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Vancouver about to kick off a rent bank to reduce homelessness

March 21st, 2012 · 8 Comments

Like Surrey, Prince George and Toronto, Vancouver is about to start a small rent bank, kicking in $150,000 of the total cost, with $350,000 coming from Streetohome, the private-sector group working on homelessness, and others.

The bank is aimed at helping prevent homelessness by providing small loans to people to help them get or retain housing.

I’m attaching the report below so those of you unfamiliar with the concept can take a look at how it works, which does NOT include just handing out money to anyone who phones saying “I can’t pay my rent.”

As you’ll see in the report, applicants are assessed and people who’ve been in place a long time and have mostly paid their rent regularly but have run into a crisis are the likely recipients. No one can get more than $1,000 every two years — it’s not a monthly rent supplement.

I discovered this concept when I researched and wrote a series on homelessness and housing for the Toronto Star 12 years ago, as a result of winning an Atkinson Fellowship. Toronto was just starting its rent bank, which helped prevent a young single mother with two kids, who worked as an administrative assistant at a local university, from being evicted.

My research then showed that loan repayment wasn’t always the highest. On the other hand, the $500-$1,000 that was “lost” to clients who didn’t pay back was still considerably cheaper than having the whole family end up in the street.

At that time, Toronto was housing hundreds of homeless families in suburban motels after they’d been evicted or couldn’t find housing after leaving abusive homes or something equally catastrophic.

A lot of agencies have refined this concept over the years, to improve their chances of lending to the people most likely to benefit from one-time help over a bad hump. We’ll see how it goes here.

rent bank report-1

 

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Derp

    Did Vancouver not used to have one in the 80-90’s?

  • Glissando Remmy

    Thought of The Day

    “If only Charles Dickens were still alive today…”

    What kind of a cruel joke is this?
    Instead of hitting the cause on the head, you glucose-IV… the effect?

    $1000 over two years is a travesty and it only throws more monies into the landlords pockets. Period.

    Don’t throw the case of a student single-mom, with kids at me,cause that was a case with a happy ending. Let’s talk about the other 99 cases.

    There are some places, you know it, I know it, where $1000 represents half the rent per one month! How about that?
    In most if not ALL cases totally unjustified.

    So after throwing your “last resort” money over one “badly assessed” rent, what do you do the following month if your situation does not improve?
    “Joe the Street Musician”, is your name, if you have no friends, and no family to take you in.

    No wake up call for the people of this city. Not yet. Not ever. Instead of doing something constructive, the powers that be are throwing themselves into a PR exercise of sorts, creating “Task Forces”, printing reports and excelling in Power Point Presentations. Meanwhile designers from all over the world are presenting their latest creations in life on the street carry-on shelters, and rubberized socks.
    How rude.
    Instead of finding a permanent solution all the effort is focused on making life less miserable for the people already on the street.
    Oh yeah, that’s just grand!
    Life goes on. Another term another buck.

    Another bureaucratic game concocted in the bowels of some out of this world of charity/ city hall/ private housing triumvirate.

    Why is it that no one touches on the fact that the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB), that was so effective in Vancouver a little more than ten years ago, is now on a respirator somewhere in Burnaby?
    If there was anyone in dire need of a defibrillator the RTB was it.
    RTB was effective, fair, and it did protect the most at risk tenants and/ or landlords.
    Not any more.

    Pity. I think “The Life And Adventures of Gordon Campbell” would have made a nice Dickens title. Well, too late, he’s in London… A Tale of Two Cities, as…

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Bill Lee

    What are the poor for housing?

    It is not really measured in Canada by most agencies.

    An article today in the Globe and Mail talks about a recent StatCan poverty levels study (Low Income in Canada: a Multi-line and Multi-index Perspective by Brian Murphy, Xuelin Zhang and Claude Dionne.)
    You might be looking for dollars$ and this absolute is not what they are measuring as what percent is poor. And you can find percent and dollars for Vancouver and B.C.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/daily-mix/the-changing-face-of-poverty-in-canada/article2376607/

    “Who are the poor in Canada?
    For a country that’s pretty good at tracking economic trends, collective knowledge about incomes and mobility is scant. Canada no longer publishes timely national stats on welfare rates, and provincial tracking of social assistance rates varies considerably.”
    “Quebec and British Columbia had the highest incidences of low income among the provinces.”

    You will see LICO and MBM numbers,(See article and study for explanations) and the first graphs and Tables A1 etc. in the 34 year study from 1976 to 2009 will give you dollar amounts.
    So they will not by making house payments and will be restricted to cheap rentals and those are outside of Vancouver or in the gentrifying East Side or Marpole.

    So rent assurance and more spaces will be essential.

  • tf

    In my opinion – a waste of money and time.

    As Glissandro says above – what good will $1000 do once in 2 years? It might help for one month but does nothing to help with poverty, unemployment, financial know-how, a low vacancy rate and sky-high rents in the first place!

    This only creates more bureaucracy, conflict, stress, and work for service-providers. None of which is beneficial to someone who can’t pay their rent at the end of the month.

    This idea is a bandage for a flood – in other words – ineffective.

  • tf

    Oh, I forgot – welcome back Frances!

  • West End Gal

    I too second tf #4, and want to echo Glissando’s comment #2
    “$1000 over two years is a travesty and it only throws more monies into the landlords pockets. Period.”
    Not to say that the truth should have hit the city administrators over the heads with this:
    “RTB was effective, fair, and it did protect the most at risk tenants and/ or landlords.”
    The Residential Tenancy Branch needs a revival, big time. That would be the easiest way out, fight Reno-victions and all the other rent increase abuses. Bravo Glissando for bringing it up! I would like to hear from other renters like myself on this subject. How about Mr West End MLA!?

  • Bill McCreery

    This may be a well meaning initiative. Hopefully it might work. But this is a Provincial responsibility. Why did not the Vision admin not get them to put money into this?

  • judyinwr

    Yep Bill it probably should be a provincial initiative but we voted this govt in and they are addressing poverty in another way, which may or may not be working depending on your income and political ideology. For many wages go down or stay the same and housing costs go up. This is a real problem for many. Think of it this way and I mean absolutely no dis-respect to low income earners, this is a metaphor only. Someone is throwing babies in a river. Someone runs in and starts teaching the babies to swim, someone goes in the river and pulls the babies out of the river and someone goes up the river to stop someone from throwing the babies in the river. Rent banks try to pull the babies from the river and try to teach the babies to swim (financial education is part of the program) however only the electorate can stop those at the top from throwing the babies in the river!