In the four years Susan Wagner has lived at the Little Mountain housing complex, she’s seen the community shrink from several hundred residents to just 19 families.
Yesterday, Wagner, her remaining neighbours, invited artists and activists gathered at the low-income housing complex near Queen Elizabeth Park to protest the development’s planned demolition through art.
Housing Art-In/tervention participants painted the plywood on the boarded-up windows, many of which depicted faces behind curtains as if people were in the empty buildings.
Wagner said tenants are being pressured to move out and now around 200 homes are vacant in preparation for the construction of condos that won’t start for two to three years.
“These homes have been boarded up to look like they’re uninhabitable,” said Wagner, a mother of two. “But they’re perfectly livable.”
She said it’s been difficult losing all her neighbours, adding that the community feels like a ghost town.
“Once the boards went up, I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach. Do the (boards) not say, ‘vandalize me?’ They were like an attack on those of us who were left.”
“I woke up one morning and there was plywood on my porch. And we’re still living there.”
Linda Shuto, one of the event’s organizers and a member of Community Activists For Little Mountain, said the paintings are meant to show that a vibrant community once lived there, and could live there still.
“The original plan was to rebuild after 2010, and they’re already a year behind,” Shuto said.
NDP homeless critic Jenny Kwan has questioned whether the redevelopment will even go ahead in light of the recent economic crisis.
“No one’s fighting the redevelopment. Of course this site should have more density,” said Shuto.
“In the immediate term these homes should be reopened and used by families who need them until there’s a development plan in place.”
