Jean Swanson: An open letter to housing minister Gregor Robertson
"I decided to run for the office of mayor to end street homelessness in Vancouver. And I’m telling you today, that hasn’t changed. It is your council’s single most important priority in this term of office."
Gregor Robertson, you said that in your inaugural mayoral speech on December 8, 2008.
You went on, "Homelessness flies in the face of everything I was taught about compassion and our duty to each other. Homelessness degrades every one of us, whether the place we call home is in an alley, a shelter, an apartment or a house. Homelessness is everything our aspiration for Vancouver isn’t. It abandons our neighbours, it disempowers our people, and it does anything but inspire. The Vancouver we hold in our hearts is not a city where people die of exposure. Not a city where a man named Darrell Mickasko, after being turned away from a full shelter, burns to death in a sleeping bag, trying to stay warm with his camping stove on a freezing night. If our vision of Vancouver is to become a reality, homelessness must end—and I tell you today that it will end. Today we challenge ourselves to end street homelessness by 2015."
You didn't end street homelessness by 2015, but you tried. Vancouver opened 500 shelter beds, set aside 14 sites for social housing, as well as sites for hundreds of units of modular supportive housing. The city created the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency to create rental units for people earning under $80K a year. You also supported the Downtown Eastside to create a local area plan that prioritized and facilitated desperately needed social housing and required that one third of it rent at the social assistance shelter rate.
Homelessness still increased. Now Vancouver has about 3,300 people with no fixed address who are on social assistance, plus more who are seniors, immigrants, and others who aren't on social assistance. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities predicts that Canada could have half a million homeless by 2030. Cities only have property tax as a source of desperately needed revenue for housing. The federal and provincial governments have income and corporate taxes, too.
Now you are the federal minister of housing. You have powers that you didn't have as mayor and more revenue sources.
Giving private developers low-cost loans to build expensive rental housing won't help folks who are homeless. Making home ownership cheaper won't help either. Even most new social housing excludes low-income people nowadays. We need thousands of units of dignified non-market housing that rents at about $500 a month, which is all that folks on welfare, disability, basic pensions and part-time wages can afford. And we need shelters and tiny home villages in the meantime while that housing is getting built.
Some people might say, but aren't there solutions to homelessness that don't involve spending money? Actually, numerous studies show that ending homelessness is cheaper than maintaining it.
Those studies linked above say that maintaining homeless costs from $55,000 to $134,000 per year in police, health, and service costs. Providing supportive housing would cost somwhere in the $13,000 to $57,000 range.
Gregor, lots of folks in the Downtown Eastside and around the county hope you remember your 2008 speech and that you feel the same way about homelessness now as you did then. We’re counting on you to create housing that homeless people can afford. And around 6,500 Vancouver SRO residents are counting on you to help replace their earthquake prone single rooms with something better. Plus, tens of thousands of folks who are homeless around the country also need homes. Homelessness is a national issue and we need federal action to end it. Now you're in a position to really end it. We've asked for a meeting with you several times but haven't got a reply. Please meet with us. We have some concrete ideas that could help.
Jean Swanson is a former city councillor and volunteer with the Carnegie Housing Project. This open letter was shared by councillor Swanson to social and also published in the Georgia Straight.
