‘Stop Gap Housing’ Idea Could Make Big Dent in Homelessness

A plan to house Vancouver’s homeless is taking shape on the drawing board of a local architect. It calls for the rapid erection of temporary villages assembled from the same type of modular units that mining companies provide for remote workers.

“Stop Gap Housing” is what architect Gregory Henriquez calls it.

“All of us in this community have long been advocates for permanent housing,” he said. “But we’ve gotten to the point where the numbers of homeless are so staggering that I’m left wondering if we will ever catch up doing it that way. I don’t think we can. I think there has to be a stop-gap measure. And that’s what this is.”

Henriquez, whose Woodward’s includes 200 units of social housing built to last hundreds of years, stressed that Stop Gap Housing would never replace permanent homes.

“It’s portable dwellings. It’s not meant to be a permanent fixture on the landscape. But it could serve for several years until we complete the construction of permanent housing,” he said. “I think it’s better than leaving people homeless.”

It’s also cheaper.

Older Article-Vancouver backs out on Housing Committments

Vancouver Drops Olympics Housing Pledge

Promise was ‘non-binding’ NPA votes.

View full article and comments here http:///Bigstory/2007/06/29/NoHousing/

By Monte Paulsen

Published: June 29, 2007

TheTyee.ca

Mayor Sam Sullivan and the Non-Partisan Association have rejected pleas for more new social housing by 2010. Critics warn that Thursday night’s decision by Vancouver City Council assures that homeless Canadians will outnumber athletes at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

“Homelessness is going to get a lot worse in this city, and the NPA is fully responsible,” said City Councillor David Cadman, who represents the opposing Council of Progressive Electors (COPE).

In a series of 6-5 votes, the NPA strong-armed Vancouver City Council into approving a misleading report drafted in the office of Housing Minister Rich Coleman and approved by the organizers of the 2010 games (VANOC). The report, awkwardly titled the Joint Partner Response to the Inner-City Inclusive Commitments (ICI) Housing Table Report, asserts that the housing recommendations developed for VANOC are “not binding.”

NPA councillors Suzanne Anton, Elizabeth Ball, Kim Capri, Peter Ladner and B.C. Lee also voted in lock-step with Mayor Sam Sullivan to defeat motions introduced by Vision Vancouver and COPE requesting an emergency meeting with federal and provincial housing ministers.

‘Huge things’

“We don’t need this motion,” Sullivan said. “We are working on a lot of things … Huge things.” The mayor did not provide details.

“Sullivan hasn’t delivered anything,” responded Councillor Cadman. “He claims credit for social housing at Woodward’s in spite of the fact that he voted against it. He claims credit for social housing at Southeast False Creek in spite of the fact that his first action as mayor was to slash social housing at that site. He claims credit for the SRO rooms purchased by the province, even though Minister Coleman has plainly said the city had nothing to do with that purchase.”

The Non-Partisan Alliance’s party-line votes came after a half-day of passionate public testimony, in which Vancouver citizens implored council to reject VANOC’s draft report and invite senior governments to a sit-down. Mayor Sullivan rolled out of council chambers during the second speaker, and remained missing-in-action for the remaining four hours of public testimony.

One of the many presentations that Sullivan refused to hear was a plan presented by Pivot Legal Society under which new homeless housing could be paid for out of existing provincial, city and VANOC funds. Pivot and 2010 Watch released documents on Thursday that they say show the city will earn $64.5 million from development of the Olympic Village, which is now under construction at Southeast False Creek.

‘No time to walk away’

Sullivan and his obedient NPA vote also defied an editorial in The Vancouver Sun, which stated, “2010 housing promises must be honoured.”

The June 26 editorial was uncharacteristically blunt: “…this is no time for the Olympic partners to walk away from promises made. Many of the housing commitments were key to gaining community support for the Games, and they must be honoured.”

Vision Vancouver and COPE councillors warned that since it takes a minimum of two years to develop social housing, Thursday night’s vote was probably the last chance this council would get to address Olympic homelessness.

“In all likelihood there will be a strike,” Cadman said. “That will place a hiatus on everything. And that hiatus will effectively delay action on housing until the fall. At that point, it will simply be too late to develop, permit and build new social housing in time for the 2010 Olympics.”

“I don’t want to give up hope until the day before the opening ceremonies,” said David Eby, a housing activist and staff lawyer at Pivot Legal Society. “But I’m getting a sinking feeling that the streets of Vancouver are going to look a lot worse when the Olympics arrive.”

UN’s harsh view of Vancouver

Any doubt that the world is watching was erased by a top-of-page-one headline in Thursday’s The Vancouver Sun, which declared “Vancouver a scarred paradise.” The Sun report described Vancouver as “a city with staggering wealth and soul-crushing poverty.” The article cited a report by the United Nations Population Fund stating that the Downtown Eastside “is home to a hepatitis C (HCV) rate of just below 70 per cent and an HIV prevalence rate of an estimated 30 per cent — the same as Botswana’s.”

Another high-profile report issued this week seemed to predict the NPA’s failure to act. Shelter: Homelessness in a Growth Economy was written by Gordon Laird and published by the Alberta-based Sheldon Chumir Foundation. The report estimated that as many as 300,000 Canadians are already homeless, at a cost to taxpayers of between $4.5 and $6 billion every year.

“Canadian governments,” Laird wrote, “have focused more on short-term crisis management over long-term strategic investment. Their response to homelessness over the last decade has sometimes bordered on outright neglect. In practical terms, absenteeism on housing and homelessness has exacerbated efforts to reduce poverty in Canada.”

Official Downtown Eastside United Nations complaint webpage

If you’d like to learn more about the Downtown Eastside issue, check out the link to the official web page that provides details of the ‘No Place Like Home’ complaint that will be sent to the United Nations today. You can view the actual complaint in PDF format from the website.

http://www.noplacelikehomevancouver.org

Vancouver groups to file complaint to United Nations over housing shortage

The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — Tourist dollars are trumping local needs, resulting in hundreds of evictions and violating international human rights, three Vancouver community groups are alleging in a complaint being filed to the United Nations.
The three groups say the ongoing evictions from single room-occupancy hotels in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside will only get worse as the city’s real estate market continues to explode in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
More than 1,000 rooms have already been converted from low-income use or closed altogether since Vancouver won the bid for the Games in 2003, according to a tally being prepared by Pivot Legal Society, one of the groups filing the complaint.
“Looking at the amount of money that’s being spent on the Olympics, looking at the public relations that’s being done around the token efforts towards dealing with the homeless problem, we feel it’s time for some international scrutiny to come to British Columbia and Vancouver about the Downtown Eastside,” said David Eby, a lawyer with Pivot.
The complaint, which will officially be filed next week, alleges that the right to housing is being violated in part by a loophole that allows tenants to be evicted while landlords carry out renovations to buildings.
Since most of the people living in low-income rentals don’t have the option to move somewhere else, it kickstarts a cycle of homelessness that’s a clear violation of international protocols agreed to by Canada and dozens of other nations, said Am Johal, the founder of Impact on Communities Coalition, another one of the groups involved in the complaint.
With more than 200,000 people expected to converge on Vancouver for the Olympics in 2010, the situation is only going to get worse, he said.
“There are options for cruise ships and homestays, but this is going to place an incredible burden on the existing rental housing stock and without closing these loopholes, even for a temporary period of time, its our view that there will be thousands of evictions,” he said.
In 2006, a U.N. committee described the state of homelessness and inadequate housing in Canada as a “national emergency,” and in the fall of 2007, the U.N. special rapporteur on housing took a two-week tour of Canada and recommended a national large-scale project of social housing.
The complaint also alleges rights violations connected to the failure to provide safe housing, police protection, accountability to displaced people and the failure to involve the inner city in development plans for the neighbourhood.
The province, the city and Vancouver Olympic officials have all launched initiatives designed to mitigate the potential social impact of the 2010 Games on the city.
Olympic organizers committed to leaving a legacy of 250 beds for social housing and the city of Vancouver has bought up 17 single room-occupancy hotels, effectively placing them out of reach of private developers and promising to build social housing units on a dozen other sites.
But Eby said those 17 purchases represent only 20 per cent of the stock of homes in the community.
“We’re concerned about the remaining 80 per cent,” he said.
“That’s full of about 5,000 people who are on social assistance, who are desperately afraid they are going to end up on the streets before the Olympic games come.”
Once the complaint has been filed, it will be reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission and, if judged valid, Canada and the province will have to answer to international community on the concerns raised, Eby said.
The process will likely take a year and a half to resolve, coming to a head just in time for the 2010 Winter Games.

Vancouver housing activists take rights complaint to UN

Christina Montgomery , Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, April 13, 2008

VANCOUVER – The battle over social housing for Vancouver’s poorest residents is moving to a new battlefield – the United Nations, which will be asked shortly to weigh a human-rights complaint against Canada for failing to protect the low-cost rooms.
Housing activists will focus the complaint to the UN Human Rights Council on the ongoing conversions of low-cost hotel rooms in the Downtown Eastside.
The move is based on a study by University of B.C. students Gayle Stewart and Mike Powar, who took a walking tour of the poverty-stricken neighbourhood last fall as part of a class in global politics and international law.
Michael Byers, their professor, arranged the tour and challenged them to apply international issues to the grim social scene.
Powar and Stewart took up the challenge with an analysis of whether Canada is fulfilling its international commitments to ensuring adequate housing for citizens.
The complaint will be launched formally by the Pivot Legal Society, the Impact on Community Coalition and the Carnegie Community Action Project – activists who have been critical of the impact of the 2010 Olympics on the supply of low-cost housing.
Most recently, the groups have applauded efforts by the city and the province to purchase and preserve 17 low-rent hotels in the area. But they’ve taken aim at the failure to find a legal way to prevent owners from legally evicting tenants of the hotels.
Their work was spurred on by a visit in October by Miloon Kothari, a UN official who reports on adequate housing.
Kothari visited shortly after a provincial announcement of $41 million for housing initiatives, including 24-hour emergency shelters, rent supplements planning money to fast-track approvals for housing on 12 sites donated by the city.
Despite the plans, Kothari noted he had heard stories of “hundreds of people who have died as a result of Canada’s nationwide housing crisis.” His preliminary report says a recent review by the UN found Canada’s homelessness and inadequate housing were a “national emergency.”
“Downtown Eastside hotels are the homes of last resort for low-income people,” said Jean Swanson, Coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project. “Almost half are already closed, at risk, or charge too high a rent. If the city and the province don’t act now, the rest of the hotels could push low income people out on to the street.”
Vancouver Province

Vancouver DTES Hotel Closures Picking Up

David Eby’s Blog:

http://davideby.blogspot.com/ 

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Hotel closures picking up

The Downtown Eastside is turning inside out, with record numbers of hotels and low-rent buildings kicking all of their tenants out.

Recent closures include:

- Star Beach Haven, 19 rooms at 658 Alexander Street (today evicting all tenants as precondition of sale);

- Backpacker’s Inn, 42 rooms at 7 West Hastings at Carrall (closed today by owners as precondition of sale, power and gas shut off, same owners as Star Beach Haven);

- 334 Carrall Street, 30 apartments (closed in February by owner Robert Wilson for renovations);

- Marie Gomez Place, 76 apartments at 590 Alexander Street (closed in January by the province, condemned due to mold);

- Dominion Hotel, 67 rooms at 210 Abbott Street (closed in January for renovations);

- Columbia Hotel, 69 rooms at 303 Columbia Street (Carnegie discovered it was illegally converted to tourist accommodation in December, reported to City of Vancouver, no apparent response);

- Phoenix Apartments 18 units at 514 Alexander Street (closed as precondition of sale in February); and,

- Colonial Residence, 144 units at 122 Water Street (54 rooms empty since at least March 20, unknown why management is emptying the hotel).

Total lost since December 2007 (last 4 months): 375 units in 8 buildings.

Holy crap.

Now’s your chance to help us out!

Dear all you fellow fungi,

The Fungus is doing a project on homelessness in Vancouver…. and here’s your chance to help out some good ol’ fashioned grass roots democracy! Our mission requires us to sift through some data – You Tube video clips and old media archives will help us convey the story of the Downtown Eastside – and we have a request! We would like concerned citizens to contribute stories, video footage, media archive reports/articles, and anything else, directly to us at TheFungus. Please send your material (or a link to access it) to us via a submitted comment to this post.

Thanks for your support!

Peace, The Fungus

Change

World wide peaceful revolution is needed urgently because the power of evil is defeating the might of GOOD.- Global warming-war-terrorism-world hunger-poverty-AIDS- Greed-Corporate immorality- Imperialism/Domination- gang violence- Increasing levels of depression- Increasing levels of stress and pressure-decreasing levels of mental health-40 hour work week- decrease in our connection to natureThe potential of humanity is the goodness, so why are our actions so blatantly contradictory to what is really GOOD? We need a drastic change in our hearts, a change in our minds, and a serious change in our attitude and actions if the goodness can prevail…. you are the solution! Change…..  Do it for yourself, do it for the world, do it for the ‘goodness’. Love, it really is the answer….Peace,D