Because this topic seems to be generating a lot of controversy, I will do a bit of notebook dumping here to give everyone all the evidence available before they come to a verdict. And then we can move on to other things.
Entries Tagged as 'Homelessness'
Full text quotes: Gregor Robertson, Suzanne Anton, James Ridge
April 28th, 2009 · 6 Comments
Tags: Developer World · Downtown Eastside · Homelessness · Uncategorized
You are still paying Judy Rogers’ salary
April 23rd, 2009 · No Comments
Oh, poor Paul Hancock, the city’s Freedom of Information officer. He must be working overtime these days, dealing with all the FOIs that have flooded in in the last four months. Here are the latest results from one of my requests. The details of Judy Rogers’ severance agreement. Not much new in terms of the [...]
Tags: Homelessness · Uncategorized
What those temporary homes for the homeless will look like
April 10th, 2009 · 8 Comments
Some of the comments following a recent post showed me that people aren’t sure what these pre-fab housing units for the homeless will look like. People were asking whether there’d be bathrooms inside and so on, after I posted recently that the city is proposing to put almost 200 units on two city lots downtown. [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Pre-fab trailers for homeless coming to downtown?
April 8th, 2009 · 4 Comments
The city’s housing director came to council with a late report yesterday on a plan for interim housing — i.e. housing for the 500 or so people now in the emergency shelters the city set up in December and January that will give them a place to stay once the shelters shut down in June [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Which is the best way to solve homelessness?
March 5th, 2009 · 10 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Where will the 500 in shelters go?
March 3rd, 2009 · 4 Comments
Oops, forgot to post my story from the Globe today earlier than this. But here it is. A look at what’s going on, as the city and province try to figure out where all those 500 people now camping out at First United and a warehouse near Great Northern and in city buildings under the [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Coleman becomes homelessness czar — not just for Downtown Eastside
March 3rd, 2009 · 8 Comments
The rumbling started this morning about the announcement that Housing Minister Rich Coleman was going to become the Downtown Eastside czar. As it turns out, it’s a little more than that. He’s actually being put in charge of figuring out what all is going on with homelessness, mental health and addiction in five different communities, [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Homeless shelters make a dramatic change to downtown
February 19th, 2009 · 4 Comments
It’s hard to get a read on Vancouver’s homeless situation through either direct observation or statistics. Few of us monitor the streets at night to do a count and what we see in the daytime can often be deceiving. Lots of people who have homes are still out on the streets during the day. Even [...]
Tags: Homelessness
Province buys housing units for the homeless all over B.C.
January 30th, 2009 · 8 Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Homelessness
What are the next steps with the Burnaby Centre for the mentally ill and addicted
January 27th, 2009 · 25 Comments
Monte Paulsen asked a good question about my recent story on the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health & Addictions, which is a 100-bed facility out near BCIT that is pioneering an incredibly comprehensive and high level of care for those people whose problems with combos of mental illness, addiction, and physical disabilities are so severe [...]
Tags: Downtown Eastside · Homelessness