To the editor:
Re: “Developing Story: Vancouver's first cohousing complex breaks ground,” June 6.
The groundbreaking of Vancouver Cedar Cottage Cohousing’s development might have been good day for Ericka Stephens-Rennie, spokesperson for Vancouver Cedar Cottage Cohousing, but it was a bad day for our neighbhourhood.
Despite Brian Jackson, the City of Vancouver’s manager of planning and development statement that “he worked with city planners to find creative ways to address community concerns,” none of the major issues about having a 31-unit, four-story, in-facing condominium development dumped into the middle of a single-family neighbourhood have been addressed.
Vision councillor Kerry Jang gave a hint of his political agenda when he said cohousing makes good use of land. Would his philosophy see all single-family neighbourhoods converted to multiple-residential use? An apartment tower on every corner would make even better use of the land if that’s his vision for the city.
Ironically, another one of Coun. Jang’s assertions, that one of the biggest problems we have in our city is loneliness, isn’t borne out in my neighbourhood. It’s a testament that community is alive and functioning and doesn’t have to be mandated.
Throughout the entire rezoning process, bitterly and overwhelming opposed by the neighbours, the Cedar Cottage cohousing people, the city planners and the politicians never did get it and they still don’t.
How can damaging the quality of life of others to create an ideological lifestyle of your own be a good thing?
Ericka’s statement of being “excited to be taking this step together as a community, with the neighbourhood and the city” was a positive and naive spin on this embattled project. The few neighbours I talked to were hardly excited, more like resigned.
But you don’t have to agree with your neighbours or even like them that much. What works in our neighbourhood is patience, tolerance, and a sense of humanity. No doubt this will be extended to the co-housing people, as it has been to others, once they move in.
How forgiving we’ll be on November 15th is another matter.
Rod Raglin,
Vancouver
