Vancouvered Out examines
Canada’s housing crisis

Montreal novelist Norman Nawrocki launches a timely new novella

By Irwin Rapoport

April 17, 2024

Acclaimed Montreal author, playwright, actor, musician, and veteran social activist Norman Nawrocki is launching his timely and thought-provoking new novella, Vancouvered Out, on Saturday, April 20, at 4 pm at the Milton-Parc Community Library.

At the free event, Nawrocki will read selections from the book, respond to questions, and sign copies. Members from the Montreal Autonomous Tenants Union will also be present at the book launch to describe their work and answer questions about tenant organizing.

Norman Nawrocki reading Vancouvered Out – Image: Vivian Nawrocki

Vancouvered Out, Nawrocki’s 17th book, is a dramatic story literally ripped from the headlines. It is about roots, gentrification, housing rights, community and the fight for a city. Although the story is set in Vancouver, the issues it raises concern a great number of Montrealers and millions of Canadians as prices for real estate are rising rapidly, as are rents for residents and business owners.

The number of renovictions in Montreal is growing, and to make matters worse, the CAQ government recently passed Bill 31, which allows landlords to reject lease transfers and makes it easier to raise rents and displace tenants, especially seniors, who lived in their apartments for decades.

Nawrocki, born and raised in Vancouver, has just returned from a visit to the West Coast to promote his novella. He says he “wrote this novella while watching my former city morph into a heart-breaking, condo-mized, unaffordable wasteland. Friends have been forced to move, while those who stay live in constant fear of reno-victions. And now Montrealers are reliving this tragedy.”

In Montreal now, like Vancouver, police and garbage trucks deal with a housing crisis by sweeping the homeless off the streets and out of encampments… It’s shameful. This violence targeting the poor must stop.

– Norman Nawrocki

A tireless activist, Nawrocki participated in the student protests against the tuition hikes in 2012, writing a book about the Maple Spring in which students and their supporters from across the province united against the Charest Liberal government and won. Nawrocki, a long-time advocate for housing rights, co-founded his housing co-op in Milton Park. He hopes his new novella will stimulate reflection and spur “tenant power” to help make every city livable again for everyone.

“In Montreal now, like Vancouver, police and garbage trucks deal with a housing crisis by sweeping the homeless off the streets and out of encampments,” he said. “It’s shameful. This violence targeting the poor must stop.”

Although he hails from Vancouver, Montreal is Nawrocki’s home, and he cherishes the city. His last book, Isabelle Walks With Angels, A Montreal Urban Legend (Les Pages Noires, 2023), inspired an award-winning same-name film currently screening in festivals worldwide.

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I recently spoke with the author about his new novella and why the subject matter is close to heart.

WM: What motivated you to write your new novella Vancouvered Out?

Nawrocki: I started to write it when I realized that even if I wanted to, I could never afford to move back to the city where I was born. Over the years, I watched my beloved former home city and community morph into an unaffordable wasteland of concrete and glass. Every time I visited, I heard stories from friends and people in the street about the worsening quality of life there, especially in terms of housing. Today, it is even worse. Average rents for a one-bedroom Vancouver apartment are now $2,500. The minimum wage in BC is $2,600/month before taxes. This leaves nothing for food, transport, clothing, medicine, hydro, phone, etc. As I watched from Montreal, Vancouver was turning into a playground for those with money. Otherwise, it had become a nightmare for anyone without money trying to find an affordable place to live.

I started to write it when I realized that even if I wanted to, I could never afford to move back to the city where I was born. Over the years, I watched my beloved former home city and community morph into an unaffordable wasteland of concrete and glass.

– Norman Nawrocki

The situation is simply obscene. Unjust. And wrong. It wasn’t always like this. I wanted to tell the stories of some of the voiceless victimized and displaced by this pure and simple greed on the part of developers and big landlords. I also wanted to witness and critique the gentrification and transformation taking place. To remind people of the need for compassion and understanding in the face of increasing homelessness and housing insecurity. And to suggest that the time for resistance is now.

Within the past decade, across Canada and in the U.S., evictions, reno-victions, demolitions and uprooting of entire communities for the sake of “development” have become normalized, to be expected. On social media, my friends are asking, “When will it be my turn?” Others are asking, “Anyone know of an affordable apartment? I just got an eviction notice.”

This is not the way it was before, and it does not have to be this way now. My novella presents another perspective – a critical one, but also a hopeful one.

WM: What is the story you are telling in Vancouvered Out?

Nawrocki: It’s a love story: the love of one man for his family, friends, community, and ultimately, for the city he was born in. It’s an ode to Vancouver as it once was and as it could be today. But it’s also a story of frustration and anger at what has happened to it and his friends and former community. Although set in Vancouver, the issues it raises concern Montrealers also.

‘It’s a love story: the love of one man for his family, friends, community, and ultimately, for the city he was born in. It’s an ode to Vancouver as it once was and as it could be today.’

– Norman Nawrocki

We see Vancouver through the eyes of Steve, a poor and unemployed labourer. Demons and drug dealers drove him out of town ten years earlier in 2004, but he returns, seeking a new life and answers to the mysterious death of his teen daughter. Unfortunately, in this west coast paradise he once called home he feels strangely out of place. As the love of family and friends stokes his own smouldering defiance of the new soul-destroying urban order, he aches for justice and a livable city for all. But as he tries to navigate a city wracked by condo-mania, nostalgia and compassion collide with his bitterness and indignation. Feelings more and more Montrealers are sharing today.

WM: What does a housing crisis have to do with the story?

Nawrocki: Everything. It is the background for the narrative recounted by Steve about his life, his family, his hopes and dreams, his past and his future. His friends have become homeless and search for safe places to spend the nights outside. His old neighbourhood haunts have disappeared and been replaced with high-priced developments devoid of the historic sense of community that once existed.

Because of the high cost of housing, people are forced to live in the street, in the shadows, on the edge of a more and more inhospitable city under all they can afford: a blue tarp to cover their heads. Yet the police rip off those tarps and toss them into the garbage. The new homeless have been driven out of their homes and neighbourhoods because of the greed of developers and big landlords and their enablers, the local, provincial and federal authorities. How can anyone survive under conditions like these?

Steve tries to understand and figure out a way forward for himself and others.

‘The new homeless have been driven out of their homes and neighbourhoods because of the greed of developers and big landlords and their enablers, the local, provincial and federal authorities. How can anyone survive under conditions like these?’

– Norman Nawrocki

WM: Why is this a timely story in both Vancouver and Montreal?

Nawrocki: Because both cities are war zones now where those with money are waging war on those without who can’t afford to pay exorbitant rents or buy over-priced condos or new homes. Montreal real estate and housing are still cheaper than Vancouver, but this won’t be for long.

Greedy developers in this city keep jacking up rents not only for tenants but also for small businesses. They’re sucking the lifeblood out of Montreal, gentrifying and destroying once-healthy neighbourhoods that were enjoyed by everyone. Low-income tenants are being booted out of the city and driven further and further away to outlying areas off island and beyond. And if they can’t afford anything there, then they’re forced to live on the street, out of sight or not.

Small businesses here are also having a very hard time being forced to either pay outrageous commercial rents or move. You see this all across Montreal. Small Vancouver merchants have already been forced to close their doors, and it’s happening more frequently in Montreal now. Without rent controls and adequate affordable housing for everyone, our city is headed for a Vancouver-like tragedy where the poor and low-income earners will all be “Montrealed Out.”

But despite the horrors of the housing market in Vancouver, my novella also celebrates the humanity that still exists among the marginalized there, as in Montreal. The homeless and under-housed help and support each other. They re-invent their sense of community. And hang onto their dignity.

WM: What are the solutions to the worsening housing crisis?

Nawrocki: Remember Overdale, One and Two? We lost a huge, vibrant, diverse community of students, low-income wage earners, pensioners and others in the area bordered by Overdale and MacKay Streets in 1988 during a major battle with the then MCM City Council and a big-time landlord.

‘But despite the horrors of the housing market in Vancouver, my novella also celebrates the humanity that still exists among the marginalized there, as in Montreal. The homeless and under-housed help and support each other. They re-invent their sense of community. And hang onto their dignity.’

– Norman Nawrocki

So much affordable housing, beautiful historic greystones and other gorgeous homes were demolished except for one historic building. But shortly after, we won a fight to save and restore historic homes that were about to be demolished. They were turned into housing coops on Jeanne Mance, La Gauchetière and Anderson Street because the tenants there learned from Overdale One and refused to move.

The city did not want to repeat the embarrassing fiasco from Overdale that gave them a big black mark, so they agreed to work with the tenants rather than against them. There’s also my neighbourhood, Milton Park, below and east of the Molson Stadium, where people resisted demolitions in the late 1970s. Today, we have the largest non-profit, self-managed housing coop project of its kind in North America. And it contains historic, architecturally interesting, restored and saved homes and apartment blocks. All affordable housing for people in need. A community saved from the clutches of greedy developers and the wrecker’s ball.

It’s obvious that we need more social housing built by all levels of government. We also need strict rent control and renoviction and demolition freezes to stop the displacement of low-income tenants. At the same time, we need tenants willing to organize themselves. To realize that they have the right to organize and to refuse to move. To resist evictions. To stay and fight. It’s the only way. Already, there are some new small victories in Montreal for tenants, but we need more tenants willing to fight. To save their homes and this city. To keep it liveable for everyone, regardless of their income.

normannawrocki.blogspot.com

Feature image: East Hastings Street looking towards downtown Vancouver, by Norman Nawrocki