It’s a cold day in Vancouver at 8 C and 46 Fahrenheit but it is walkable in sufficient comfort. I venture out with my cotton mock turtleneck, cotton striped hoodie and fleece vest. New wool socks trap the heat I generate in the runners who have just one more season left to them due to rebuilt old orthotics. It radiates upwards under the polyester pants and I ambulate through the streets. The bearable chill and early darkness make space for reflection.
Heavy winds cleared loose leaves from the trees and brushed them from the roads. Now, the rainy hours each of the days and the nights this past week have cast new ones onto the pavement making my route a bit slippery and messy. Most Vancouverites just let the leaves lie and smush into the pavement. Leaves build up around the wheels of the walker I am gripping for security. They slow my progress requiring more effort and grit to press on, or simply stop me entirely from rolling home on the concrete.
Uncertainty accompanies me on my journey as I continue to cling to my walker a full 5 months after my hip replacement surgery. Some days my gate is less stable due to new diagnoses and old vertigo issues and the physio tells me I am lagging in building my leg strength.. so I rely on my ‘Mercedes’ to provide some certainty when I step out of our building and plan to cover greater distances on errands.
Uncertainty also occupies my mind.
The apartment building I share with about 115 other seniors, is the object of redevelopers’ lusting for new projects and massive profits. Eventually. Sooner now than when I first moved from downtown. In each case, the West End and now this seniors’ building in Kitsilano, I lived in the same place the longest ever, in my life. Ten and a half years downtown and the same, so far, in the neighbourhood where Greenpeace was founded. Where hippies roamed the streets and residents lived within walking distance to life on the beach.
Soon enough, our building will also have one of those massive blue and white identical zoning alerts. Low-rise apartments or sagging big homes fated to be replaced with 22 and 29-story housing. It is said that 20% must be set aside for below-market housing. Yet, what could that mean? It may be that $50 a month might qualify for below-market rent.
When is the question, not if. Not at this point. I joined VoteTeam, a political party striving to make an impact at Vancouver’s City Hall by reminding all stakeholders from residents to investors of other options. I sought more info as I struggled with the one-sided siren song of the sorely needed increased density to house us all.
But at what cost? What were the options for better planning that factor in the needs of the community? What possibility was there to preserve wellness for humans and the natural environment? Growth grounded in goodness, not just for the sake of growth.
I toddle alongside St. Augustine’s church. Its sprawling size matches the massive and diverse parish district it served. My windows looked onto the front door in both its steps and ramp as well as its circular arrival driveway.
I pondered the ticking timeline for making decisions to declutter my home to make myself more portable. I faced the possible decline in my options, my legs less strong to carry me to a new place as I faced the next decade of life and residence location as well as my dwindling finances in one of the world’s most expensive cities..due in great measure to planning for profit and not for the shifting workforce that focused on real estate development and the service economy.
It seems this is a universal experience now in other geographies.
Written and not overly edited by Helena Kaufman, a senior person and writer, whose aim is to write so she doesn’t stall due to fear and uncertainty from sharing the extraordinary ordinary of surviving in the city.
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