MAKEWORK The Vancouver Observer's interview with a Vancouver escort includes the quote “I have a lot of clients who are my friends.” Meganews has now sent out invoices for money owed.

PERIODICALS Bun fight at City Hall over an unsolicitied subscription to Urban Male magazine

HOT HOT HEAT The City has approved hot weather shelters. Which is great, as are winter's cold weather shelters. But is the idea that, when the weather is pleasant in the spring and autumn, homeless people are okay on their own?

HOMES The Tyee has a keen series on reinventing the coop

The former residents of 2131 Pandora St. have won another victory this week over their former landlords after they were forced to evacuate their homes after the roof collapsed in heavy rains in 2007.

The Residential Tenancy Branch awarded them $53,000 in compensation after they were given just three hours to leave.

This is the second settlement against the owners of the apartments, the notorious Sahota family. The first $170,000 was awarded by the RTB last year. The Sahotas appealed and lost this May. But according to a Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association (DERA) press release, no former 2131 Pandora St. resident has received any compensation yet.

The Sahotas have been under fire for quite some time for allowing the buildings they own in Vancouver to literally fall apart. An inspection of the Pandora building later found everything from mould to cockroaches. On the bottom floor, water was ankle-deep.

Vancouver City Coun. Tim Stevenson has called them “slumlords.” That they are allowed to stay in business is likely a symptom of the extreme housing shortage in the city that has seen land values and housing prices explode.
Former and current tenants have accused them of intimidation and refusing to return security deposits.

“There is no question the Sahotas can afford to pay. The Sahota family owns properties throughout the Greater Vancouver area, including a number of million dollar properties in the Kitsilano and Shaughnessy areas of Vancouver,” says the DERA release.

Those Pandora residents who participated in the first suit have a mortgage registered on a Sahota property. The BC Public Interest Advocacy Agency Centre has applied to foreclose the property in the hope that it will force the Sahotas to cough up the $170,000.

Many other Sahota properties have also been subject to forced closures and inspections that have turned up revolting conditions. Across the street from the Pandora building at 2178 Triumph, inspectors found rotten balconies, rats, roaches, mould, dangerous electrical wiring and broken kitchen exhaust ducts.
In 2006 at another Sahota property, 525 E. 5th Ave, two were injured after a rotten balcony collapsed.

A city inspector called 1847 Larch, another Sahota building, “a nuisance and dangerous to public safety,” and recommended it be demolished.

Very public incidents such as the Pandora collapse don’t seem to have pushed the Sahotas to change their ways. The DERA release says a Sahota-owned building in Surrey has been leaky for years and they have ignored numerous calls for repairs. A tenant has taken the Sahotas to the RTB to force them to perform adequate maintenance.

The Sahotas live in a house in Shaughnessy worth over a million dollars.

By Todd Brayer

WAR STORIES The Federal Government is addicted to 'war on drugs'

SMELLY After years of complaints, a new odour bylaw may do something about the stink at Hastings & Victoria.

FARMERS Mayor Robertson wants a large expansions in farmers' markets

NEAT Beyond Robson takes a look at Megaphone's writing series

TOWERING INFERNAL Marpole residents mobilise to keep Marpole the way it is: A suburb of Richmond. We kid.

MONEY It's time to raise the minium wage to something that at least matches the wage in Newfoundland.

NAMES The party that has governed Vancouver for most of the last century wishes to remain calling themselves Non Partisan.

TRANSIT On the Evergreen Line, the next station is already six months late

MIDDLE OF THE ROAD Vandu says that one-third of Downtown Eastside residents have been hit by a car What's that, joke from 1920? You say, "Jeepers, Meganews, that guy is sure a bad driver!"

BRIDGES The movement to remove the viaducts gets ever so slightly stronger. Also, the GM of the Downtown Vancouver Business Association accidentally speaks in favour of increased transit.

BUSSES Coast Mountain bus driver manual mocks cyclists.

ROYAL CITY City of New Westminister apologises to Chinese Canadians for a century of unspecified humiliations

SPIES R US The head of CSIS says that some municipal politicians are 'foreign influenced.' They sure are: half of them want to be Sarah Palin, the other half want to be Kim Il-Jung. *Rimshot*

TRANSIT Broadway merchants not only want light rail, they would prefer it if the stops were placed in front of their businesses

SCIENCE David Suzuki asks Will we ever learn from our oily disasters? Meganews can save you a life of wondering: no.

COOL DIPS Remember that Mount Pleasant pool that was going to be saved during redevelopment? The short version is, don't let people dig up your pool

THE NAME GAME The Non-Partisan Association is mulling renaming itself to Vancouver First

OUR HOME & NATIVE LAND A Haida totem pole in Jasper National Park is being returned to Haida Gwaii. Also, last week, the Haida First Nation returned the name 'Queen Charlotte Islands' to the Crown, in this case, Premier Campbell, in an empty box.

LAW After denials by the government that a crime took place and after an investigation by the Mounties that said a crime did not take place, an independent prosecutor has finally been appointed decide if it's appropriate to reassess the Crown's decision not to lay charges against any of the RCMP officers involved in tasering a man to death at the airport.

HOMES Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he will develop a national housing strategy. Not yet, mind you. But soon.

STREET FOOD It's so close: you can almost taste the new, non-hotdog, street food. If you are interested in a stall, here is the info page.

What better way to spend Father's Day this weekend than by celebrating at one of the city's Car Free Vancouver Day sites. This Sunday, roads will be shut down in Kitsilano, the West End, North Van and on Main and Commecial for a pedestrian-powered party.

For one day the cars will be replaced by DJs, dancing, poets, potlucks, street hockey and roller derby skaters,

“Less cars means more community.” says CFVD Co-founder Matt Hern in a press release. “This is a day to visualize what an ethical and ecological city might look like. To give people a chance to reclaim their streets, hang out with their neighbours, and enjoy a great car-free day."

The event is free and takes place from noon to 6 p.m. in various communities.

BIKES Downtown NIMBYs continue to complain about the Dunsmuir bike route. Apparently, they prefer to have cars whizz by without stopping rather than hundreds of leisurely cyclists. Also note the hotel owner who believes that having a quiet bike route beside his downtown hotel is bad for business.

LAW Journalists, lawyers, and judges at a workshop came to blows over publication bans. (Note: Meganews has since updated this story: 'come to blows' should be replaced with 'had entertaining and enlightening discussion over tea.')

OIL China needs oil. We gots oil. Guess which port city is going to be shipping it through treacherous waters?

WALK THIS WAY City gives $65,000 to VANDU to improve pedestrian safety in the Downtown Eastside. A Courier writer figures that this just enables the whole Downtown Eastside scene and will lead directly to free heroin. So, that's clear then.

Public schools are never as funded as they would like. Even in the best of times there is always one more program they need money to implement.

On the other hand, what we have in B.C. is not the usual malaise. What everybody, except possibly the Liberals in Victoria, is hearing is more the death throes of a drowning sailor than the teenage daughter who needs one more dress to go to the prom.

The Liberals said, back when they came into power, that they wouldn't cut education funding. And for core funding, that is true. But they haven't increased it much either, even enough to account for inflation. Which means a small but significant cut each year.

To demonstrate, according to the Bank of Canada, a product that cost $100 the year the Liberals came into power — 2001 — would now cost $118.

Naturally, with less money to go around and no ability to run a deficit, school boards have had to cut programs and teachers, increase class sizes and generally lower the quality of education given to the next generation.

This is compounded by the fact that schools have to appeal to all students. Students who want french or mandarin immersion, sports programs, special needs workers, trades programs and more. Invariably, these are the programs that are getting hit.

A lot of parents, seeing the drop-off in quality in public schools, are pulling their children and dumping them into private ones.

Which is only making matters worse, since the province gives money to schools based on headcount.

And then last year the Annual Facilities Grant, which provided $110 million to schools for maintenance got cut. The province later restored it, but only to half as much as before.

Without fundamental change in the current education policy, even the blood that will flow this year won't stop the VBE from being in the red next year.

The belt has been tightened as far as it can be without making the legs gangrene. Education is the great equalizer, but it can only be so if the system is not reduced to enormous classes of only those children too poor to go to private schools.

The school board has until Friday to submit an official budget. I don't have high hopes.