A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Last night I took By the Waters of Manhattan: Selected Verse (1962) by Charles Reznikoff to bed with me and read a couple of short pieces about a work crew boarding an over-crowded ferry and a young worker who gets her hair caught in the gears of a factory sewing machine before drifting off.

When I awoke I turned on the radio and listened to our mayor, Gregor Robertson, field questions on CKNW's "Jon McComb Show" about his decision to not seek a fourth term.

McComb: "Do you think that the housing crises has, in effect, left you unelectable as mayor?"

Robertson: "Oh no, not at all. Quite the opposite. I feel it's kinda going against my competitive nature to not run again. I've been elected three times with those consistent priorities of focusing on affordable housing and rental housing in particular. Those of us who are lucky enough to own a place and bought into the market years ago, we're doing fine, and we've had a huge windfall from the increase and made a lot of wealth.

McComb (sarcastically): Well good for you!

Robertson: Yeah, and that is something to be thankful for, but for half of the city here in Vancouver -- rent -- they don't own a place, and that's gotten way tougher. The values of real estate end up impacting rents, so we're seeing the pressure on half the city having trouble with affordability and that's where city hall has to focus on the affordable side of the spectrum, and rental housing, and making sure-- You know, I think that's been a top priority for me, and I expect and hope that the next mayor of Vancouver continues to do everything that city hall can do on housing and transit -- getting the Broadway subway built is still something I am hopeful I can deliver with mayors across the region in the year before this term is up -- so I've still got this year to deliver a whole bunch of the big commitments that I've been committed to.

McComb: But your heart is not in it though.

Robertson: Yeah, that's where I ended up over the holidays with my family and friends for a lot more time than I've had with them for many years and it really hammered home for me personally that I am ready for change.

Perplexed, I return to the imagistic poems of Reznikoff, and this short piece in particular, "Building Boom", which brings to mind the pictures of Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall, Roy Arden and Stan Douglas, not to mention Westbank's "Fight for Beauty" campaign:

The avenue of willows leads nowhere:
it begins at the blank wall of the new apartment house
and ends in the middle of a lot for sale.
Paper and cans are thrown about the trees.
The disorder does not touch the flower branches;
but the trees have become small among the new house,
and will be cut down --
their beauty cannot save them.