Again, Frances, good reporting on an issue that can be solved – albeit slowly – when all levels of government co-operate.
I would like to see you do a story or two, however, as to what the other Metro Vancouver municipalities are doing regarding homelessness. Notably Burnaby and Delta.
Vancouver has approx. 25% of the population of Metro Vancouver, but I’m told it has 75% of the shelter beds.
It would be a good read in the New Year.

http://www.straight.com/article-365108/vancouver/high-demand-greater-vancouver-shelters-sees-some-turned-away-say-operators

Have you read this? It looks like people are getting hit pretty hard. People with jobs and no place to live? Homelessness quadrupling in the last decade?

500 shelter spaces and 14 projects promised before Gregor was elected can’t really be called new.

@ Lewis . . .

Forget Oscar. Thinq for your self . . .

Yes, “And, the need to provide supports for poverty-addiction-mental illness sometimes is better dealt with in houses housing not more than 7 or 8 people.”

What do you propose? A cuppla hundred Victorian farm cottages in DTES.

Let me acquaint you with a solution . . .

12 stories +/-

On each floor four cottages: all with modern cons. kitchen, bathroom, telly etc. . . . and an intercom . . .

Wow even views!

And, of course, in house attention 24/7 much more readily available than if the attendants were blocks away.

Stay with Google Earth Lewis . .

Check out Unpacking the Housing Numbers: How Much Social Housing Is B.C. Building? and cheer for data like this:

Taken together, the government’s own data indicate an overall net increase of only 280 actual social housing units over the past five years.

Frances, I hate to rain on your parade, and I hope you are right in your assessment that 2010 was the year Vancouver started to turn the corner on homelessness, but I am concerned that your optimism is inflated by political spin—not grounded in reality.

The main reason there are fewer people living on the streets is due to more shelters—not homes. Developer-beholden politicians are happy to provide shelters instead of homes because it reduces pressure to invest tax revenues in social housing, impose inclusionary policies that would stymie land speculation and inflation by requiring that the market produce affordable rental housing, or close the legal loophole that allows landlords to renovict tenants in order to circumvent the meager statutory rent controls.

With the destruction of the Little Mountain Housing complex—which Robertson agreed to despite an election commitment to the contrary—we lost housing for nearly 700 residents, primarily low-income families with children, and seniors. While these residents were relocated to existing BC Housing units, they were scattered and dislocated from their support networks, which often includes extended family. The loss of these homes, which will not likely be replaced before the end of the decade, puts even more pressure on the rapidly vanishing housing stock affordable to the working poor, the disabled and others on fixed incomes, which increases the risk of homelessness for these populations.

The proceeds from the sale of Little Mountain are earmarked for supportive housing (primarily geared to persons with mental health and/or addiction problems) on the “14 sites,” most of which will include more than 100 housing units. Research has shown that supportive housing projects in excess of about 25 units are associated with increased crime and decreased property values in surrounding neighbourhoods. We are therefore not only privatizing public land needed for present and future non-market housing, and applying the proceeds unsustainably (core social safety net obligations should be funded through ongoing tax revenue, not divestment of irreplaceable assets), we are turning our neighbourhoods into guinea pigs for a massive social experiment that has not been attempted in Vancouver outside of the DTES and which has not proved successful elsewhere. If these projects, frequently physically out of scale with their surroundings, are regarded as a social failure and blighting influence, the understandable public backlash will make it far more difficult to provide social housing in the future.

2010 also marks the year that Council failed to extend the rate of change policy to protect rental housing in the C2 (mixed use) zones, and the year Council “redlined” the environmentally advanced, affordable and family-oriented Marine Gardens rental complex by earmarking it for tower redevelopment under the Cambie Corridor Interim Rezoning Policy. Even if Marine Gardens, which employs a district energy system, is not destroyed in the near term, redevelopment of the adjacent property for two podium towers will blight the heavily treed, wildlife-rich complex by subjecting it to dense afternoon shadowing when its car-free and highly permeable laneways function as play areas for resident and neighbourhood children. The rezoning policy that would enable this travesty was rushed through without significant community consultation; it remains to be seen whether our developer-beholden council will respond to the growing community opposition to this utterly top-down “Gateway” concept, a “plan” without a Community Plan that discards key neighbourhood assets.

In short, by cutting corners in planning and resource allocation (attempting to remedy decades of neglect on the cheap); by failing to reverse the net loss of low-income housing (ignoring loopholes that permit renoviction and dislocation); and by pursuing policies that enable gentrification and land speculation, 2010 could turn out to be the year that Vancouver adopted the delusion that we are ending homelessness, when in fact we are perpetuating that vicious spiral and instilling conditions for an even deeper crisis through over-dependence on makeshift interventions, continuation of retrograde policies and the discarding of responsible neighbourhood-based community planning.

Just one example about the “hard to house”. I came across another Capricorn at the Waterfront Station recently. 15 years younger, street-involved, and just released from jail for parole violations. He wanted money, I offered to pay for one night at the Ivanhoe on Main & Terminal.

On the way to the car he explained that he had no I.D. That his bag was with a ‘friend’ nearby on Pender, but that there was nobody home to call on. Could I trust him with the $18 for the night’s stay?

I related the story to a close acquaintance that works with the street involved. His response, “Sounds like he wasn’t ready to give up the street”.

He saw the street as a powerful draw. For him, there is an element of living day-to-day that is like the life of the first peoples before European contact. You move around in an alien environment. Sometimes you do alright, but just as often you can get sick and die. We can only help those that are ready to get help.

Yet, the other Capricorn was quick to point out that the emergency shelters were all full up.

Social housing must be seen as infrastructure: locally planned and managed, with Federal funding (the 35-year-old I spoke with was from North Vancouver, but our street involved come from across the nation).

Form must follow function—rather than market economics. We need to build the kind of housing that is supportive of delivering the best quality of help. Just building the “numbers” clearly is not enough. Else, we will be host to the problems of the New York Boroughs, Chicago, and the rest.

We must work from a comprehensive strategy. It will not be enough to provide shelters. We need those, and we need housing too. We also need the neighbourhood plans that will build out building types that deliver affordable suites (i.e. mortgage helpers).

We need to design & build strong neighbourhoods or quartiers as the baseline measure of social functioning.