City manager Penny Ballem is worried this month’s homeless count in Vancouver will show people are still living on the street despite efforts of her staff and B.C. Housing to find shelter and housing for more than 500 people recorded in last March’s count.
Such bad news would be a big blow to Mayor Gregor Robertson and his goal to end so-called “street homelessness” by this year’s homeless count, which will be conducted by city officials and volunteers March 23 and 24.
“I’m concerned because I think we’re still going to have street homeless,” Ballem told the Courier by telephone as she pored over a spreadsheet of homeless numbers and available housing. “We know what we’ve opened but if there’s still 200 people on the street, the question is: Where have they come from and what is causing that?”
On paper, Ballem said, matching shelter beds, temporary housing and permanent housing to the 536 homeless people recorded in last year’s count should leave the city with a surplus of 29 beds.
“My hope would be that we’ve just about reached the goal for the mayor,” she said. “But looking around the city, I’m worried. It doesn’t feel like we’ve got there.”
Ballem pointed out the city has been unable to accurately track other drivers of homelessness, including the number of people who leave hospital, jail or foster care and end up on the streets. Also, she said, people on welfare are losing their homes to unaffordable rent increases, particularly in the Downtown Eastside.
“We are bringing on capacity but there’s other things that may be working against us,” she said, noting the city’s moderate climate is also attractive to homeless people from other parts of the country,
Adding to Ballem’s concern is her staff’s inability to account for at least 68 people that moved out of single-room-occupancy hotels in the Downtown Eastside undergoing renovations.
Ballem said she expects to get an answer this week from B.C. Housing, which is renovating 13 hotels, on what happened to the 68 people.
“We’re really, really trying to actually to be a bit more scientific than ‘trust us, it’s all good,’” she said, referring to previous responses from B.C. Housing.
B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay said all tenants of the hotels under renovation were relocated to other accommodations. Ramsay said tenants were given priority to move back in to the hotels once they re-opened.
“Nobody has been lost or displaced,” Ramsay said. “We’ve relocated hundreds and hundreds of people — some vulnerable people — and there hasn’t been one bad news story about it because of the effort we went through to relocate folks.”
Ballem said the city also doesn’t know how many homeless people counted last March have received rent subsidies from B.C. Housing, saying “ideally we should all know that but we just don’t have that at this point.”
Though the city and B.C. Housing have worked together to build 14 social housing sites across the city, the Vision-led council has repeatedly called for the provincial government to build more housing in Vancouver.
Housing Minister Rich Coleman told the Courier in an interview in January “there’s no jurisdiction that I can find in the country that has received more in funding for supportive housing than the city of Vancouver has.”
Since the March 2014 homeless count, various B.C. Housing buildings, shelters and temporary housing have opened across the city. But some buildings have also closed, including the 100-room Bosman hotel that could re-open with 40 beds by the homeless count in two weeks.
As well, Taylor Manor, a 56-unit building at Adanac and Boundary, is expected to open before the count and be home to people with mental illness.
A 146-unit social housing building at 220 Princess Ave., which will house female-led families, is scheduled to open in April. All of the city’s shelters are full.
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