Point Douglas Community News
Vol. 8 *  Issue 1 * January / February 2010

Inside this issue

Realizing Renewal in North Point Douglas

Dale Harik is a Community Housing Coordinator with the North End Community Renewal Corporation, a local non-profit organization committed to the economic, social and cultural renewal of Winnipeg’s North End. You can call Dale with questions at 927-2343.

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by Mary and Valerie

We hope all our readers had an enjoyable holiday season, and we send out our wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year.

The Point is starting 2010 with an in-depth look at housing in our community. Historical content, information on current initiatives, and personal stories from residents are all included in this issue. We hope you will find the contributions thought-provoking and that you might be inspired to get involved in some aspect of renewal and revitalization in the Point.

For future issues we are hoping to focus on education and training, the arts in community, family literacy, and community economic development. We welcome your comments and critiques, and we are always looking for more community members to contribute articles, stories, photos, and artwork. Don't be shy, all submissions are acknowledged and appreciated.  ♦

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By Christine Burrows

Sel and I just moved to the house next door. This sounds crazy but it does make sense for reasons of my health. I can live on one floor and avoid stairs. We usually borrow or rent trucks to move house, but this relocation was accomplished in true Inner City style: by shopping cart. I borrowed an attractive red Zellers cart that had been abandoned on a neighbouring street. Slowly we schlepped our worldly goods (junk!) from one house to the other. Larger items required our dolly, a great find at the dump. Wonderful neighbours were ready with help for really large and heavy pieces.

An old house bought “as is” after quite a few years as a rental comes with some surprises. Two days after we took possession, the furnace clearly was not fully functioning. Who to call? Since we have lived in Point Douglas we have been delighted to find that there are amazing resources right in our own community. Northside Automotive (formerly Loewen& Loewen) on Sutherland have become our regular car mechanics, and they have always been honest and creative with our family’s car repairs.

So we decided to look locally for furnace work and called Tradesman Mechanical Services on Main Street. A friendly and efficient workman checked our old furnace and pronounced it repairable, but he suggested that we might want to look at a high efficiency replacement furnace which would come with several rebates. Tradesman removed our old furnace and put in a new one in one day.  They took care to put down thick drop sheets on our floors and were friendly and cheerful despite the fact that our short basement led to a crooked neck and several battered foreheads as men and beams made contact.

While the furnace was being installed we found out that our insurance company had concerns about our four electrical services (the house had been a four-plex some years ago). Tradesman came to the rescue again and put in a new 100 amp board and took away our four old systems.

Next, the insurer (postal code R2W makes them fussy) was concerned about our roof.  November is not the usual month for re-roofing, and most of the roofing companies were not taking orders until the spring. We were again very lucky with a local contractor who took pity on us.  

Eric Dihic from Primal Contracting found a delightful group of roofers who had to strip the two old layers of roof off, re-shingle, put in some air-vents, and remove a sky-light. We were moving in as the workers were stripping the roof and they were so careful and respectful, yelling “customer below!” if they saw me heading in with my red shopping cart. Working on a roof in November is not the greatest job, although it was a very mild November, but the guys were cheerful, polite and friendly all the time. Eric, the owner of Primal, was around to check on the work regularly. He also cheerfully repositioned a gazebo twice to make me happy.

Our next big project is insulation. The basement has none, the attic has 30 to 40 old quilts thrown around--I am guessing an R factor of about 3! Once again I will be using a local workman, but I am married to him!  ♦

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Reno or Demo??		Visible Progress

In response to the "What's Happening" feature in the November issue, a reader e-mailed to confirm that the brick building at Euclid and Hallet is indeed being renovated. As the accompanying photos show, there has been visible progress. A future issue will include an article on this further example of 'Realizing Renewal' in our neighbourhood.  ♦

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By Robert Galston

Well into the 20^th century, North and South Point Douglas were the most densely-populated districts in the city. They were also two of the most socially and economically mixed, with some of the poorest citizens residing a block away from fairly prosperous merchants and doctors who lived in big houses with their families and perhaps a live-in maid. 

A prejudice against density and diversity motivated urban renewal efforts beginning in the 1950’s. The great theorist and activist Jane Jacobs wrote that population density has been associated with crime, poor health, and social dysfunction due to a tendency to confuse it with overcrowding. While density measures the number of persons per square kilometre, crowding looks at persons per residential unit. In Point Douglas, overcrowding has sometimes been a safety and sanitation issue in cheaply planned rooming houses and tenements. 

Jacobs argued that increased density and mixed use buildings benefit a neighborhood by making it viable for small businesses and safer by putting “eyes on the street.” Owning a car is less of a necessity and walking more enjoyable in such areas. 

If there is a concern in Point Douglas about private development cropping up, such as the Youcube condo project at the corner of Heaton and Waterfront Drive, it should not be asking “what can we do to keep for-profit developers out?” but “what can we do to pressure governments to add good affordable options here?” 

Point Douglas and the surrounding inner city have seen more housing lost to decline and poor planning than to gentrification. Housing plans have often demonstrated an inability to see the value in traditional urban density and diversity, and affordable housing opportunities have gone to waste.   

One example was an early 20^th century mixed-use apartment block that stood on the corner of Main and Pritchard and was damaged by fire several years ago. It was eyed for rehabilitation as non-profit housing, similar to projects that have restored old apartment blocks in the West End. The plan fell through, however, and the building was demolished with the reason being that the property did not have enough room for parking spaces. 

Density doesn’t mean high-rise towers. Mixed-use buildings on main streets such as Euclid and Higgins would have storefronts (economic opportunities) built on the ground floor and apartments on the one or two floors upstairs. This is an attractive option, particularly for single people including the “hidden homeless” frequently identified as being the most in need of affordable housing. Triple-deckers, found in Montreal or Chicago, are three-storey houses with an apartment on each floor, which would add density while still conforming to the low-rise character of Point Douglas’ residential streets.  

In the 1990s, when real estate and building costs were at bargain basement levels, it was easy for non-profit housing initiatives to build a single-family house on a single lot. Today, with costs increasing, building affordable housing this way has quickly become, well, unaffordable. Innovative options need to be looked at.  

Historically, Point Douglas provided numerous housing types to meet the needs and budgets of its diverse population. Today, the neighborhood should welcome new housing, both publicly and privately driven, that adds to its density and diversity and makes it a more pleasant place to live.  ♦

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By Shirley Kowalchuk 

A brewing public relations storm swirled prior to a spring 1919 Winnipeg City Council meeting. The issue was whether or not to publicly release a 1918 report on the state of living conditions in downtown Winnipeg, including Point Douglas. “It would be very unwise to publish broadcast some of the things exposed…you have taken a survey of the city in its worst state, and also you have gone over the worst parts of it,” pleaded Mayor Davidson. The city’s chief medical health officer, Dr. A.J. Douglas, courageously proclaimed he would go ahead himself and print the report.

Point Douglas was included in the housing survey, and then as now it reflected the greatest ranges of social and economic diversity. Concern over increased post-war immigration, returning soldiers, and the federal government plan to build post-war houses forced the contentious housing investigations of 1918.  

Lands near the Point were chosen by the Selkirk Settlers in the summer of 1813 for planting and home building. Traditional post and beam structures, like the 1868 Barber House at 99 Euclid, were built until the 1880’s boom saw the construction of stately brick homes for local legends like “merchant prince” James Ashdown. Once the soot-belching 1882 CPR mainline attracted heavy industry to the area and posh residential areas opened in other areas of the city, Point Douglas changed. Great waves of immigrants stepped off at the nearby CPR station, and many area houses were transformed into rooming houses. A few houses resembled hospital-style dormitories. Although relatively early water hook up was available in Point Douglas, for these boarding homes a lone sink or toilet was, for all practical purposes, fairly inaccessible to multiple boarders. 

Communicable disease epidemics struck those living in such crowded conditions, and a hopeful remedy was the 1909 Tenement Bylaw that closed attic rooms, rooms without windows opening to the outside air, rooms too dark for living, and “strong measures for sleeping in the kitchen, although we cannot prevent it” and also specified enforcement of water services for tenants and rat-proofing basement foundations, among other things.  

Multiple-unit dwellings remained plentiful in Point Douglas during the Great Depression, amid a city-wide housing shortage. Post-World War II saw second wave immigrants and others purchasing homes in the area. Earlier CPR-built houses have survived in a gentrified nucleus in South Point Douglas. Some contemporary locals recall that over the years additional family-built structures for rental were constructed on many lots. Today, dense streets of historical homes still retain the quiet mood of the first well-heeled to working class residential district of Winnipeg, with sunburst gables, pillared porches, and stained glass windows under thick canopies of tall trees. Multiple unit dwellings in various states of upkeep also remain.  

The recommendations of the 1918 report paved the way for the modern housing and tenancy bylaws, as well as present day programs of government rent-controlled units and financial incentives for home ownership. The various housing improvement programs which have operated in North Point Douglas in recent decades developed in part as a result of the 1918 public relations storm.  ♦

No reproduction in any form without permission of author, all rights reserved.

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By Jordan Van Sewell

Back in the nineteen hundred and seventies I worked as a brakeman on freight trains in Saskatchewan. We’d roll through towns that still held evidence of the Depression. The cabooses I worked and lived on came from the nineteenth century. Those times are gone.

My closer inspection of these prairie towns revealed a subculture I’d never experienced. It was shed living at its best. Whether it was a farmer whose family had moved him into town or a remittance man whose disgrace elsewhere had brought him to hide out in a small town, the result was the same. They could continue to live independently with dignity.

About the same time in history you could walk through Watrous, Saskatchewan and experience a shtetl you might also have found in prewar Romania. Rows of tiny little houses, most used seasonally, offering everything from a massage to palm reading or tinctures and poultices to heal or to aid a condition.

Winnipeg’s North End had the same thing going on. Immigrants (weren’t we all) would build a shed on their residential lot. When good times rolled in, a ‘proper’ house was built in front and the shed became the back porch, the summer kitchen. For some newcomers the promised prosperity of the new country never materialized and while their neighbours’ homes grew in size, theirs did not. Typically these small shed homes never changed, and there are surviving examples throughout older Winnipeg neighbourhoods as well as most prairie towns.

More recently I’ve witnessed an alternative variety of homes in Mexico. People there build to their own means. It’s good. Separate residences can be built onto existing homes. It could be for a returning or aging family member or to accommodate newlyweds. All of these examples offer a sensibility that coexists within the community, an element that describes and defines a good human condition.

So what about the needs of our community? How can these anecdotal tales pertain to our situation? We certainly don’t want to return to the problems of former rooming house models that we’ve only recently turned around. The ‘market’ has been describing the near-future in which smaller condominiums will be desired--smaller in both square footage and price. This will be welcome and may work, but not right here, right now.

I am proposing a model not that different from what that guy was doing over on Horace Street in St. Boniface and similar to what Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys lives in. Of course a little tin garden shed is inadequate and unfit. Prefab units can be built off-site, trucked in, and hooked up to the grid in existing backyards in our community. There’s no assurance they’d come with the same compassion and responsibility that Bubbles and the Horace Street tenants enjoyed. That is something that society needs to learn.

I understand these models have been called ‘granny shacks’ or something similar. A project like this would offer a number of things--first, a residence for those currently without homes or in a transitional state and those who don’t want to go to a large, impersonal facility that is perhaps dangerous and inhumane. Second, the owner/host/landlord/sponsor has both a charge they are responsible for and a modest supplementary income from their new tenant. These relationships strengthen and diversify our community.

We need to turn some things around here. We’ve got to involve the marginalized and include them in our future. Society should be inclusive. Let’s preserve something that will remind us we’re social animals. Hey, let’s call it preservation. That’s what I’m talking about.  ♦

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Are your energy and water bills too high? Is your house cold and drafty? Are you low income? If your answer is yes to all three of these questions, you may qualify for a program offered by BUILD, a non-profit community-based training organization tht has helped to lower utility bills in hundreeds of inner-city dwellings since 2006. Thanks to funding from the Government of Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro, and the Government of Canada's EcoENERGY program, BUILD's retrofit services are provided at no cost to you. Call NECRC (927-2341) or BUILD at 943-5981 or go to www.WarmUpWinnipeg.ca to get more information on how to apply. ♦

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By Craig Ross 

On November 23^rd the Winnipeg edition of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s ‘At Home’ project was officially launched at Thunderbird House. The purpose of the project (which is also running in Vancouver, Toronto, Moncton, and Montreal) is to test an increasingly popular model: putting homeless people with mental health issues into housing first, instead of making sobriety or treatment a condition of housing. 

Aptly named Housing First, it’s a philosophy that reflects the idea that a person can’t begin to address all their life issues (addictions, family breakdown, etc.) until they have the basic stability that housing provides. 

According to Betty Edel, Executive Director of Mount Carmel Clinic: “How can you say to someone who is homeless, Well, we'll give you a place (to live) if you sober up. Well, a lot of times that's their coping mechanism because of all the fear and all the strife on the streets.” 

The ‘At Home’ project has three components: researchers, who will monitor whether the project is meeting its goals; housing providers, including private landlords who agree to set aside units for study participants; and service providers, agencies who will support participants in their new housing. 

Three agencies will be acting as service providers to the project: Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, and Mount Carmel Clinic. Mount Carmel will be working with the clients identified as the most at-risk. This means that the new Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team—11 members, including a psychiatrist, a peer (someone with lived experience), and specialists in family relationships, justice, and substance abuse—will be working very closely with participants, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

To get more information, don’t hesitate to contact Corrine, ACT Team Leader, at 943-6801 or corrine@mountcarmel.ca.  

Finally, if you know someone who might be eligible to participate in this project, go to http://www.mountcarmel.ca/programs/community/ACT.php and consult the referral package (near the bottom of the page).  ♦

Craig Ross is Director of Community Services at Mount Carmel Clinic.

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By Heather Geddie

Buying my little house on Granville Street changed my life. I went from being a lifelong renter to being a first-time home owner – with all the expense and responsibility that entails. Much as I loved my little house, it was less than homey. The wind blew in through the windows and doors, there was no insulation, the yard was a jungle of weeds, the porch was rotten and the roof sagged. I couldn’t afford to fix anything, and like so many other folks I lived with it. In the first six months my 40-year-old furnace died. I couldn’t afford to replace it and thought I’d have to give up my house.  

Then I heard about the Winnipeg Housing & Homelessness Initiative (WHHI) program created to stop inner-city houses from being boarded up and unused. The grant paid for a new, high-efficiency furnace. Right after that, I had all my windows replaced through a Winnipeg Hydro loan that went onto my hydro bill each month. I was on a roll!

An apartment-dwelling friend with a talent for home renovations offered to move in and work some home reno magic. With the help of many good friends and neighbours and a couple of well-timed Fix-Up grants, my sorry little house was turned into a palace. Many of my neighbours, home owners and renters alike, were taking renewed pride in the appearance of their homes and yards as well.

My house was one of many that were transformed thanks to the hard work and dedication of Nancy Barbour and others who were the driving force behind the Fix-Up grants and our community’s five-year housing plan. Nancy passed away before her work was finished, but her legacy has continued, with movement on several fronts concerning housing.

The PDRC Housing Committee is set to renew our housing plan. Through our community survey we identified houses in poor condition, both rentals and owner-occupied. We’re looking at ways to help home owners keep their homes in good repair.

The Power Line is working hard to see that livability bylaws are enforced and to ensure that landlords maintain their properties to acceptable standards.  

There is discussion among some community members of forming an organization to purchase and renovate boarded houses for low and middle income tenants.  Nancy would be proud of the work our community is doing. This article is dedicated to her memory.  ♦

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You asked for it -  Now it’s here!

By Elaine Bishop 

The Point Douglas Residents Committee, in its 2008 community survey, asked what services you, the community, wanted to see at the North Point Douglas Women’s Centre.  The most asked-for service was for the Centre to bring counseling services into North Point Douglas. 

Now it is here! In partnership with the Recovery of Hope and with funding from Neighbourhoods Alive! we are launching a program that will provide counseling at the Centre two days a week for the first year and then three days a week in the second year. 

New faces at the Women’s Centre: (l) Sheri Nepinak, Neighbourhood Resources Coordinator; (r) Elizabeth Reimer Plett, counsellor.

We welcome Elizabeth Reimer Plett to the Centre on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1-7 pm.  Appointments can be booked by calling Recovery of Hope at 477-4673.  Drop-in counseling will be available on Wednesdays between 1 and 4 on a first-come-first-served basis.  We ask that the ‘Women Only’ hours between 1 and 3 pm be respected. 

Elizabeth is willing to work with individuals, families or couples.  All sessions are free, and of course, all information is completely confidential! Elizabeth will be providing occasional workshops at the Women’s Centre on some of the topics women want to explore, like dealing with anger or responding to the death of someone you love.   

Elizabeth has lived and worked in Nicaragua as well as rural Manitoba. She has been working with Recovery of Hope for ten years.

Now Elizabeth is excited to come to know North Point Douglas. She joined us at Norquay Community Centre in December as we celebrated the Community Spirit Award given to the community by Manitoba Hydro for the float in the Santa Claus parade. 

Whether you need one session or more, this counseling is now available to everyone in The Point at the Women’s Centre. Please see the back page if you do not know where we are or how to contact us. Feel free to call or drop-in to see Elizabeth any Wednesday or Thursday in the New Year!  ♦

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By Valerie Himkowski

This issue’s focus on housing brings back many memories of my childhood home in North Point Douglas.

The house I grew up in consisted of one-bedroom suites, single rooms for boarders, and the two-bedroom suite I lived in with my extended family. All shared a front and back door with some large common areas including the central hallway, bathing facilities and a large room in the basement with a wood burning stove.

This basement provided another housing model. The space was divided by walls that were about six feet high to create small curtained-off cubicles with enough room for a bed and a side table, with clothes hanging from pegs on the wall. This provided accommodations for six men, most of whom had jobs which took them out of town regularly.

Including my family, this house on Barber Street was home for up to 20 people at a time. My grandmother even did all the laundry. Every two weeks, come laundry day, we would gather up all the bedding and replace it with fresh sheets and pillow cases, then have to wash and dry the used ones.  Just imagine the large cupboards that held all those sheets and blankets, and the time it took to get all that work done.

This kind of housing was normal for me when I was young. The people who shared my home sometimes stayed but mostly came and went. Life, death, babies, and family problems all took place under one roof to people I knew but were not related to.  ♦

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