Community Builders

The community builders blog 
explores the power of small in 
healthy community development 
initiatives and seeks to understand 
why redemption is resilient in a 
world dominated by natural 
selection. 



                              Gordon K. Wiebe 
                              is a retired 
                              minister who 
                              lives with his 
                              wife, Catherine, 
at the Dodson Rooms on Hastings in 
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. 
Personal interests include quiet 
coffee meetings with benevolent 
business investors, innovative 
social service providers and 
agenda-free altruists. 



In Canada the Community Builders 
society coordinates best practice 
market housing initiaitves and models 
compassionate adoption for at-risk 
infants. In Sub-Saharan Africa the 
society promotes self-sufficiency 
through relationally-based 
mirco-enterprise.

View the Blog

"Hart's Housing"
Hart Molthagen, the owner of Jubilee
Rooms on Main, is inerviewed by the 
Canadian Broadcasting Coorporation.

"Sounds Like Canada"
David Ash the owner of Dodson Rooms
on Hastings, is interviewed by Shelagh 
Rogers of the CBC and discusses the 
Vivian Housing Centre in Vancouver's 
Downtown Eastside.

"Frontline Heroes " by Dimitrios Otis 
From the January 18, 2008 Issue of the Vancouver Courier. 
"...the people behind (the) front desks at SROs might be the 
city's best kept, secret heroes on the front line of human need... 
Egon Otten is a quiet, soft-spoken man. He is 69 and lives in 
West Vancouver just one block from the ocean ... Otten is a 
front desk worker at Dodson Rooms..."

"From Slum to Safe Haven"   by Glenn Bohn 
From the January 22, 2005 Issue of the Vancouver Sun.
"Whatever the label -- "Christian social  entrepreneurs," 
"benevolent businessmen" or just plain  "developers" -- 
tenants at the Dodson say life in the hotel is better under 
the new management."

"The Power of Many"   by Marcie Good
From the December 2004 Issue of Vancouver. "...I ask him 
what makes the Dodson different from other hotels, and 
he finally gives me the words I've been waiting to hear. 
Those other places, they're residences, eh?' he says 
waving down Hastings Street.'This is home.'"

"It's Our Parallel Universe"
A short video that featrues parrallel 
interviews of a rich investor and a 
tenant in the Dodson Rooms.

"Can The Very Rich"   by Gordon Wiebe
"Today, at the Jubilee and Dodson, Molthagen and Ash do 
not know all the tenants by name nor do they visit the 
rooming houses on a daily basis. But a kind of chemistry 
connects them with the tenants in their buildings - sort of 
like a parallel universe where the very rich dance with the 
very poor without touching."