If there’s one factor driving change in Greater Vancouver’s Jewish community, it’s the cost of housing.
The high price of single detached homes in Vancouver, along the Oak Street corridor where most of the city’s major Jewish institutions are located, has jumped 220 per cent in the last nine years. Today, an average single detached home in this area costs $2 million, while the average townhouse sells for $622,000, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.
This reality has resulted in many Jewish families moving to outlying areas including East Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, White Rock, Burnaby and the TriCities of Coquitlam, Port Moody and Port Coquitlam.
With their dispersion from the core come challenges, says Shelley Rivkin, associate director of community affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. “We’re trying to focus on innovative and organic ways to keep people together, but it’s more challenging to establish what their needs are as community members become dispersed,” she says.
Abba Brodt, a Montrealer who now heads the Richmond Jewish Day School (RJDS), says Jews in Vancouver have been making a tradeoff all the time. They move to areas where it’s less expensive to purchase a home, but risk easy access to a key part of their Jewish heritage in the process, he says.
“It’s a brutal set of choices, the fact that real estate is driving where people can live,” he reflects. “Whether you’re in East Vancouver or Burnaby, you’re definitely pushing the boundaries of where the traditional community has always been. What does it mean if everything keeps spreading out, and what does it do to community cohesion?”
It does damage, says Rabbi Don Pacht, a local mohel and principal at Vancouver Hebrew Academy, an Orthodox elementary day school. “The single most significant challenge here in Vancouver is affordability,” he says, reflecting on the 10 years he’s lived in the city since leaving Rochester, N.Y. “That creates a challenge for families who want to stay frum and be in Vancouver. They don’t have the option of moving to the outlying areas because they need to be within walking distance of the shul. So it’s been hard to attract families and keep frum families here.”
Adam M, 57, and his wife (not his real name) moved to Vancouver from Montreal in February, and the two have struggled to find affordable rental accommodation.
“There’s great, great demand, a number of people looking at the same time, and you’re fighting with tens of thousands of students who pick up units quickly and cheaply,” he says. “When you get to a showing, you find up to eight others there in the space of one hour. So it’s difficult and very frustrating.” Adam is shomer Shabbat, which further limits his options for accommodation if he wants to be near the Jewish centre.
Three months ago, he leased a home he could ill afford while he continues to scour the advertisements for more suitably priced accommodations and for a job. For Adam, approaching the Tikvah Housing Society in Vancouver was a comforting experience, and they agreed to help subsidize his rent. The non-profit organization helps low-income Jewish individuals and families access safe, affordable housing.
“The Jewish community in Vancouver does help,” Adam says, “but they need more resources from donors. I know a lot of religious people that would want to come and live in Vancouver with their families because of the lifestyle out west. The problem is living close to the Jewish community is too expensive.”
This four-bedroom, 3-1/2 bath house in Richmond, B.C., sold for more than $2.4 million.
Orthodox young people who want to marry and settle in Vancouver face an additional problem, Rabbi Pacht says. “Shidduchs are a challenge, only because they’re just not done. People don’t even think of looking around here for a shidduch, because any couple that has paired up here in the Orthodox community has been paired up for years. The singles know who the prospects are, and if there’s no one in that pool for you, you know you’re looking at Toronto, New York or Los Angeles.
“Once our young adults have established themselves in other communities and met someone over there, it’s hard to uproot and come back to Vancouver, even though they may want to,” he says.
On the education front, the vast majority of school-age Jewish children are not accessing any form of Jewish education, Brodt says, with only four out of every 10 kids attending Jewish camp, Jewish supplementary school and Jewish day school combined.
Rivkin has noticed that while 40 per cent of Jewish parents will support their kids going to Jewish elementary school programs, the degree to which they support their kids going to Jewish high school is different. (The CJN contacted Russ Klein, principal of King David High School in Vancouver, who refused to comment.) Of the kids that do attend Jewish day school, 40 per cent are receiving some assistance from the Jewish federation.
“Sixty per cent of Jewish kids in Greater Vancouver don’t go to Jewish camp, supplementary school or day school,” Brodt says. “Our collective goal should be to go out and meet these people, wherever they are, and connect with them, showing them that we care about them and their kids.”
He’s done precisely that at RJDS, where losses in recent years have flattened out and the school now has 90 students. It has a capacity of 130.
“We have to go out there and make the school a place where they want to be,” Brodt says. “Whether you’re a synagogue or a school, you can’t just open your doors and expect people to come in anymore. You have to go out and sell people on what you do, find out what’s important to them. This is Western Canada, where the Jewish community has always had a reputation for being less connected and less affiliated than your standard Montreal or Toronto community.”
The Jewish federation and its partner associations have created several initiatives to reach Jews in outlying areas. The Jewish Community Foundation just funded East Side Jews so that Jewish families can come together around Jewish holidays and for Shabbat. The expanded PJ Library program provides ongoing Jewish education for families with young kids, even if they’re not close to a community institution. And in Richmond, the Richmond Hub opened last June to bring Jewish social services to the city. It’s a common office and meeting space where Jewish organizations can serve their clients without them having to cross the bridge into Vancouver.
And that bridge, while small in physical terms, is a massive psychological barrier for Jews who live on either side of it.
Despite the cost of living in British Columbia, the Jewish population grew 14.2 per cent between 2001 and 2011, Rivkin says. “That’s a faster increase than any other city in Canada, and our population is now at 26,750.”
But there’s also been a growth in the rate of poverty within the Jewish community, from one in seven to one in six. More people are coming to the Jewish community for assistance, she notes, whether it’s camp scholarships, support for JCC memberships or for basic needs.
Rabbi Pacht says he’d love to see Vancouver become a workable place for young Jewish families. “It may mean changing people’s mindsets to the idea that it’s OK to raise a family in a townhouse or apartment, as opposed to in a single detached home,” he suggests. As he looks to the future of the frum community, he suspects growth will come from within by connecting more people to Torah and Orthodoxy.
“Vancouver has a very connected community between Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and unaffiliated Jews, with far more overlap and interplay between different segments of the community than, say, in Toronto or New York,” Rabbi Pacht reflects. “Here, Conservative Jews and Orthodox rabbis are attending the same bar mitzvahs, weddings and events. I think there’s a real thirst for genuine Torah in the community and, with the right group of people spearheading outreach, we can create more and more Orthodox Jews from the community in Vancouver, families that may not have grown up frum but are not averse to growing and are here to stay.”