Vancouver mayor stands by plan to cut net new supportive housing

Vancouver’s mayor is standing by his controversial idea to freeze new supportive housing projects in the city.

As part of a plan designed to revitalize Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Mayor Ken Sim announced in January that the city will pause the construction of net new supportive housing units.

Speaking at a forum held by the Save Our Streets B.C. Coalition on Jan. 23, Sim announced his plan to transform the neighbourhood by breaking up supportive housing, shelter services, and social services to encourage a mix of housing and businesses.

Sim claims the current state of the Downtown Eastside has led to a “cycle of instability and decline,” weighing unfairly on Vancouver.

A statement from the city says Vancouver currently houses 77 per cent of the region’s supportive housing, despite comprising only 25 per cent of the region’s population.

Speaking with OMNI News Tuesday, Sim repeated the statistic many times, claiming, “it doesn’t matter what resources we throw at it,” the Downtown Eastside won’t improve.

“If we want to improve the situation, we have to do things differently. And that’s what we decided to do. And so we believe that we should be looking at no net new housing in the City of Vancouver, until which time the other housing and all types of housing is built in other municipalities,” said Sim.

He clarified that the city is fully committed to maintaining its current stock of supportive housing already “in the pipeline.”

“We’re committed to honouring them, and we’re also committed to replacement stock as well. And so we want to actually focus our attention — instead of building additional units – we still have a lot of units that just don’t work. They’re unlivable. They’re actually horrendous. The conditions are horrendous. And to think that someone who lives in one of these units can have a chance at a road to recovery, I just think it’s unrealistic.”

Of Vancouver’s homeless population, Sim claims “a lot of the individuals that are looking for services actually aren’t from Vancouver.” He aims to lessen the homeless population with fewer new services in Vancouver and the presumption of more services available to those people elsewhere.

In January, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told 1130 NewsRadio he agrees that the province needs a regional approach to supportive housing, but he’s concerned Sim is conflating supportive housing with increased crime and violence.

He says he wants all communities to do their part, but says Sim’s plan misses the mark.

“By taking resources away, we’re actually not going to make the community safer. We’re not going to address the challenges that individuals have, and we’re not going to be able to address the regional challenges we have.”

Last week, the city announced it is moving forward with a new initiative to deliver more market rental housing.

The plan will see the city working with partners, including developers, to build market rental housing on city-owned land.

When tenants move in, the city will still own the land and act as landlord.

“We’re creating an environment where we can build housing of all types. So be it market housing, middle-income housing, even supportive and social housing, we haven’t stopped that; we have just said ‘no net new.’”

Sim says he will be introducing a motion to support his plan to limit net new supportive housing on Feb. 26. He says he anticipates and welcomes a “lively debate” on the issue when it’s tabled.

“We want to make it better for businesses to operate. We want to make it easier to live there as well. So it’s multifaceted. This is just one big part of a bigger plan.”

—With files from Yoyo Li, Monika Gul, and Michael Williams