That’s the latest fun news from city hall, as per this report that just got put up on the city’s website.
The cost of the 250 housing units has soared from the original estimate of $65 million to $110 million. Now the city is facing the question of what to do — put in millions more [...]

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Another fun morning in another unheated brick building being renovated, with the housing crowd in the province as everyone gathered at the St. Helen’s hotel on Granville Street. That was to hear the premier and Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced they had bought 601 new units around the province in 15 buildings, all as part [...]

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I haven’t bothered posting the last couple of days on the Olympic village because there is now such a raging torrent of media coverage that I decided to stand on the riverbank letting it flow by, while I think about what’s going on. I’m sure many of you are in the same state, as we’ve [...]

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Hi Frances,
Thanks for your response to my pre-Christmas post on homelessness. It’s important there be a real debate about these issues, and it seems to have started. So let me respond to some of what you have written.
1. You write, “ … Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced he had bought 10 Downtown Eastside hotels to [...]

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Just before Christmas, MLA David Chudnovsky sent a little missile in my direction, saying that I had been suckered by government propaganda (yet again, I think was the implication) when I put up a blog item about the provincial government delaying the bid process on some of its 12 social housing projects to try to [...]

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I’ve heard some people fretting that the province may be stalling on construction of all its fancy new social housing projects, specifically the 12 fast-tracked ones in Vancouver.
But, au contraire, it seems as though they’re just working out a better deal.
As the construction industry crashes in B.C., it’s not all bleak news, it turns [...]

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I was forwarded this email from Vancouver’s housing planner, Dan Garrison, which gives the detailed list of social housing projects completed, under construction, in development and you name it from 2005-2010. This is helpful for everyone because at least now the various sides in the debate over whether the provincial government and city are doing [...]

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After I posted my little vignette about the trauma of renting my basement suite (hundreds of calls from desperate people), I got a couple of comments from people who went through similar experiences recently, at either end of the rental trauma.
I also got this question from regular correspondent RossK: “Sure would be interested in reading [...]

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Three years ago at this time, the one-time Downtown Eastside housing activist was getting ready for what looked like, at last, a successful campaign to be Vancouver’s mayor at the head of the gosling Vision Vancouver party. As everyone knows, he ended up losing to Sam Sullivan by about 4,000 votes. There was a lot [...]

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