British Columbia ‘No kids’ ban worsens lot of Vancouver's one-parent families BY NOREEN SHANAHAN Vancouver watches as women are forced to pack up their children, vacate their homes, and look for another place to live. In their search, however, they often find land- lords standing on the other side of an ‘Adult Only’ sign, barring their entrance. The city’s current housing crisis trans- lates into greater discrimination against women and children. Considered undesira- ble tenants, families increasingly have no other option than to cram into a hotel room, most often in Vancouver’s down- town eastside. “Women tell us they’re forced into hot- els, forced into raising kids in one stinking little room,” says Karen Gallagher of the Vancouver Housing Registry. “Tt’s a landlord’s market these days, and they get to ‘skim the cream’ as far as who theyll rent to. With scores of people on waiting lists, tenants have to jump through hoops just to be considered.” And women trailing kids behind them don’t often make it through these hoops. Margo MacGuire lives in a hotel with her two teenage children. Since arriving from Toronto a year ago, she has already watched one east end home be demolished and another burn to the ground due to bad wiring. She’s now searching for a third. “Last week I phoned 49 places from the paper, and was allowed to see only seven of them. They never say it’s rented until after I say I have kids. . .If my kids were smaller I'd hide then, and wouldn’t say anything ’til after we move in and then watch them try to kick us out.” The Ministry of Social Services and Housing (MSSH) first tried to book them into a women’s shelter, she said, but shelter waiting lists closed off this option. Instead, MacGuire considers herself privileged to be living outside the downtown eastside (although she uses the area’s services) in a South Granville hotel. Another woman frequently seen at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre clutching the day’s ‘suites to rent’ ads is Tracy (not her real name), the mother of four girls aged nine, 10, 11 and 12. Tracy moved her family into the area early last summer, after being forced out of their decrepit Mount Pleasant suite, where the landlord continually refused to do necessary repairs. In her search for a new home, she most commonly hears landlords say “you have too many children.” “I know other women with kids who are waiting five months to find a home, living in shelters or hotels or with relatives; sharing anything with a roof over their heads. You have no choice when you have children, as long as it’s a roof.” According to Kim Nightingale, coordi- nator of the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, women are moving into the area at a disturbing rate. “We get calls from transition houses, DERA (Downtown Eastside Residents Association), St. James, MSSH, all saying ‘we have women with kids who can’t find housing’ and we say ‘sure, send them all down.’ (The Women’s Centre doesn’t house these families, but welcomes them into the area.) “And these single mothers aren’t stupid; they know this is a lousy area to raise kids, and they wouldn’t do it if they had any other choice.” The women’s and children’s physical safety is a particular concern in the com- munity. According to Betty MacPhee at Crabtree Corner Daycare, assaults on 2 e Pacific Tribune, November 20, 1989 women in the area are increasing at an alarming rate. “Minor assaults aren’t reported, but a growing number of aggra- vated assaults — when ambulances are called — are being documented.” Hotel security is frighteningly faulty, she said, leaving the family vulnerable to attack. Two women were recently raped in their rooms. “Hotel room doors can be opened so easily, which also leave the children at risk,” says McPhee. ‘‘What often happens is on (welfare) cheque day someone gets into the room, takes a look around to see if anything new was bought, and then takes all the family’s possessions. “This leaves the family homeless and on the street. We try to get them into transition shelters, but they’re already overbooked.” Many believe raising children in a hotel is a last option, but according to Nightingale, hotels are also turning single mothers away, in effect implementing their own ‘adult only’ restriction. According to John Shayler of the Tenants Rights Coalition, a recent trend by management in cheaper hotels is to raise the rent. This not only deters the most econom- ically desperate from living there, but it also effectively wipes out any legal tenant protec- tions. “Recent amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act cover hotel residents, provid- ing they’re ‘permanent’ (have no other address) and don’t pay over $450 per month.” Nightingale says one downtown eastside hotel recently shot its’ monthly rate up from $450 to $700. These restrictions leave women with even |! fewer housing choices, and dreams of ‘security’ becomes little more than fantasy. Discrimination in rental housing is, unfortunately, as old as rental housing itself. Nor is it the first time Vancouver has been confronted with homelessness. The con- temporary twist, however — leaving more families homeless — is compounded by many factors. Secondary suite closures: Single mothers are traditionally given rental market dregs partly because it’s all they can afford, but also because the old maxim “children are to be seen and not heard” applies in housing. Many landlords also require they be pretty well hidden away — in basements, or above garages — so other tenants aren’t “bothered” by them. Vancouver’s present vacancy rate of 0.4 per cent translates into 282 suites available at any one time. Shortly after this statistic was released by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Cor- poration (CMHC), Vancouver city council threatened closure of 280 secondary suites, housing a large number of single mothers on welfare. A total of 26,000 secondary suites are threatened. Demolitions: Since January, over a thou- sand people in Vancouver have lost their homes to the wrecking ball — most of them women, many of them with children. Roneen Marcoux, a researcher hired by the city who compiled this data, was shocked at the extent of affordable housing being destroyed and the effect it was having on women she interviewed. “Single women with children were turned away time and time again,” says.Marcoux. “One woman tried to find a place for her- self, her teenaged daughter and her mother -but the landlords would reject her, saying ‘and what about your husband?’ “They equate single parent families with total poverty; there was a great deal of eco- Poorer children live in increasing shoddy accommodations as housing crunch worsens. & nomic discrimination happening.” Decline of Rental Subsidies: Subsidized social housing units have declined to the lowest levels in this decade, falling from 1,405 in 1985 to 425 in 1988, according to David Hulchanski at the Centre for Human Settlements. ‘ Furthermore, B.C. Housing Manage- ment regulations deny subsidy to women under 45 years. Gail Meredith, director at the downtown eastside’s Mavis McMullen House said their building — containing 34 units — fought to convince B.C. Housing to include younger women in their man- date. ‘““We managed to change it to age 35, arguing that living in the area ages women. Renovations, condo-style: With the mighty swipe of the bulldozer, affordable ‘homes’ are being replaced by luxury ‘con- dos’. Throughout the city, women and children are being evicted to make way for “extensive renovations.” One landlord in a west end building con- taining 86 units, and between 70 and 100 children, has sent almost everyone an evic- tion notice. In two months, renovations begin and predictions are that within a year manage- ment will demand out-of-reach rents, and children will not be allowed to live there. The west end is already out of reach for most parents. In fact, this building is one of few remaining where children are allowed. After a determined search, Sarah Mar- chant and her husband gave up on the west end. Although they fit the bill of ‘family’ which many landlords require, there simply weren’t any buildings which allow children. “We must have looked at 50 places when finally a woman let us in and showed us around some really nice suites,” says Mar- chant. “Then she asked us, ‘Is this your child?’ I said yes, and she said ‘we don’t take kids here.’ “Tt was almost as though she couldn’t believe we had the nerve the come and look at the place, with a kid.” It’s illegal to evict a woman simply because she’s a mother. Instead, landlords are ‘cleaning up their tenancies’ by harass- ing women out. And although the Residen- tial Tenancy Act protects people from harassment, this protection is_ rarely enforced. Karen Fletcher has lived with her four children, for the past seven years, in a two bedroom basement suite. A couple of months ago, she called the landlord in to repair the toilet. In September, he finally got the plumbing bill. “He said that either I pay half the bill ($250) orhe’ll raise my rent $200 a month,” says Fletcher. This is clear harassment, she says, intended to get her out. Her children are the only ones left renting, not only in the build- ing, but on that entire Mount Pleasant block. Age discrimination allowed: Just as a developer’s dream of ‘adult only’ buildings translates into discrimination against women and children, so too does this particular discrimination translate into age preference. Under the B.C. Human Rights Act, age discrimination in tenancies is allowed, although it is specifically prohibited in all other sections of the Act. Section 5 (b) reads: ‘‘No person shall dis- criminate ... because of the race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religion, marital status, physical or mental disability or sex of that person or class of persons, or of any other person or class of persons.” “The reason for the exclusion in tenan- cies,” says Suzi Kilgour of the Tenants Rights Coalition, “boils down to feudal property rights of man (sic); that a man has the right to dictate what happens to his property...and the belief that people with . children will ruin his property more than people without children.” — However, she adds, this age discrimina- tion contradicts protections in Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Free- doms, which applies equally to children as members of Canadian society. Legal steps necessary to end child dis- crimination in B.C. require a Charter chal- lenge, says Carolyn McCool, a lawyer with. Gastown Legal Services. And the legal argument would be made on the basis of ‘sex discrimination’ as well as ‘age discrimi- nation,’ since the impact of this form of housing discrimination is invariably on sin-. gle, low-income women. “We need to find a client, a woman, who’s looking for a place to live and gets turned away at the door; who is facing actual discrimination,” says McCool. Why aren’t women coming forward to fight this extremely crucial legal challenge? To answer this question, one need only think back to when you were last threatened with eviction; when you last searched des- perately for a home, a roof over your child- ren’s heads. . .. When confronted with so basic and essential a need, one has scant energy left to fight for anything more. Once, and if, the legal battle is won, will it truly be able to protect women and their children when a landlord greets “more desirable” people standing in line waiting to view the suite? Noreen Shanahan is a staff member of the Tenants Rights Action Centre in Vancouver. A longer version of this article first appeared in Kinesis.