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Vancouver business elite discovers how messy solving homelessness is

March 8th, 2010 · 14 Comments

For years, I’ve heard that business leaders in the city are itching to give millions to solve homelessness and, related to that, the problems of the Downtown Eastside. And many have tried to tap into that.

Former mayor Philip Owen and others started a fund through the Vancouver Foundation to try to encourage donations for the Downtown Eastside. Various housing groups have charitable arms to encourage donations. And especially during the Sam Sullivan administration at city hall, I heard a lot about how there were businesses waiting in the wings to give to the right project.

The Streetohome Foundation, brought to life through former city manager Judy Rogers and former former city manager Ken Dobell, was supposed to funnel all of that goodwill. It may yet do it, but it has had a rocky start the foundation’s business leaders grapple with the complexity and politics around homelessness. I explored the whole issue in my latest Vancouver magazine column here.

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  • Lionsgate

    Why is the conversation about how to deal with the DTES not gravitating toward building a new mental health facility? Closing Riverview was a mistake. The lands that had once been suggested as a replacement to St. Paul’s (yards next to the train station) should just be dedicated to another hospital with a focus on mental health. The real-estate play of selling St. Paul’s to pay for a new hospital was always ambitious, but post recession/athletes village seems like an unlikely play. With another batch of towers, and with it a larger population base, set for NEFC another downtown hospital will eventually be needed anyway. I believe that people, the business community, would be willing to contribute to a very specific project with identified goals around outcomes. Toronto is a great example of where this has already been successful. There are 2 mental health facilities on Q. West that serve a large population and the area has been able to successfully gentrify around it. This should not be led by the usual cast of characters, but by a long standing Vancouverite with strong business background and access to capital from government and private hands. Partnership with medical boards and an individual within that community would add a great deal of legitimacy.

  • mary

    the link doesn’t work, but your intro is tantalizing

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    “January 12, 2010, after spending $700,000 of “…government money on research and operating costs, Streetohome released its 10-year plan… 2,000 units needed beyond what the province is already building will take $500 million.” [page 3]

    These are the real numbers in the story. If we want to end homelessness by building housing, we need a $500 million dollar bond issue. Now.

    We will need a non-profit developer that will see the job through turn-key; we will need non-profits that will run the housing after it is built; and we will need to understand how these non-profits are going to be funded. Will it be government grants, public sector fundraising, or by what is sometimes termed “profit centres”?

    There is that old saw about “buying a person a fish; or teaching them to fish”. The latter is always better. That brings me to a question I have been pondering for some time: do we give the 2,000 units away; sell them; or lease them in 30 to 99 year terms?

    Of course, that just takes care of the homelessness issue in 2010 terms. We are left with the spectre that after the 3,700 are housed, a new wave will come in.

    However, we’re only scratching on the back of a BulaBlog so lets keep going.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem that haunts us is of our own making. We have confused homelessness, poverty, mental health, addiction, and having the historic neighbourhoods in a prolonged period of decline as one and the same problem. Canadian Northrope Frye’s admonition probably applies: We have to distinguish where we cannot divide.

    I submit we have two problems, not one—one is a problem in urbanism; the other a problem in social governance and moral conscience. No one has got the first one right. As far as the second one goes, it is an issue in culture and governance. A queer mix of our ability to get up in the morning and stare the face in the mirror in the eye, and political will.

    To solve the first problem, we need a complete urban design plan for the historic neighbourhoods, or the so-called Downtown Eastside.

    The ability to have “profit centres”, and to turn the neighbourhoods around without opening the flood-waters of gentrification, hinges on the targets that we can only measure at the neighbourhood or “quartier” scale.

    The good news will also come from analysis at that scale. If the historic neighbourhoods are returned to urban function—say, to look like Mount Pleasant or Strathcona—what will be the savings in municipal services? And, keeping in mind that there will be a chunk of non-market products, what can we expect as the tax increment from a revived tax base?

    The bad news is that we really have shown no capacity to get this done. The recent Historic Area Height Review, the Woodwards, the Storyeum, the Olympic Village, the revitalization of Cambie Street post cut-and-cover fiasco, the late start to planning TOD along the Canada Line, and any number of other small and large examples remind me that we still don’t get the urbanism around here.

    I dunno. It rains, and that keeps us busy.

  • Bill Smolick

    Donating money isn’t going to “solve” homelessness.

  • Urbanismo

    Intractable, intractable!

    Charles Dickens used to enjoy the hangings at Pentonville. He would rent a room overlooking the gallows and enjoy a good meal of roast lamb whilst watching the spectacle; evidently one or two of the youngsters, who had done none so much a steal a loaf of bread, would put on quite a show before the trap was sprung!

    Then, and later, along came Canon Barnett: or more effectively his wife Dame Henrietta. They were partly responsible for eliminating the “rookeries” which were then London’s version of DTES, except far, far worse.

    Dickens gave us a bowdlerized glimpse of the “rookeries” in “Oliver Twist”.

    The canon and his good wife were able to have the rookeries demolished: they were located were the now, fashionable, shopping street New Oxford Street is now located. I bought a nice gold watch there on one of my visits: like who gives a shit were the poor now live? Dame H established Hull House, a sort of refuge somewhat like a Sally Anne bandstand out of the rain: totally inadequate but a comforting gesture to keep the Bermondsey street gangs out of the headlines,

    What happened to the Bermondsey street gangs? Well, they were conveniently wiped out on the
    Somme, yunno the one Pierre Burton claims to be Canada’s identity rite of passage, and other such firework displays. The leftovers were pretty well accounted for, later, on Sword and Juno beaches: sure as hell kept the riff raff off the street.

    In the early 1950’s I briefly worked on, what we called, the South Lawn Building at Riverview. It was part of a, supposedly, enlightened approach to caring: a loony bin without the bars. Shortly after completion, Riverview wound down in what we all thought was the best way to handle “those” people.

    Back in the skid road days I cannot remember seeing all those dumpster divers shooting up. Indeed, in the 60’s, a real cool place to eat was the “The Green Door” Chinese restaurant, in what is now a notorious back alley. I ate there all the time. I do not remember any shooters then!

    So now we are lamenting: the international MSM ignored our dirty little secret.

    Every city has them, we console ourselves . . . huh huh . . . pretty damn callous!

    Closing Riverview was a big mistake . . .

    Intractable, we say!

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    http://www.streetohome.org/about-streetohome/streetohome-plan/10-year-plan

    Link to the plan.

  • Blaffergassted

    For years, I’ve heard that business leaders in the city are itching to …

    a) give millions to solve homelessness, or

    b) stop paying taxes and leave the cost of social programs to the people who use them.

    I’m guessing the second group is larger.

    Coleman is probably the most effective BC Housing minister we’ve seen in 35 years, but … dammit …

    The astronomical cost of market housing is the bigger problem.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    A first look at the Streetohome “Plan” shows a first rate effort at tackling homelessness in our city. The analysis is sharp. I’d give these folks their time line to produce results, and look forward to their “Report Cards”.

    1. Two concerns

    (i) “We know that the combination of housing, health care and social services can end a person’s homelessness and prevent future homelessness.” p14

    That still leaves the neighbourhoods teetering on the edge. Home is not just the roof over our heads, it is also the “place” where the home is located.

    The Board will remember this principle as “Location, location, location”. I think of it as “good” urbanism.

    Assuming most of the homes are going into the Historic Neighbourhoods as they are today, it’s hard to reconcile than anyone in their right mind would invest this amount of capital into an area suffering from a bankrupt vision of planning.

    (ii) Given that what is represented in the foundation are the best business brains in our community, I would have rather seen them tackle the issue of reinvesting in the neighbourhoods at a massive scale, and put the lobbying muscle to shifting the planning paradigm.

    Making the historic neighbourhoods the next “Vancouver Miracle” has to be seen as part of solving homelessness.

    2. Looking at the Streetohome Plan

    Page 15 of “The Plan” breaks down the 10-year costs:

    “$50 million—an average of $28,000 per unit for dedicated buildings, and $26,000 per unit for scattered sites.”

    The yearly operating cost estimates (purpose built product):

    1. Financing the development, construction (mortgage) $10,400
    2. Operating & maintenance (strata fees) $5,100
    3. Supports (assisted care) $12,500

    Total $28,000 ($26,000 if in “scattered sites” or

    1,600 housing units/purpose built $44,800,000
    400 units scattered sites $10,400,000

    Total $55,200,000 or $55.2 million to pay for, operate and support 2,000 units of assisted housing per year.

    About $23 million per year or 42% are what I would term the costs of “software”, or providing the supports necessary to make it “assisted housing”, not just housing. Next, we can take a second cut at the building development or “hardware” costs of the issue.

    3. Our Own Numbers for Construction

    With Michael Geller’s help, we had generated here on this blog a figure of $1.15 million for a fee-simple, 4,000 s.f. house.

    Retaining 800 s.f. for program space (shared facilities, recovery work, suite for live-in support worker, etc.), the house yields 3,200 s.f. for living space.

    The building was based on one of two FormShift entries I designed with Ron Simpson. Thus, it fits the typical Vancouver neighbourhood plat, it works as architectural space, has parking, etc. Each house occupies its own plot of land. There are no SROs; the smallest unit is 400 s.f. If the scale of housing needs to be greater than, say 8 singles at a time, then two or more of these buildings can be developed together.

    Portions of these buildings can be used as “market housing” providing a rental income to the house.

    The 3,200 s.f. for living space per building could house:

    2 full families
    4 single parent families
    8 single residents
    16 SRO-replacement units

    A yearly mortgage cost for the first 25 years might be in the $70,000 range, or $8,750 per single unit, per year. The question of Property Tax has to be addressed. Applying this building type to the “gap analysis” in housing established by HometoStreet, we get the following:

    Page 11 of “The Plan” breaks down the “housing gap” of 2,006 units as:

    602 youth (75 houses, 8 units each)
    192 families (if single parent, 48 houses)
    1212 Adults (152 houses, 8 units each)

    275 houses total at $1.15 million or $316.3 million turn-key (best ball park estimate, market rate development).

    We can lower the bond issue from my previous post by 40%. We still face the question around form of ownership. Note that under either the “sale” or “long term lease” options, we would include selling to housing co-ops.

    4. Urbanism

    An important footnote is that the 4,000 s.f. free-hold building gets the urbanism right. It can be built incrementally, without land assembly, on any Vancouver neighbourhood, not just the DTES.

    However, in the Historic Neighbourhoods, it would be compatible with the historic fabric, helping to fill the missing teeth. The product is high-density, human-scale, and street oriented. It use contributes to making walkable neighbourhoods and safe streets and lane ways.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Looking down the street, the houses would look identical regardless of whether they were market, assisted, or non-market. That homogeneity is also part of good urbanism.

  • Joe Just Joe

    The problem I see with issuing a bond is where is the money going to come back to pay the interest and then to repay the bond? Why not just use government money to begin with as they can borrow directly much cheaper and without the administrative overhead of a bond.

    Maybe a tax lawyer could weigh into this idea, if it’s legally possibly. Have a non-profit issue a bond, but instead of paying interest on that bond issue tax receipts. For instance you buy a $1000 bond and it’s earns 6%. Each year you would get a charitable tax receipt for $60, and at the end of your term you receive the money back although a portion of people would happily reinvest so the money doesn’t all come out at once. Is this possible and has it been tried.

  • urbanismo

    Just because its social housing doesn’t mean it must be a prison . . .

    http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/just.for.fun.pdf

    Just for fun . . .

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Good examples “urbie”. Why not have every house be chosen from a design competition. Except that instead of “jurors” we have construction companies picking the winners. Kind of like going to a plan drawing service.

  • Bill Lee

    @Lewis N. Villegas // Mar 9, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    “. Kind of like going to a plan drawing service”

    Which is what much of the veteran’s housing was after the war. Pick one of 6 plans and the government funds it. There used to be another house plan shop next to the Broadway and Yukon licence office.

    Much of South East Vancouver is old same-design Veterans Housing plans. Get on your bikes and have a look. Make notes and then go on the Shitty’s VanMap and see they are assessed at a million or more.

    They didn’t make the Post Canada stamp 1998 series ( http://www.knpha.ca/housart.html ) but were servicable.

    Others in the infamous area northeast of Renfrew Elementary.

    Here’s 2 side by side in SE
    http://www.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2188+E+55th+Ave,+Vancouver,+BC,+Canada&sll=49.219405,-123.062797&sspn=0.007092,0.013583&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=2188+E+55th+Ave,+Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&ll=49.223568,-123.062797&spn=0,359.986417&z=16&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=49.219402,-123.062793&panoid=-TCTNKyfhaeo7X7LDBsciw&cbp=12,205.02,,0,13.79
    [hate these google refs]

    …”The ‘Build Your Own Home’ Programme of the Veterans’ Land Act operated from the late
    1940s until 1975 in urban, suburban, fringe and rural areas…. Published and archival documentation of the programme, however, focuses on those beneficiaries whose main source of income was wage employment, almost all of whom worked in urban areas.Urban workers could take advantage of the scheme in two ways. A veteran who applied under the small holdings programme could obtain the greatest benefits. … ‘

    from
    Schulist, Tricia and Harris, Richard(2002) ”Build Your Own Home’: state-assisted self-help housing in Canada, 1942-75′, Planning Perspectives, vol 17: issue 4, October 2002 , pages 345 – 372
    To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02665430210154759

  • MB

    Great ideas, folks.

    May I suggest the buildings be super energy-efficient too? Operating costs are, after all, on the other side of the same ledger, and are all too often sacrificed to keep the initial capital bottom line as low as possible. Energy prices are also unpredictable over the life of a building, let alone the next three years.