist to kick us in the head with that fact — in a most inspiring way.
