Here is another effort for describing and deconstructing some rather complex interdynamics as a way of further defining love, or where love is lacking I will focus here on my experience of living here in Candela Place, my apartment building. This all came up today when I was on the phone with the building manager, a really lovely and very supportive individual. We were talking about the details for getting ready for the delivery of my new fridge today. I was particularly asking that they not arrive ahead of the scheduled time, this time, because I had some things to do, shopping and going for a long walk. My building manager, understandably, suggested that I might want to do those things after, but I said that I was not going to wait in my apartment all morning, and for some rather basic reasons. First, even though this is my day off, I do have a discipline, to help maintain good health, of getting out in the fresh air and walking at least six miles a day. This is important for a number of reasons. The exercise, which is also easy on my aging joints, the prayerful and meditative aspect, especially walking in the forest of Stanley Park, or in the forest anywhere. It also helps me maintain a healthy body weight.
The shopping is also a bit problematic. There is a bit of a problem with where our building is situated. It is in the middle of downtown, on a busy main street, Granville, and there are a lot of major social problems in the area. Also, there is no affordable grocery shopping anywhere within walking distance. All the local supermarkets are expensive and cater to a niche market. For this reason, we have to travel around Vancouver for affordable food, since in this building we are all on low incomes.
But it isn't just that we want to get cheap groceries. Even though we are all on low incomes here, we all have our individual dietary needs, preferences and food tastes. I really don't think that the folks who manage this building have really worked that hard to factor this in. In my case, I am vegetarian,. I also like to eat food that is healthy, whole, fresh and natural. In the local supermarkets it is very difficult to source a lot of these foods when living on a low or limited income. For example, I was wanting to buy peanut butter, jam and cheese. So, one could easily imagine that, well, I can get all these things at Shoppers Drug Mart down the street. But the food prices there are very high, as they are in Choices nearby and Fresh Street Market and Nester's, all within walking distance. And the peanut butter I was wanting isn't just any old peanut butter. Most commercial brands are full of sugar and additives. Out of deference to my health needs, especially now that I am in my sixties i like to eat well and healthy. But the natural peanut butter in all the local yuppie markets, and is prohibitively expensive. I can get the best deals for natural peanut butter and other foods at No Frills and Safeway, but they are all distant from this neighbourhood. Likewise with buying affordable produce, which is even hard to find in No Frills but more available in small markets in other neighbourhoods. I could go on, but the people who administer, staff and run this building don't really seem to have much of a clue of what we have to live with every day, as tenants, just in order to source decent, healthy, tasty, interesting and affordable food.
I think part of the problem is the administration of More Than a Roof, many of whom are conservative Christians from the Fraser Valley, who usually vote for conservative politicians and really seem stuck in a mentality of meritocracy. In other words, you earn what you get and otherwise it's charity,. Beggars can't be choosers. I don't believe this to be the actual mentality of our current management team, but this is still a kind of system and unconscious bigotry against the poor that is built into some aspects of the culture that administers More Than a Roof.
I really used to run into difficulties about these kinds of details with a lot of previous managers, who really just wanted me to put up and shut up, and when I didn´t, they wrote me up in my file as being prone to causing conflict, and that is perjury.
But this unconscious bias against poor people is even made evident in the poor kitchen design, as well as the small size of the apartments in general. Beggars can't be choosers. Who knew that some of us actually do know how to cook, enjoy cooking, and happen to be very good at it. But we are almost not allowed to be competent, or gifted, or well-educated, above average intelligent, and otherwise high-functioning adults. Why would we need to live in subsidized housing then? Except, and I think it is rather a cruel irony because the politicians that our administrators usually vote into office, have also been responsible enacting some very regressive and poor bashing polices that helped create our current crisis of street homelessness. Which has also made Vancouver one of the world's most unaffordable cities, so that if you do luck into subsidized housing, if you don't want to end up sleeping on the sidewalk or in a low barrier shelter, you are going to want to stay where you are. I am not sure if any of them have really explored this irony and inconsistency of theirs, but I really think they ought to.
No comments:
Post a Comment