Last month, Ken Sim told the “Save Our Streets” group he’d propose freezing new supportive housing in Vancouver. Residents we’ve spoken to are concerned about the ABC party undermining non-profits and punishing the vulnerable. Their motion dropped today.
Sim’s motion, up for debate on February 25, has been revealed. Its new title, “Temporarily Pausing Net-New Supportive Housing Investments,” is less harsh, but still harms vulnerable populations by denying any new supportive housing to meet growing needs.
Read full text of motion:
https://council.vancouver.ca/20250226/documents/pspcmotion3.pdf
The softening of mayor Sim’s motion is a response to the public’s strong backlash to freezing all supportive housing across the board, and shows his backroom machine may be listening, yet still it punches down on some of society’s most vulnerable: the homeless.
Supportive housing is subsidized housing with on-site supports for adults, seniors and people with disabilities at risk of or experiencing homelessness. Sim’s revised motion will freeze City contributions of land or funds specifically for homelessness response supportive housing.
Sim’s less-bellicose, revised motion includes exemptions for health and recovery, women and families, seniors, and youth ageing out of care. Curiously, there’s also an exemption that allows for (net-new) density added to replacement supportive housing sites.
Nonetheless, ABC’s message is quite clear they would like the homeless problem to go away – and by that either to future as-yet-unfunded replacement housing, or preferably to another city. Beyond the callousness of that intention with regard to our fellow humans – there are four big problems.
First, back when the City of Vancouver regularly conducted homeless counts, data showed most street homeless were once permanently housed here before circumstances found them unhoused; not by choice, and not coming from elsewhere as often suggested.
Secondly, despite purported intent of public safety and quelling street disorder, the absence of housing with support for folks at risk of homelessness will only exacerbate the desperation and chaos for unhoused folks in an increasingly hostile city. I don’t believe this will help public safety.
Thirdly, we are collectively entering a time of profound economic uncertainty and housing precarity – things aren’t getting better for a lot of Vancouverites and many are “one paycheque away.” Rather than saying no, we should be looking to make supportive housing better.
Lastly, injunctions to evict encampments (Strathcona, Oppenheimer, CRAB) were inevitably overturned because courts (under Charter Sec. 7) ruled homeless campers had nowhere else to go. In past we could call on Province to do their part, but now we have abdicated our role? Seems fraught with issues.
Let Sim and ABC know unhoused Vancouverites matter too. We want public safety and decent housing for everyone. We can and should do better, but as other cities in the region are taking Ken’s cue to cancel supportive housing, this bad policy will only hasten worse outcomes.