Free The Vanishing Track by Stephen Legault Page A

out. That didn’t happen very often. In fact, in the year and a half since she had won a National Newspaper Award, it had never happened. Now she wondered why. She had shown up at the mayor’s office after calling his press liaisons that morning, requesting an interview, and being assured that she would get ten minutes with His Worship. But when she arrived, she was intercepted by a woman named Trish Perry, the deputy planning commissioner for the city.
    â€œMs. Webber?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m Trish Perry. Mayor West has been called away on an urgent matter. His office asked me to talk with you.”
    They shook hands. Nancy said, “You understand, Ms. Perry, that these things aren’t interchangeable. If I had wanted to talk to a civil servant, I would have called one. I want to speak with the mayor.”
    â€œI understand. I was made the new spokesperson on housing this morning. Come, let’s walk to my office. Or would you rather grab a coffee across the street?”
    Nancy stood a moment considering her options. “Let’s go to your office,” she said. They walked through the corridors of City Hall and arrived at the planning department’s section on the second floor.
    When they were seated at a round table in Trish Perry’s cramped office, Nancy opened her notebook. “What is the City’s plan to address the needs of the two hundred and fifty people who will be homeless as a result of closing the Lucky Strike?” asked Nancy.
    â€œIt’s actually more like three hundred people,” responded Perry. “Though it’s single-room occupancy, some of the rooms have couples living in them. We’re working with the Downtown Eastside Community Advocacy Society right now to find housing for those people.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œVarious shelters around the city, and in some SRO s that aren’t at capacity.”
    â€œHow many of those three hundred people will have roofs over their heads tomorrow night?”
    â€œWe’re aiming for one hundred per cent.”
    â€œRealistically?”
    â€œWe expect to get close.”
    Nancy thought of something Cole always said when he heard that refrain: “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” She didn’t think it appropriate to repeat.
    â€œAnd those you don’t find space for?”
    â€œI don’t think anybody believes we can find a bed for every single person who is displaced by this closure. No doubt some folks are going to end up on the street. Understand that the City is doing everything it can to attend to their needs. The Lucky Strike Hotel is a mess. It hasn’t had a renovation in twenty-five years. The inspector found over fifty violations of code. Wiring that’s been eaten by rats. Half the doors in the place don’t close. There are only a handful of fire exit signs. Hallways don’t have lighting.”
    â€œAdvocates say they have been asking the City to order the SRO s to clean up their act for a decade, and the City has been purposefully dragging its feet.”
    â€œI don’t know about that. We’ve known that the SRO s need work. Some of them are a hundred years old. And none of them make much of a profit for their owners; otherwise they wouldn’t be selling them, right? There is only so much the City can do.”
    â€œYou can enforce fire codes.”
    â€œSure we can. We walk in the door, make our inspection, give the owner fifteen days notice to fix up the place, and then they turn around and sell it.”
    â€œYou can fix it up yourselves. You have that authority. Bill the owner for your work.”
    Perry smiled. “In some situations we do. We spent two months fixing up the Liberty Hotel just last spring. Forty-five rooms. Some sixty people living there, including a Chinese man who was one hundred years old. A centenarian. Can you believe that? He’d been in that room for a decade.