First United believes we need to avoid two common ‘answers’ that have been suggested by some in response to the challenges faced in the Downtown Eastside:

-  The answer to homelessness is housing

-  The way to protect against gentrification is to preserve the neighbourhood exclusively for low-income residents

Our belief is that:

1.  The ‘answer’ to homelessness is not housing.  It is homes (place where one belongs, feels safe and anchors one’s being).

Indeed the factors typically found at the margins of society (homelessness, poverty, addiction and mental illness) are not separate issues to be addressed independently, but are deeply interdependent. Underlying all of those reflections of distress is the common theme of alienation and dislocation: a loss of connection with self, family, friends, society, culture, the earth, one’s spiritual centre.

We need to build off the sense of community that already exists in the DTES and deepen the ability of each individual to reconnect with self, family, friends, society.  The ‘answer’ to homelessness, poverty, addiction and mental illness lies in addressing the immediate and systemic factors that produce alienation and dislocation.

2.  The ‘answer’ to the marginalization of individuals and groups is not to build an exclusive low-income neighbourhood.  We do need to ensure that there is no further displacement of people, heritage, culture, etc. And we do need to first secure the rights, accommodation, ongoing presence and freedom of the vulnerable persons and groups within the neighbourhood. But with those two critical prerequisites, we need to embrace the development of a truly diverse community. A community not of the marginalised but a community without margins. In such a community there should be no one who feels merely tolerated. All should feel genuinely welcomed and celebrated as part of the rich tapestry of diversity.

The way forward demands that we do more than build a physically diverse neighbourhood – in which there is a colourful mix of rich and poor, industry and art, commerce and residences, market and social housing. If we only build the mixed neighbourhood without developing the on-the-ground relationships that are the DNA of community, this area will erode over time – it will either gentrify as the more vulnerable move out or it will revert to being a ghetto as those with more means move away. And the end result either way will be a perpetuation of marginalisation.

First United believes organisations like ourselves need to step up and become engine rooms for community building. This requires:

- Not focusing only on meeting basic needs and providing social services, but building interdependency and mutuality within healthy community.

Not focusing on building community only with those who are presently in the “in” group, but proactively engaging people across the social, economic, religious, political “us-them” divides. Every building we erect and every activity we initiate should ideally include elements that send irresistible invitations to “outsiders” to come and participate. New social housing projects could and should include swimming pools, skate parks, recreational attractions, etc that will draw people from other social circumstances and neighbourhoods.