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Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair

I remember being 13 and reading the Hamilton Spectator while sitting on the living room floor of my grandmother's Rosedale house after a family gathering. It was likely Thanksgiving, because I was glued to the coverage of the 2003 municipal election, scheduled for November 10th. A few weeks earlier, I had done some research on the candidates and boldly informed my parents that, when casting a ballot for Ward 8 councillor, they should vote for Peter Martin, who ran an appliance company on the mountain. I have no idea what inspired me to support Martin. His campaign wasn’t heavy on ideas, with the only notable thing coming up in Spec coverage of the west Mountain council race was his declaration that student houses around Mohawk were lowering people’s property values.1 I don’t know, I was a weird kid.

But, on the floor that evening, reading through the Spec coverage of the campaign, I decided that another candidate deserved a shot at representing the west Mountain on the second ever term of the new city of Hamilton's council. “I've changed my mind,” I told them, “you should vote for Terry Whitehead instead.” He had political experience with people from all levels and the three major parties, had an energetic campaign, and told The Spec that “we need some creativity at city hall.”2 It just seemed right.

I can't be blamed for his election. I don’t even know how my parents voted and, even if they did cast ballots for him, Whitehead beat former CHCH reporter Jamie West by about 300. But still, major lapse in judgement on my part.

Over the next 19 years, Whitehead would become one of council’s most unpleasant and unhinged members. The COVID-19 Pandemic seemed to accelerate an already rapid decline in his working relationship with his colleagues and the community. In July 2020, Whitehead sent this email that quickly became the talk of the town:

But I don’t want to talk about Terry. I want to look at the first sentence of that email. Or, more accurately, what Terry was trying to say.

The hard right has an obsession with San Francisco. You’ve seen it in Terry’s weird email. You’ve seen it in Jason Farr’s anti-Cameron Facebook screed.

You’ve seen it in the most inhumane Reddit comments on r/Hamilton.

Where are people getting this idea that San Francisco is some kind of dystopic hell?

There’s long been a fascination on the part of the radical right with California and the Bay Area. The city has long been seen as a centre of America’s (and, by extension, Canada’s) counterculture. The liberal tradition in San Francisco began in the 1950s with beatniks and poets flocking to a city in transition. They were followed in the 1960s by hippies and peace activists and, soon after, by queer people seeking refuge from discrimination elsewhere in the United States and around the world.

The city has been bolstered by its natural harbour, proximity to incredible natural beauty, distinguished post-secondary institutions such as UC Berkeley, and the vibrant cultural diversity and creativity that makes it such a unique stand-out place. But those conditions, which have created a deeply liberal and progressive culture in the city’s politics, have also drawn the ire of conservatives across the United States.

The far-right Manhattan Institute (the workplace of Christopher Rufo, the man who kickstarted both the current waves of Critical Race Theory and Trans Panics that continue to shape contemporary North American politics) calls the city “America’s Havana”. They’ve spread purposefully misleading and inaccurate data about the rate of disease transmission, particularly within the city’s homeless population, even going so far as to claim the city is experiencing a typhus surge, despite there only being one case in the city in 2013.

A now-infamous map spread on social media in 2019 reportedly shows the city literally covered in human waste.

The map, showing the 118,352 calls to the city about waste issues was an attempt by hard right activists to show that the city’s permissiveness resulted in a dangerously unsanitary situation for everyone. Problem is, this map was purposefully misleading, representing 8 years worth of calls (working out to one call per square mile a day) about any fecal matter, including dog poop. The screenshot above was actually of an interactive map, so the pins seemed the size of city blocks, further exaggerating the issue. And, to put a cherry on top of this pile of crap, the area with the most concentration of people experiencing homelessness had only two reports a year.

The hard right has been targeting San Francisco for a while now. In 2021, they were able to launch a series of recall elections (removing officials from office through a vote of the people), mainly targeting progressive legislators. Alison Collins, a member of the San Francisco Board of Education was removed from office (partly for her progressive stances on some issues and partly because of some racist tweets about Asian Americans that occurred after her children were bullied in school following the election of Donald Trump). Hard right “eco”capitalist Michael Shellenberger sought the office of Governor of California on a platform that blamed San Francisco’s progressive politics for the issue of homelessness in the city, fixating on what he called a “victim ideology”. Conservative online publications rant and rave about the city’s impending economic collapse, fixating on how drug use and homelessness will drive every capitalist out of town for good.

This is all being fueled by mainstream news outlets throwing kindling on a raging fire of inaccuracy. CNN dedicated a whole hour-long special in May to a “documentary” called “What Happened to San Francisco?”, decrying the closure of a Whole Foods and the city’s “permissive” attitude toward drugs for pushing San Francisco toward being a “failed city”.

Venture capitalist Michael Moritz penned a piece that ran in the New York Times entitled “Even Democrats Like Me Are Fed Up With San Francisco”, lamenting how radical socialists and manipulative Democrats are purposefully turning the city into a lawless hellscape, all for their own amusement. This was followed by their coverage of the death of Bob Lee, a founder of CashApp, who was stabbed to death in front of his apartment. The Times ran the story under the headline “Stabbing of Cash App Creator Raises Alarm, and Claims of ‘Lawless’ San Francisco”. It was later revealed that Lee had been high on cocaine and ketamine when he was confronted by a person he knew (and had also worked in the tech sector) about his relationship with that person’s sister. Despite this, the hysteria fixated on people experiencing homelessness and mental health crises.

Then, in June, the Atlantic published a piece by conservative writer Nellie Bowles (the spouse of hard right, anti-woke journalist Bari Weiss), once again, deriding San Francisco as a “failed city”.

All of these stories were engineered to be shared on your aunt’s Facebook with the post “so sad”, right after a Minion meme and a repost of a pixilated black-and-white photo of a soldier with the caption “no one stands for the TROOPS anymore SHARE if YOUR PROUD TOO be a PATRIOT”

Which is why you’re hearing C-list local politicians and anonymous trolls rant on and on and on about a city they don’t understand. They’ve been spoon fed a shit stew by right wing commentators and ultra rich “enlightened centrists” who want to convince you that, if you vote for a progressive in your next city council election, then your peaceful little corner of the world will fill to the brim with stabbings, human excrement, and typhus.

Okay, but WHY San Francisco?

The United States federal government has been consistently cutting supports for people at risk of homelessness since the 1970s, with the neoliberal turn in the 1990s accelerating that change. In response to these cuts, cities like San Francisco have sought to implement local solutions and provide assistance that otherwise would not be there.3

In response to this, coalitions of what Amaral calls “business and neighborhood merchants, elected officials, conservatives, and homeowners” have worked together to pass “anti-homeless” laws, creating an “anti-homeless regime: an informal coalition of actors all contributing unique resources necessary to adopt anti-homeless policies.”4 This anti-homeless regime both pushes people into specific areas (thereby making people experiencing homelessness more visible and less safe) and works to perpetuate the idea that the city is unsafe due to the problem they are mobilized against.

But the data just doesn’t back up the idea that high rates of homelessness cause crime. San Francisco has actually seen violent crime drop (and is only slightly higher than Miami, a famously Republican city), but crimes like shoplifting and theft increase. But we’re seeing that everywhere. The high cost of living is pushing people to extremes. Homelessness isn’t the cause of that; wealth inequality is.

And the homeless population in San Francisco is not staggeringly huge. The point-in-time survey of people experiencing homelessness indicates that 7,754 people fall into that category. That’s 0.95% of the city’s population. Slightly higher than in Hamilton, where 0.30% of the population is experiencing homelessness or Vancouver (also cited as a “failed city” by the hard right) where the population is at 0.31%.

Ultimately, we have the right wing fringe pointing to San Francisco, a city famous for liberal values and tolerance, and blaming a host of social issues on those policies, rather than on their real causes: inequality, greed, discrimination, and an unbalanced economic system.

Local politicians and angry internet posters are using the fictionalized right wing fantasy of San Francisco in any discussion about homelessness, drug use, or “liberal” policies. But to what end? Opposing tiny shelters or sanctioned encampments or calls for the federal government to decriminalize drugs isn’t policy. It is the absence of policy. And there have yet to be any reasonable alternatives proposed other than “I don’t care, I just don’t want that here”.

This dystopian San Francisco is nothing more than a throw-away reference meant to scare people who are generally afraid of some other place that’s, according to all their Facebook friends and the angrier of our local politicians, fallen to pieces because they dared to let people experiencing homelessness live in their city.

There’s so much energy being put into demonizing a place because of the politics of the people there. But all that energy is in the pursuit of hostility and exclusion.

We can’t let that be what defines us. You don’t want “What, you want this place to become like Hamilton?” to be used as a dismissive statement when people are worried their city is becoming nastier, meaner, and less welcoming.

Waitin’ on the market

This week, we got two important pieces on housing that deserve some attention.

The first is from Shawn Micallef in the Toronto Star. The original piece is paywalled (as is the reprint in The Spec), but the basics are this: Pierre Poilievre is making everything about housing, but his ideas are mediocre at best. Justin Trudeau consistently and reliably drops the ball on housing, and, when he does decide to talk about it, he’s repackaging formerly allocated money as if it is some big new investment or is shrugging his shoulders and blaming provincial governments.

“It's easy to get the sense that federal Liberals are themselves comfortable and unaffected by how difficult it is to find decent affordable housing across the country, and they take for granted a loyal base of voters who are comfortable too,” Micallef writes, recognizing that there is a core constituency for the Liberals that’s aware of the problem, but too secure in their own positions to want real action. Wealthy middle-class homeowners in key ridings who are uninterested in voting Tory unless the Liberals have another Sponsorship Scandal-style screwup will reliably park their votes behind JT. But as that constituency ages and realizes it is hard to survive in retirement when all your savings are wrapped up in shelter, it’ll become necessary for the Liberals to act.

Micallef calls for a “wartime effort” to deal with housing. Harkening back to when the Canadian government, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) “facilitated an incredible expansion of Canadian housing, from sprawling suburbs to rental towers that dot so many cities to, most importantly, vast amounts of genuinely affordable public housing,” Micallef reminds us that the federal government has, in the past, cared about housing. And should absolutely do so again.

For those of us who are really feeling the squeeze in this current housing market, from people renting in increasingly precarious situations to those who were lucky enough to buy but are now seeing their mortgages consume more and more of their income, the lack of action on the part of the federal government is deeply baffling. Justin Trudeau’s complete devotion to the market seems like classic Liberal out-of-touch-edness at best and strategic malice at worst.

And it is clear we need more coordination from other levels of government because, when municipalities try to go it alone, they can sometimes fail miserably. That’s where the second story worth noting comes in.

Montreal’s opposition party, the centre-right Ensemble Montréal (because remember they’re a normal city with political parties) released data this week indicating that the Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis, one of Mayor Valérie Plante’s signature pieces of local legislation designed to create affordable housing in the city, has failed to do just that.

The bylaw requires developers to include affordable housing in any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet and, if they don’t, they have to pay the city (in the form of cash or land) so that the municipality can build the housing instead.

Not a single developer has built affordable housing, with the majority just paying the city and a smaller number handing over some land. Ensemble Montréal indicates that the city’s only earned $24.5 million from the bylaw after two years.

Plante fired back, saying that the province wasn’t stepping up with funding for affordable housing, which both disincentives developers and makes it hard for the city to go it alone building new units.

"The Quebec government has its foot on the brake…We're not going to throw the bylaw in the garbage because it is a great planning tool. The issue is that the government is not financing social housing anymore,” Plante told the CBC.

The CBC also interviewed housing advocates who are pushing for stronger legislation and developers who are fighting to get rid of what little legislation there is protecting tenants and ensuring there’s space for social housing. The quotes from developer Nicola Padulo are just…something else, but signal the need for strong regulation and a place for social development.

We know what it will take to get housing built. It will necessitate the power of the state to source materials, provide financing, secure locations, assemble the necessary crews, and get shovels in the ground. It will mean partnerships between the federal, provincial, and municipal governments and a willingness on the part of each to put up the necessary cash, change rules that are impeding progress, and listening to experts. Municipalities have a strong role in all this (not bending to the will of the most narrow-minded of NIMBYs is the first step), but, as the case of Montreal proves, even the cities with the best of intentions can’t go it alone.

A time-honoured tradition

Oh, and speaking of housing:

Housing is more unaffordable now than at any point in recent history.

Who is to blame?

Is it civic policy makers who emphasized building nothing but single detached homes? Is it successive federal and provincial governments who pursued a neoliberal policy of cutting funding for social housing while making it easier for greedy speculators and investors to scoop up what little housing there was on the market? It is the REITs who enthusiastically evict people and charge disgustingly high rents to ensure a profit for their shareholders?

Nope.

Immigrants. Blame immigrants. Comin’ over here, taking our jobs and our homes. Them and those international students.

Yeah, the trend in the country’s right wing media (and on the desiccated husks of what remains of social media) has been to fixate on immigrants and international students, which is complete and utter nonsense.

As the Migrant Rights Network reminds us, immigration levels dropped dramatically during the pandemic, and yet, housing prices still went up.

The facts are clear: According to Statistics Canada, 1 in 5 homes in Ontario is owned by an investor while only 3% of homes are owned by “non-resident” foreigners. Sources in The Globe and Mail indicate that, while 38% of homeowners are immigrants, nearly 75% of them have lived in Canada for 10+ years. Only in Toronto did 49% of immigrant homeowners indicate that they arrived in the last 5 years. And what is Toronto building? According to the CMHC, in 2020, 93% of all new housing starts were condo/apartments.

So let’s just break this down very clearly here:

• We live in stratified cities with fiercely protected single detached homes and soulless, uninspired glass condos that are disconnected from the communities in which they are built;

• These condos are really only good to be used as investments, which is fine by the developers slapping them together, the real estate agents hawking them, and the wealthy people purchasing them to be used as investments;

• Some wealthy foreign nationals and immigrants snap these condos up for different reasons - some because they realize Canada’s laissez faire attitude toward housing allows them to capitalize on the market, some because they’ve been told the only way to truly be Canadian is to own a home;

• Politicians and commentators (many of whom are deeply invested in the system) fixate on these rare cases, all while highlighting outrageous and cherry-picked examples, as part of a misdirection effort so we don’t look at their failure to enact policies that will fix the problem and not turn on the more sizable chunk of the market that’s owned by Canadian-based investors.

And so, we once again turn to The Beaverton, Canada’s voice of reason, who published an article on August 21 entitled “Corporations hoarding homes thank Canadians for enthusiastically blaming immigration” with these absolute fire lines:

A recommendation

I highly recommend checking out this piece from Adam Bunch over at The Toronto History Weekly newsletter. It has the Rolling Stones. I has political scandals. It has the Kennedys, Baryshnikov, and Quebec Separatism. No sleep. Bus, club, another club, another club, plane, next plane, no sleep, no fear, nobody believed in Marg.

Most importantly, it is a fascinating insight into how hard it can be to be the partner of a politician. An amazing and engaging read. Go check it out.

Cool facts for cool people

• Over in Manitoba, their provincial election campaign is heating up. While Wab Kinew’s NDP had been leading in the polls for the past three years, the PC government of Heather Stefanson is ticking up slightly, making this a more competitive race than anyone expected. To counter their sagging poll numbers, the NDP seems to be…doing what they always do, pitching out lukewarm and uninspiring half promises like their recent pledge to cut the province’s gas tax. The CBC article on the announcement indicates they’ve earned praise from the hard right Canadian Taxpayers Federation but lost the support of working class people, one of whom told the CBC they wanted to see the party actually deal with social inequity at a more meaningful level. Just, for once, I’d love to see an allegedly left wing party look at the problems in this world and provide people real, inspiring, long-term solutions. Cost of living is going up? Cool, here’s a 50 step plan to make life easier, segmented into immediate, short term, medium term, long term, and future generation-focused steps to address the situation. Are we going to cut the gas tax? Hell no! We’ll use every penny to invest in public transit, community spaces, and promoting local business and products. Here’s a plan for more local food to bring your grocery bill down, here’s a plan for public auto insurance, a public telecom option, affordable medications, expanding the co-op sector, bringing the cost of housing down, etc. etc. etc. But, no, let’s make gasoline cheaper to save people a couple of bucks while the world burns. Boring.

• The rise of AI got you down? Worried about how the use of technology might impact your livelihood? Sad that computers get to make art while we toil away at menial jobs? Consider going on vacation! And, before you do, read up on all the wonderful places you can go. For example, if you’re thinking of heading to Canada’s capital city, you might want to check out this Microsoft Travel article which gives you loads of fun things to do, like “look at bridge”, “skate on World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink”, or “visit food bank”! Yeah, this AI-written article (link to a CBC article about it since the Wayback Machine generated one only works sometimes) was shared a bit last week when people realized 1) it was written by AI and 2) it suggested, as the number 3 attraction in Ottawa, visiting the Ottawa Food Bank with the exact quote: “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.” WOW. Yeah, AI is generally not my favourite thing (don’t use it for anything…yeah, I type all this nonsense out myself) and that was wildly inappropriate, but Microsoft is off the hook here. What are they going to do? Fire the writer behind this? GIF of Bill Gates smashing a computer. One last point: beyond it being terribly written generated and very cringey, it doesn’t even list Parliament as a place to visit. Just the lawn. Of Parliament Hills. Awful. -50/10, terrible work, bad computer.’