Good Places to Live
  • Paperback ISBN: 9781552664148
  • Paperback Price: $19.95 CAD
  • Publication Date: Feb 2011
  • Rights: World
  • Pages: 160

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Good Places to Live

Poverty and Public Housing in Canada

Jim Silver

Public housing projects are stigmatized and stereotyped as bad places to live, as havens of poverty, illegal activity and violence. In many cities they are being bulldozed, ostensibly for these reasons but also because the land on which they are located has become so valuable. In Good Places to Live, Jim Silver argues that the problems with which it is so often associated are not inherent to public housing but are the result of structural inequalities and neoliberal government policies. This book urges readers to reconsider the fate of public housing, arguing that urban poverty — what Silver calls spatially concentrated racialized poverty — is not solved by razing public housing. On the contrary, public housing projects rebuilt from within, based on communities’ strengths and supported by meaningful public investment could create vibrant and healthy neighbourhoods while maintaining much-needed low-income housing. Considering four public housing projects, in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax and Winnipeg, Silver contends that public housing projects can be good places to live — if the political will exists. 

 

Contents

 Good Places to Live • Thinking About Poverty and Public Housing Problems • “It’s Prime Land, and Why Would They Leave That to Poor People?” Vancouver’s Little Mountain • “Because It’s Not About Creating New Housing!” Toronto’s Regent Park • “We’re Not Going Nowhere; They’re Gonna Have a Huge Fight” Uniacke Square in North End Halifax • “Rebuilding from Within” Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park • Building Good Places to Live • References 

About the Author

Professor Silver’s research interests are in inner-city, poverty-related and community development issues. His most recent book is In Their Own Voices: Urban Aboriginal Community Development. Among other books, he is the co-author of Building a Better World: An Introduction to Trade Unionism in Canada, a revised, second edition of which will appear in 2008; and editor of Solutions that Work: Fighting Poverty in Winnipeg. He is co-editor of Doing Community Economic Development, scheduled for release in 2007. Some other recent publications include the following monographs, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba and available for free download from their website: Unearthing Resistance: Aboriginal Women in the Lord Selkirk Park Housing Developments; Safety and Security Issues in Winnipeg’s Inner City Communities: Bridging the Community-Police Divide (co-authored with Elizabeth Comack); North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Public Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects; and Gentrification in West Broadway? Contested Space in a Winnipeg Inner City Neighbourhood.

Professor Silver did an M.A. in Political Science at Carleton University, and completed a Ph.D. in Politics at Sussex University in 1981. He started teaching on a full-time basis at the UW in 1982. He was the recipient of the UW’s Robson Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1985, the UW’s Atchison Award for Community Service and the Joe Zuken Citizen Activist Award in 1997, and is the 2007 recipient of the UW’s Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research. 

Professor Silver is a Professor and Co-Director of the UW’s new Urban and Inner-City Studies program.

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Reviews

If You Rebuild It... Public Housing Can Be So Much More

 When public housing projects seem to become a social problem instead of a solution, Jim Silver argues that maybe everyone would be better off it they put the wrecking ball to bed, and consider an alternative: “rebuilding from within.”

In Good Places to Live: Poverty and Public Housing in Canada, Silver shows that residents working together to rebuild their community, is an innovative and proven concept.

”The rebuilding-from-within strategy starts from the belief that if we can create opportunities for people [in the projects] then some people will take advantage of those opportunities,” the University of Winnipeg professor explains.

There are no tricks here, no sleight of hand, just commitment and hard work. Silver volunteers with the North End Community Renewal Corporation (NECRC), and works side-by-side with community workers, students, and a lot of courageous people from Winnipeg’s Lord Slekirk Park housing project. Together they have been working on their neighbourhood rebuilding process despite a lack of ongoing support.

Silver says the focus is twofold; to provide different kinds of educational opportunities and to create jobs. 

”We already have an adult learning centre that offers a mature Grade 12 and a literacy program that prepares people for entering the adult program.”

For phase two, the group is on the cusp of building a childcare centre, an initiative that should create jobs for about 20 workers from the neighbourhood. Hiring local is another goal of the project.

Silver believe that acquiring new skill sets while obtaining job readinss and work experience in the safety of your own bakyard is the solution for preparing for potential outside employment.

Although Silver is most closely involved in Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park project, he also studied and reported on similar conditions in Little Mountain Housing in Vancouver (bulldozed in 2009 and 2010), Regent Park in Toronto, and Uniacke Square in Halifax. Unfortunately, these three communities were built on what has become prime gentrification property and are susceptible to “redevelopment,” or being taken over by higher-income residents from whom profits can be made.

In the book, Silver explains how urban poverty–which is spatially and racially concentrated–and the political ideology of neo-liberalism (with its penchant for tax cuts and consequent lowered government revenues and reduced social spending) helped  create fertile ground for the level of poverty found in the four public housing projects in the study.

”The culture in Canda has been gradually heading in what I would call a mean-spirited direction,” he says.

But Silver is optimistic that if he continues with the research and writing then the information will get out there and persuade some people that there are solutions. 

”And if only we invest in them,” he says, “we could make a serious dent in this problem.”–Jim Mullett, Prairie Books NOW, Summer 2011

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