I should have added to my original post that the gross figures for homelessness in the city are basically the same as they were last time. The explanation then, seems to be that several hundred people who had previously been on the street were, at the time of the survey, sleeping in a temporary emergency shelter. The fact that they weren’t any longer sleeping on the street is a good thing. The fact that they were still homeless isn’t.

Spartikus…I was curious how much blame you lay at the NDP’s feet given that it was the horrid financial state they put our province in that ultimately led to the cut in social programs that I assume you are referring to. Or do they simply get a pass because they held the party and left the next group responsible for the cleanup?

More money is definitely needed and much more focus on the underlying problems, but I do hope that your analysis of how we got here doesn’t start in 2002

@Jason,

Interesting how I say “Victoria” and you assume “BC Liberal Party”.

But by all means, Jason, why don’t you [for once] construct an argument – with support of course – about how it’s all the NDP’s fault neener neener, instead of engaging in your usual recitation of talking points and falsehoods.

Given the homelessness count only began in 2002, where else could I start?

But again, dazzle us with an argument this is entirely at the feet of the NDP.

It’s true that the closing of Riverview is a contributing factor to the problems of the DTES. But there are 2 much more important factors that explain the homelessness crisis.

The first is that early in the 90’s the federal (Liberal) government stopped building social housing. Since the end of the second world war we as a country had built tens of thousands of units of subsidized housing for those families and individuals who couldn’t afford rental housing in the market. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians lived in those homes. We can argue about design flaws and less than ideal planning choices that were made, but the homes were built and people lived there. In addition, the feds, through CMHC, made it possible for tens of thousands of co-op units to be built. That was cancelled too.

The second contributing factor was the BC Liberals’ cancellation (immediately after they were elected in 2001) of the BC Homes program which was one of only two provincial social housing programs in the country. The other one was in Quebec. Had that program simply continued in place and the 600-800 units it was generating per year simply gone ahead, there would be 6,000 – 8,000 additional units of social housing available in BC today. That would put a significant dent in the homelessness crisis.

Of course, many (but certainly not all) of those who are homeless need, in addition to a home, appropriate services to be successful in that home.

The crisis of homelessness is part of a continuum of problems and is that continuum’s most dramatic and shameful aspect. But affordable rental housing for families, seniors and young people are aspects of the problem which need urgent action as well.

Geesh Spartikus, awfully testy there.

I’m sorry if I misunderstood you, but by putting the blame solely on the years 2002-2005 when the BC Liberals were in office, I kind of thought you were placing the blame at their feet…I’m not sure how that assumption is unfair?

I also asked you a question…I wasn’t reciting talking points…and I thought the question was fair.

But given that you seem to feel victimized, somehow, by my question and claim I don’t make any arguments, I’ll happily indulge your request.

I’m stating very simply that the years that the NDP were in office they continued to borrow money and run up our debt/deficit. In fact, there wasn’t a year they were in office where they didn’t continue to do this. (resulting in downgrading of our credit rating) When the Liberals came in they had to make some hard decisions about where we spend our money based on how much we had to spend. There were therefore cuts made to a wide variety of programs to try and get us back on a strong financial footing.

Therefore, the argument I’m making is that while you attempt to lay the blame at the feet of the BC Liberals, I believe the NDP share a large part of the responsibility, as it was their fiscal management of our Province that led to the needed cuts to these programs.

Yes, the Liberals bare part of the responsibility as they chose the priorities. However, it’s hard to argue about spending and priorities when you don’t have any money left.

Is that not a fair point?

By the way, I don’t think I laid the blame “entirely at the feet of the NDP”, I simply asked a question, yet your statement did seem to suggest that the blame was entirely at the feet of whichever administration was in power from 2002-2005….which just happened to be the Liberals. So perhaps you might want to back off your accusations.

@ Jason 12:

“Therefore, the argument I’m making is that while you attempt to lay the blame at the feet of the BC Liberals, I believe the NDP share a large part of the responsibility, as it was their fiscal management of our Province that led to the needed cuts to these programs.”
———-

I think the blame can be divied up between them. Harcourt said in a published interview about a year ago (sorry I didn’t retain the link at the time) that he regrets cutting funding for Riverview in order to have patients treated “in the community” without first providing the community level facilities and programs.

Duh.

That’s about as dumb as Campbell espousing sound fiscal management while illegally binning existing hospital employees contracts and selling BC Rail after saying he wouldn’t. These came back to bite him, but he survived.

Campbell went on and accepted wide praise when the BC economy turned for the better. But it wasn’t his prowess in balancing the books that led to rosier forecasts, it was because international commodity prices skyrocketed (with positive ramifications to government revenue), notably gas, coal and metals.

But then campbell went and increased the provincial debt again and again after his radical cuts, even with vast new revenue from NE petroleum royalties and called it “sound fiscal management.” The provincial government does not control the world price on commodities.

Duh.

If there’s anything that will sink this province it’s political ideology overpowering common sense. We can only hope commodity prices will rescue us just as neatly in future. But I wouldn’t count on it.

“I do think much more could be done by the Liberals, and that different “priorities” could have risen to the top in order to help deal with the problems.”
———-

Now that we have the benefit of recorded recent history, one of the most obvious ‘tells’ that the BC Liberals were riven with ideological inconsistency is the huge difference between managing public sector labour negotiations Campbell-style (nuclear bomb) and Taylor-style four years later (use new revenue to catch up and establish peace).

Of course, hosting the Olympics helped establish labour peace beforehand. But the differences between these two approaches is mind boggling and cannot be attributed to any stable sense of sound fiscal management.

Max,

Your wording is purposefully vague: “Over the past 4 years, the Provincial government has worked on opening up roughly 3,000 units in Vancouver…” I note you didn’t write, “… has opened up roughly 3,000 units …” That’s because, of course, they haven’t “opened up” anything like that number. The CCPA study on this issue concludes that between 2006 and 2010 only 285 new units of social housing were built across the entire province! In fact, the BC Liberals have closed hundreds of social housing units – 224 at Little Mountain alone.

I attended Minister Coleman’s press conference in November 2007 when he announced for the first time (he’s re-announced the same thing many times since), that the province was going to pay for capital funding for 12 (now 14) sites provided by the city of Vancouver, for social housing projects. He said subsequently that half of them would be finished by the time of the Olympics. If I’m not mistaken, one of them is operational now, and a number have not even had the ground broken on the project. All of those – one complete, a few started, some not yet begun – are part of the 3,000 figure you have referred to – and you know it. So are units in SRO hotels that were purchased by the province (a good thing) that didn’t reduce homelessness at all, because people lived there before they were bought and renovated. So are temporary emergency shelter beds which are not homes.

As for the definition of affordability, that’s an excellent question. The word has begun to lose its meaning. I remember speaking with a developer about a project near Fraser and 28th, when more than 100 families were being evicted from rental apartments that had rents that they could afford ($500 – $800 per month for family apartments) who told me the new development would include “affordable rentals”. When I asked him what he meant by “affordable” he told me it meant what people were willing to pay.

Housing economists tell us “affordable” housing costs about 33% of a family’s income. So, we need to make a calculation of the mean income for families in Vancouver, and make sure that half of all rental units cost less than 33% of that mean income. That is an objective measure. If we were to use that calculation of affordability we could actually assess to what extent we were meeting people’s needs.

Nothing like joining a conversation late. Closing mental health wards in the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney years was the beginning point of seeing people begging in streets in Vancouver, the way I had seen them in Montevideo growing up.

The other issues that David narrates also contributed. However, the starting pistol shot was with clearing out the wards.

The second shoe dropped when crack cocaine hit the streets in 1984.

The rest as they say…