Social Investment in the Inner City: Community and Capital in West Broadway, Winnipeg.

Substantial efforts in housing and community development have been focussed onto the West Broadway neighbourhood of inner city Winnipeg in order to stem processes of decline. This paper focuses on the effects of housing work in which residential buildings have been purchased and / or renovated with the support of public or philanthropic resources. Beyond the upgrading of housing stock and the provision of improved quality accommodation, the impacts of such housing work are poorly understood. The paper seeks to document and interpret the relationship in space and time between supported housing work and improvement to the stock undertaken without support. It finds that in some cases in West Broadway, assisted housing work appears to have had a stabilizing influence on the local area and in others there are indications that private sector activity has concentrated near assisted interventions. Indications of gentrification pose particular tasks for community development workers and funding agencies in West Broadway and provide lessons for this work in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]