Some of you may have read my story last week where I gave you a heads-up that Vancouver’s homeless count conducted in March saw a slight drop in the number of people living on the street.
I posted the story online last Monday, the day before city housing director Mukhtar Latif released the full report on the numbers. I know, right, what took them so long to tell us the numbers?
Analysis, I’m told.
Anyway, Latif confirmed the accuracy of my story in his report, which revealed the overall homeless population counted over two days in March totalled 1,746, with 488 on the street and 1,258 in some form of shelter or temporary housing. That’s a drop from last year of 48 people on the street and nine in shelters.
I was able to get the news out last Monday because I happened to be in the Downtown Eastside with a guy who was briefed on what was to come Tuesday. That guy was B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay, who led me and a few other reporters on a tour of buildings and programs funded by the provincial government.
At the end of our walkabout, Ramsay — who lives in the Downtown Eastside — told us Latif’s report would show a slight reduction in the number of people on street and that the shelter population remained steady. But that’s not all Ramsay said as he took questions from me and colleagues Travis Lupick of the Georgia Straight and David P. Ball of the Tyee.
So I thought I’d share some of what else he said.
- On whether he gets tired of Mayor Gregor Robertson and city council dumping on B.C. Housing, saying they’re not building enough housing to accommodate the city’s homeless: “We just go about the work that we do.”
- On the current relationship with the city in terms of addressing homelessness: “It’s very good. You know, the remand project [turning the former jail into housing] is nearing completion and the city contributed to that. I had a conversation with [Latif] before I came on the tour this morning around what the presentation [on the homeless count] is going to look like tomorrow and the kind of areas the city would like to target. So we discussed those opportunities. And last week, I was briefed on the housing numbers. So [there’s] a good degree of cooperation.”
- On whether the government will fund a second phase of development of social housing on city property, as it did previously with 14 projects (so far, 13 are open): “I won’t rule it out, but I really see us at a place where we’re looking more and more at arrangements like the remand centre, like 41 East Hastings [a 52-unit project], like Taylor Manor [for tenants with mental health issues] that become just a different way of delivering those kinds of housing units. No question, the 14 sites were a significant commitment, but a very costly one to bring on board, too.”
- On whether he sees a day when no one will be living on the street in Vancouver: “That’s probably a question you should ask [Housing Minister Rich Coleman]. We’ve strayed into some policy areas, and I’m an operations guy.”
- On the goal, then, of B.C. Housing to eradicate homelessness: “Just continuing to work in a positive direction, dealing with the housing issues like single-room-occupancy hotels, like people on the street and creating opportunities for them.”
- On selling off B.C. Housing property to nonprofits: “No other jurisdiction in Canada is engaged in the kind of transfer of provincial assets to the nonprofit sector. And this is really a belief in empowering the nonprofit sector. All of the value of those transfers, though, will be re-invested by the province back into housing. That will total about $650 million over the period 2014 to 2019.”
@Howellings
