Vancouver’s Chinatown calls for help

Merchants in historic area feel abandoned by Ottawa under pandemic

VANCOUVER—Merchants in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown say the COVID-19 pandemic is wiping them out and the federal government is doing nothing to help save the treasured community.

At the same time, advocates ask why another tourist hot spot in the city, federally owned Granville Island, has seen millions worth of funding to help keep merchants there afloat.

“This is a great example of a community that’s racialized that’s not able to access the same funding that a non-racialized community can,” said Michael Tan, co-chair of the Vancouver’s Chinatown Legacy Stewardship Group.

Vancouver’s Chinatown is the third largest in North America after those in New York and San Francisco. Prior to the pandemic, the neighbourhood’s shops and restaurants were destinations for both locals and tourists. One draw is the famed Sam Kee building, long dubbed the narrowest building in the world and built as the result of a wager between two local businessmen more than 100 years ago.

But despite their rich heritage, these once-packed six blocks of the city have buckled under the weight of COVID-19, Tan said.

“When you’re walking down the street, it starts to look like a ghost town at times,” he said. “There could be 100 businesses that are shuttered in the neighbourhood.”

Graffiti tags now festoon many of the buildings and merchants recently complained to local media about conditions in the area, including a spike in vandalism.

Tan said the neighbourhood needs help. He pointed to the assistance Ottawa has given to Granville Island, which is owned by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Granville Island received $16.7 million in emergency funding in 2020, to be used for efforts like rent relief for merchants. This year’s federal budget included a further $22 million for the island.

Tan is not the only one asking why the purse strings haven’t been similarly loosened for Chinatown.

“You’re throwing money out there left, right and centre right now. What about us?” Jordan Eng, the president of the Vancouver-Chinatown Business Improvement Association said.

Eng said he understands why the federal government would fund Granville Island businesses — it’s a case of the “landlord helping the tenant” — but said Chinatown also needs to be shown some consideration.

It is one of the last culturally distinct sections of the city, he said, and its history makes it worth supporting as a working neighbourhood.

But when Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland was asked about federal assistance during a visit to Chinatown this week, advocates for the area were not impressed by her answers.

At a housing announcement on Wednesday, Freeland pointed out that her Toronto riding includes that city’s Chinatown, and said she is a “big champion” of Chinatowns across the country. She said a number of programs, such as the Canada Recovery Hiring Program and the rent subsidy, are available for merchants in Vancouver’s Chinatown.

“The community hasn’t always been fully aware that these programs exist and that you just need to go out and apply for them,” she said in video of the conference provided to the Star.

Tan said Chinatown has different needs than other parts of the city. Many of its businesses

are “mom and pop” operations without staff, he said, so the wage subsidy won’t work for them. It was also difficult for businesses to apply for rent subsidies, with landlords in some cases refusing to help their tenants apply when that was initially required, he said.

Eng said Freeland didn’t address the matter sufficiently for Chinatown merchants. “I think she totally sidestepped it,” he said.

He said he’d like to see some help in the way of subsidies for property taxes or programs to help the city’s legacy businesses, such as restaurants that have been in place for generations.

The Department of Finance did not provide a response Friday to questions from the Star.

Tan said the situation reminds him of the 1970s, when Granville Island was being developed with support from all levels of government while parts of Chinatown were being destroyed with the support of those same governments.

“This is that legacy,” he said.