Last summer, city employees in the Southwest borough scrubbed the equivalent of two football fields’ worth of graffiti from public property, at a cost of over $355,000. But just as soon as it came off, it went back up.
“Graffiti’s a little bit of a game,” says Sterling Downey, the 38-year-old founder of Under Pressure, both a magazine and a festival dedicated to graffiti culture. Usually graffiti goes up, then gets cleaned. Goes back up, gets cleaned again. But in the western part of St-Henri, it goes up—and stays up.
“Most of the stuff [in St-Henri] is old. There’s stuff I painted in 1995-1996 that’s still up,” he says. Downey’s spent a lot of time in the Southwest over the years, both putting graffiti up in his younger days, and taking it down in his more recent ones. He openly plays both sides of the fence, helping the borough develop better policies to deal with all the issues around graffiti, and helping youth find methods of self-expression.
RELATED: A photo slideshow of St-Henri's graffiti and tags.
Two of the biggest causes for graffiti’s pervasiveness in St-Henri have to do with the borough’s own rules. First, it doesn’t currently work on removing graffiti during the winter, despite the fact that graffiti artists work year-round. “It’s a question of safety,” says Huguette Roy, the St-Paul-Émard councillor in charge of the borough’s graffiti dossier. Using pressure washers in the winter could make for some slippery streets and sidewalks, but they’re currently looking for alternatives. Second, the removal of graffiti from private property is governed by owners’ consent.
In short, building owners have to officially permit the city to remove graffiti (for free) from their property, Roy says. The borough can’t force a building proprietor to remove graffiti, and commercial or residential tenants can’t legally authorize the removal if they don’t own the building. In a low-income community like St-Henri, where 76 per cent of residents are renters, there appears to be, at least visually, some passing on of responsibility by tenant, owner and city when it comes to graffiti removal.
And so graffiti accumulates. “There are a lot of buildings that are closed or are for rent,” Downey says. “They aren’t being maintained by the property owners, so they lend well to certain things.”
In other words, St-Henri provides a lot of opportunities for graffiti writers to do their work without fear of getting caught and where their work will likely stay up for a good chunk of time.
“The majority of people are fed up,” says Roy. “But the borough can’t erase it by itself.”
Putting St-Henri in context
Graffiti contributes to the urban blight some parts of St-Henri suffer from, but it’s more a symptom than a cause. The neighbourhood experienced rapid industrialization during the 19th and 20th centuries and triplexes were built cheap and fast to house a large influx of labourers coming to work in St-Henri’s factories. A hundred years later, and for better or worse, a lot of those buildings still remain. The ones that aren’t condos yet are in varying states of disrepair, which begs the question — if the inside’s not so great, why bother fixing the outside?
Because it’s a matter of community involvement, says Downey. “Is it a nuisance? It depends to who, to what. There’s no question that when something’s done without permission, it’s not really acceptable,” he says. As a result, people expect the city to remove the graffiti without them having to lift a finger—“It’s an expectation, and it’s not necessarily wrong. But everyone has to do their part; everyone has to contribute.”
Roy agrees that it would be a lot easier to clean St-Henri up if residents were more involved in the process—not as a matter of responsibility, but more of civic pride.
“Getting the community involved is key. Then you have to maintain the cleanliness — tag goes up, clean it up right away,” Downey says.
As it stands, building owners can either get the borough to remove graffiti, or residents can borrow equipment from a local éco-quartier to remove the graffiti themselves. Both options are free. Whether it’s scrubbed off or covered with paint, Downey suggests residents act quickly when graffiti goes up to help deter people from making one’s home or business a regular target. “We know with graffiti, you have to clean it. It comes back, but you have to be persistent. If you leave it up for a while, you’re putting [your home/business] out there,” Downey says.
Of course, removing graffiti doesn’t solve the problem. Downey and Roy also agree that the key to preventing it in the first place is to work with the area’s many young people on the issues that graffiti is a symptom of, and to teach them to take pride in, and take care of, their community.
“I talk to kids. I listen to them. I talk to them about what they’re involved and interested in. [...] I show them respect, and I open that door. We talk about social issues, we talk about identity issues. They know I’m a graffiti writer. I’m on their side,” Downey says.
Roy also points to a pair of park benches in front of Atelier 850, a youth centre in Little Burgundy. The borough gave the benches to the kids and asked them to take care of them. Roy says that if and when they’re marred by graffiti, the kids spring into action to remove it. “They really take pride in, and care for, those benches,” she says.
Related reading: An in-depth research report (PDF) looking at the population, economy and imminent gentrification of St-Henri.
