Alie Lynch

Simon Fraser University Urban Studies master’s student Alie Lynch devotes her professional and academic life to advocating for better housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Her commitment to helping people in one of Canada’s poorest communities has earned her the 2024 Urban Studies Alumni Award for Community Engagement.

Lynch’s interest in the Downtown Eastside developed when she was an undergraduate who played in local bands.

“I would be playing music all over the city, in all these different underground venues, most of which were illegal, some of which were legal,” she says. “A bunch of venues were located in the Downtown Eastside, so I became more involved in the community.”

At that time, Lynch also discovered that bands couldn’t play at very many places because of the city’s bylaw restrictions.

“I thought at the time, ‘Our current urban planning is stifling my ability to play music—it would be cool to be more involved in planning and hopefully change the laws,’” she says.

Lynch also later experienced struggles related to Vancouver’s housing crunch. She became more involved with tenant organizations and personally invested in a new future for housing.

Professionally, she focused on housing in the Downtown Eastside when she became a research and policy coordinator for the Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre (VACPC).

“My job involved doing research on community land trusts and starting to apply for grants and manage grants to build up the potential of having a community land trust. One of my main jobs was to put together a tenant and elder advisory committee. It has about 17 tenants who live in single-room occupancy (SRO) housing, and about eight Indigenous Elders who are active in the Downtown Eastside.”

Lynch worked under the supervision of Norm Leech, whom she credits as a key influence on how she approaches housing and decolonizing the current housing system.

“He has taught me so much about not only the Downtown Eastside, but how the current housing system is so harmful because of its colonial legacy—this colonial drive to keep people really separated and just put into boxes,” she says.

Lynch has continued to work with Leech in her current position as a research and policy coordinator with the Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust (DTES CLT). Her job focuses on looking into the possibility of a community land trust that could get privately owned SROs out of the market and into the hands of community, so they could be both protected and improved.

“Right now, the only people who determine how the city looks in the future are the property owners,” says Lynch. “This way, the community determines how their own neighbourhood gets transformed. It’s not just left in the hands of the private market, which is not going to make decisions based on community wellness necessarily.”

Lynch’s supervisor Norm Leech praises her work with the Trust, saying, “she has been the lynchpin for success of this entire project…Her amazing efforts will make it possible to prevent homelessness for hundreds of people and potentially thousands more in the future.”

Like her work with the Trust, Lynch’s thesis research is focused on the Downtown Eastside’s SROs. She wants to interview residents about the two kinds of SROs available to them: privately owned and government owned. Both kinds of SROs have pros and cons. Privately owned SROs tend to be poorly maintained. They have a monthly rent that exceeds the shelter rate of income assistance. Tenants in these SROs receive no services and have a high chance of being evicted. However, they can live autonomously, like tenants in any other rental property.

Government-owned SROs, on the other hand, are a bit better maintained and have a stable rent. Tenants have different services offered to them and have less chance of being evicted. Their living situation will be more restrictive, though, with more surveillance and security.

Lynch has found that tenants will often opt for more precarious housing where “they get to be a tenant rather than a client”. Maintaining a level of autonomy is more important to them than having services.

“It’s important to examine how the government’s investment into housing is implemented,” says Lynch. “Is it fair to do a one size fits all? The government is implementing it in this way because of how the Downtown Eastside is depicted in both policy and the media as full of people who need really high levels of support. In my research, I hope to dispel that a bit and give some agency back to the tenants and examine what their view of future housing looks like and why it's important to stop this unsuccessful top-down methodology of housing implementation.”

Lynch’s MA supervisor, Professor Yushu Zhu, supports her research in this direction.

“Her past and ongoing efforts, particularly in supporting individuals experiencing housing precarity, are highly commendable and will continue to drive meaningful progress toward a more equitable and just city for all.”

For the immediate future, Lynch intends to continue working with the Trust. She loves research and wants to do it long-term, though in what capacity she’s not quite sure yet. When asked about being an urban leader, she doesn’t see herself as a traditional leading-from-the-front person.

“I prefer to be the engine pushing from behind,” she says. “I want to be gathering and analyzing the data, talking to everyone, and helping put together a plan.”