This just out from city hall, where apparently some poor wretch is still employed to put out news releases while everyone else is on holiday.
Howe Street shelter closes two days early
The Howe Street shelter has closed two days ahead of schedule thanks to the availability and acceptance of alternate housing by shelter residents, Vancouver Deputy [...]

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The residents around the two homeless shelters under the Granville Bridge started complaining a month ago about the activities in the shelters and their uncertain future. At first, they didn’t get a lot of attention, but the story exploded in the last couple of weeks and has turned into one of city hall’s major unchecked [...]

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I got a copy of a letter last week from the Fraser Valley Regional Library board that expressed an anxiety felt by many out there. It began:
Over the past few weeks the Board of Fraser Valley Regional Library, along with other
libraries across the province were concerned to hear rumors over possible significant
reductions in the provincial [...]

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A big report on the city’s homelessness efforts is on the agenda for next week. Most of it states a lot of what we’ve heard throughout the last few months in terms of the state of affairs here in Vancouver re homelessness and where the city would like to go.
A new squib that was interesting [...]

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For my latest in Vancouver magazine, I got to spend some time with the province’s ambitious Housing Minister NOT at housing announcements. Love him or hate him, no one can deny that Coleman is pouring a lot of energy into the housing/homelessness issue.
The question for some is what the long-term consequences of his vision of [...]

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Get used to it. Everyone is going to be writing about us ad nauseam for the next year. Here’s just one sample of how we look to the outside world, from today’s Financial Times: homelessness, drug addiction, gang violence all chipping away at our beautiful image.

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Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson got to deliver HIS speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade today, right after Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts’ speech to her board yesterday. Like Dianne, he promised lots of things to stimulate developers and construction: speeded up processes, some vague stuff on fee concessions that I couldn’t get a tight [...]

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Word is about to come down that the city and province will put money in to keeping the new, as they’re called, “Gregor shelters” open for a few more months, while more permanent housing is brought on board. That’s the result of intensive meetings Friday, Saturday and Sunday with Mayor Gregor Robertson, Housing Minister Rich [...]

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This illuminating email exchange went is making the rounds today in the city, with two very different approaches to finding solutions to homelessness.
Hello Michael,
Would you publically, along with HEAT, Streets to Home, BCS, Gregory
Henriquez and Housing Providers, have a press conference and say to the
province and feds that we need them to fund 800 units [...]

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B.C.’s auditor-general issued a definite C- report card today on how the provincial government is dealing with homelessness, saying not only does it not have a clear plan for reducing it but it doesn’t even have good information on what the homelessness problem is. You can read the whole report here.

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