For those who haven’t spotted it, The Tyee and Monte Paulsen have an interesting series starting on affordable housing. The series looks at how shipping containers, which are ubiquitous around the world, can be used for housing.

I admire them for taking on this topic. And I’ve seen shipping containers used ingeniously in a few places I’ve visited. It seems to me I saw stores operating out of them in Kabul and, at the other end of the universe in all ways, I also visited an organic farm in Maui where the owners had turned a shipping container into their office. (They’d also turned a garden hose into an outdoor shower for our benefit, but that’s another story.)

However, I have to say that in the way of the great Media Chicken Shunning that is going on in this city, I currently am having strong doubts about whether Vancouver can accept any idea that strays outside the parameters of the mediocre and middle of the road that seems to prevail here. I’ve always known the city was parochial and small-minded, but that’s been brought home forcefully in the last couple of weeks, as all the pundits of the land have thundered on about the way global disaster will come to Vancouver if it allows urban chickens.

I’m frankly completely baffled by this reaction. I could understand their scorn if the Vision council had decided to make decisions by consulting a ouija board or if it had mandated that all new housing development include a space for housing pigs and donkeys at the basement level, in order to promote food security.

But we’re talking about allowing urban chickens — a trend that has been growing in North America for at least the last decade. If anyone wanted to do even the most minimal research, they would see that hundreds of cities have made the move to allowing people to keep small numbers of chickens and that it’s hardly a radical concept. Susan Orlean in the New Yorker wrote about what a trend it is, definitive proof that, far from being some new age weirdo fad, it’s a yuppie as a Starbucks non-fat, no-whip moccachino.

So … shipping containers as housing? Nice try, but I can well imagine what the great minds around here would have to say.

It was the best kind of theatre, being at council last week when West Enders showed up to voice their concerns about the Vision council’s program to create permanent rentals, the Short Term Incentives for Rental or STIR.

Councillors tried to keep the bemusement out of their voices, but weren’t all that successful as they questioned one person after another along essentially the same lines, which was: If you’re opposed to having new rental towers built, what the heck do you think is the solution to what seem to be cyclical rental crises in the city?

Geoff Meggs was the most persistent, asking whether people think there is no rental crisis any more. (Apparently, there are some who think there is no longer a problem with rentals in the West End, in spite of the screaming for the last several years about same.)

Even Suzanne Anton, who has been critical of the STIR program from day one, pointed out quietly to one speaker — a woman who seemed to think that the solution would be to have the city subsidize rents for all the existing residents but not allow any new developments — in a low-key way that “people like it there and over time that will drive rents up.”

I’ve tried to capture some of the current debate on the STIR program in my Globe story today, but it’s a big topic with many side issues that is too big for this box.

And this council is going to have to find answers, not just for Vancouver, but for all the municipalities out there wondering what to do about what’s been a national problem for 30 years — the lack of purpose-built rental housing.

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Adding to the list of local politics-watchers is this new blog that Frank Murphy, who comments here occasionally, is starting up. That’s in addition to blogs in Langley, Surrey, New Westminster, Kamloops and North Vancouver that I know of. (If there are more, get in touch — happy to link.) Here’s Frank’s message about his new blog.

Frances — Could I interrupt this chat to point out you’ve inspired another civic politics blog:

http://www.nanaimocityhall.wordpress.com

Keeping an eye on City Hall in Nanaimo. We’d very much like your and your readers’ feedback.

Sam Sullivan used to love to go to Chicago and admired Mayor Richard Daley, perhaps in part because of his imperial powers, but also because of the way he had single-handedly turned Chicago from a rust belt disaster to a thriving urban innovator.

But Gregor Robertson’s favourite city, at least this week, is New York. Apparently he’s off there today, tomorrow and Wednesday to talk to Mayor Michael Bloomberg (wealthy beyond belief, brought in a smoking ban to restaurants and car-free days to Times Square and various other roads), among other things.

Along with that, he’ll be schmoozing more green business types. I, for one, am waiting to see what comes of all this. It’s all been a bit of a mystery, as no one wants to trot out any of these potential future Vancouver powerhouses for interviews until they actually commit to something. So far, Surrey’s announced one deal from all this dedicated green networking, but nothing else definitive so far from the half dozen cities that have been pursuing the new economy.

My friend Peg Fong has a nice scoop in the Toronto Star today, with sources talking to her about the possibility of former mayor Sam Sullivan being considered for Governor-General.

The Star’s big story last week, also based on sources, was that Rick Hansen had been approached about the post and had turned it down. Stephen Harper’s people later said that Hansen had never been officially offered the job.

The drama continues

Okay, nothing at all to do with urban issues, except that Kash used to police parts of Vancouver, but this is so startling I had to put up a link

As a follow-up to the stats released by the city from its homelessness count, here’s my story in the Globe with Councillor Kerry Jang staking out the city’s position unequivocally: It’s the province’s job to pay for enough shelter space to get everyone off the streets. The city will give land, buildings, fix-up costs, but not more.

The two sides are at a stand-off right now over that issue, with Housing Minister Rich Coleman having said to me and others that if the city wants to open up more shelters than the province has determined is its limit, it has to contribute half the operating costs.

I await the results of this dust-up when 560 people no longer have a place to sleep inside on April 30. That’s when the seven additional shelters the city pushed to get for the winter run out of funding.

The results of the city’s homeless count are in and, as the Vision Vancouver team hoped, it shows that the numbers of people sleeping outside was reduced by almost exactly the number of beds created in the mayor’s seven emergency shelters.

The memo from city manager Penny Ballem spells out the dire consequences for the city when those 600-some people are back out on the streets as of April 30: danger of moving backwards in several areas, tarnished reputation of the city, and so on.

I’ll be awaiting the return volley from the province on this. Their bigger problem, I suspect, is not going to be the numbers in this report, Numbers are numbers and reports are pieces of paper. No, it’s going to be the actual experience most people in the city will have when 600 people go back to sleeping on the streets — more than doubling the number out there now — that has the negative impact.

That’s a lot of people and it will be visible. We’ve forgotten a little what it’s like to be walking past people sleeping under pieces of cardboard or next to their shopping carts or in grubby sleeping bags sheltered from the rain by a small overhang. It’s not a pretty sight and it doesn’t make any of us feel good about our city or ourselves.

Yes, I’ve been gadding about a lot and this time to Montreal — mainly to cook meals and provide a taste of home to a cluster of young adults, some of them family, some of them friends. There is a veritable ghetto of Vancouver kids in Montreal these days, so there were plenty around to entertain.

As those privileged to pay tuition fees these days know, living a student life often means living in conditions that approach those of people on welfare. So when the kids are camped out in their SROs and tiny apartments out of town, sitting down to a meal that hasn’t been on a steam table for five hours is pretty exciting.

When I wasn’t shopping for or chopping onions, beets, fennel, carrots, parsley and the rest, I did get a chance to walk around quite a bit since we were one block off Saint Laurent. And was reminded again about all that’s good and not so good about this city, which I spent a year working in during the 90s.

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SFU’s always-great City Program has another interesting lecture coming up, this one by Thomas Osdoba, the former sustainability manager in Vancouver.

Those who think the recent firing of the city’s chief electrician was odd should refresh their memories about what happened with Osdoba, who was fired by then-city manager Judy Rogers after a lot of internal pushing from him to make the Olympic village achieve higher green standards. What actually happened there, no one ever reported on fully — again, one of those extremely messy situations where it was hard to tell whether there was a political agenda or something harder to nail down.

At any rate, here’s Tom again to talk about a bigger-picture look at making cities green.

A 22nd Century City: Reinventing our DNA
April 15, 7 pm
Venue: SFU Segal Building, 500 Granville Street, Vancouver
Admission is free, reservations are required. Reserve at www.sfu.ca/reserve

What will it take to transform our cities? What changes do we need to make in the basic operating code in how cities function? In this lecture, Thomas Osdoba will argue for creating a culture of innovation around sustainability — and ways to make it happen.

Thomas Osdoba is Managing Director of the Center for Sustainable Business Practices at Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, and Principal at Tao Strategies. He is the former Sustainability Manager for the City of Vancouver and has served as the Acting Director of the Canada Carbon Trust. He has 20 years of experience in environmental policy development and initiatives to promote and support sustainable development.

Sponsored by HB Lanarc Consultants Ltd and the SFU City Program .