February 26, 2025
Mayor Ken Sim and Vancouver City Council
City Hall, 453 West 12th Ave
Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4
Sent Via Email
Dear Mayor Sim, and Councillors Bligh, Dominato, Fry, Kirby-Yung, Klassen, Meiszner, Montague, and Zhou,
Open Letter re: Opposing Mayor Sim’s motion, “Temporarily Pausing Net-New Supportive Housing Investments in Vancouver to Prioritize Replacing Existing Stock and Promoting Regional Equity”
I write today with urgency in opposition to Mayor Sim’s motion to the February 26th Council meeting. This motion calls to “direct staff to temporarily pause any City contributions of land or funding for homelessness response supportive housing developments—except for projects focused on replacing existing SRO buildings or TMH projects—until progress is made in increasing the supply of homelessness response supportive housing across the region”, along with related directions to Council and City staff.
I am deeply alarmed by this motion and strenuously oppose the Mayor’s proposal to "pause" development of supportive housing in the City of Vancouver. Equally shocking is the fact that Mayor Sim's motion explicitly excludes “supportive housing for seniors, women and families, and youth ageing out of care”, and “Road to Recovery continuum or health-care related housing or residentially based health care such as complex care housing or long-term care”.
The City of Vancouver's 2023 homeless count identified over 2,400 people as homeless. It should come as no surprise to you that this is an increase from the 2020 Homeless count.1 The City's own report has laid out the drivers of homelessness in three categories:
Structural Factors
Poverty
Lack of affordable housing
Lack of appropriate health care
Racism, etc.
Individual Factors
Traumatic events
Mental Health and Addictions, etc.
Systemic Factors
Aging out of care
Discharge into homelessness
Intergenerational trauma, etc.
The Mayor's approach fails to help address what the City's own report has indicated as the drivers of homelessness in Vancouver. In fact, a column recently published in The Tyee points out the sad reality that the City has already "...abandoned 144 units of supportive housing (Larwill Place, Little Mountain) in 2024 with 39 more at Aneki Place on the chopping block for 2025 supportive housing projects”.
To effectively address the homelessness crisis, all levels of government need to work in partnership to tackle the root causes of the crisis. Over the years, the City of Vancouver, irrespective of political leanings, have stepped up in support of the development of social and supportive housing in Vancouver.
I recall my time at City Council, while I was the lone opposition member in a 10 to 1 council and there were many policy decisions where we had disagreement, when it came to approvals for both social and supportive housing in the City, we always acted in unison in support of those developments in our community. Indeed, “Vancouver has long taken a leadership role in providing supportive housing”, and it has done this regardless of whether or not other municipalities have fallen short in also providing social and supportive
housing.
While I also agree that the City cannot be a lone actor in bringing about sufficient dignified social and supportive housing, health care supports, including the full spectrum of mental health, harm reduction, addictions supports and recovery care needed to serve residents living in the Downtown Eastside and
beyond, instead of advancing collaboration and partnerships, this motion does the opposite.
Worse still, this short-sighted vision peddles the "Not In My Back Yard" sentiment as a solution to challenges in the community. It is sending the wrong message that the development of supportive housing is bad for neighbourhoods.
At a time where there is so much discord, fear and uncertainty in our community, elected officials across all municipalities and levels of government need to come together, not to sow division but to unite in collaborating and delivering real solutions that are evidence-based.
There are many reports that speak to the importance of supportive housing in communities. A recent op-ed in the Vancouver Sun points out that supportive housing makes our communities safer, because “[s]tudies show that supportive housing reduces pressure on public services. Residents use 32 per cent fewer health and public safety services than people at risk of homelessness. They are also 64 per cent less likely than shelter clients to require ambulance services. But setting aside financial impacts, supportive housing is simply the right thing to do to support our fellow neighbours.” The article points out that “when modular housing residents were surveyed, the results showed 77 per cent had a prior connection to the community, including friends and relatives close by.” The Vancouver Sun op-ed also points out that “over the past five years, two-thirds of new permanent supportive housing units have opened elsewhere in Metro Vancouver” – the Mayor’s motion is not needed to spur the construction of new units in other municipalities because they are doing this work already.
2Mayor Sim's motion also completely ignores the experts who point out, again and again, that “recovery from addiction is possible when people have access to quality, evidence-informed services and supports”. It further perpetuates the systemic inequities that marginalize and disenfranchise Indigenous peoples, who are disproportionately overrepresented amongst the unhoused and underhoused in Vancouver. And it disparages the hard work of frontline workers, in paid employment and in volunteer capacity alike, who daily staff and clean supportive housing, and provide mental health care, addiction treatment, recovery, and harm reduction supports, as well as provide outreach and wrap-around services that afford home care, food, employment supports and recreation opportunities to the most vulnerable people in our community.
If the intent is to truly find solutions to address the housing crisis that communities face, the City should examine ways to work collaboratively with all levels of government and potential partners.
For example, it could explore options on how to work with the Metro Vancouver Board and its Housing Committee to fund and ramp up construction of supportive housing throughout its member municipalities, or through the BC Union of Municipalities and its Housing Summit to find ways to support and incentivize the development of supportive housing, including for smaller municipalities since their tax base is limited.
It could work on an Indigenous-led housing initiative to ensure the fundamental right to a home as stipulated in the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is respected.
In its effort to address the housing crisis, the City should not shy away from holding senior levels of government to account. The truth is that the Federal government failed provinces, municipalities and communities when it began to gut funding for housing in the name of austerity. It was wrong that
the government of the day under Mulroney’s Conservative administration eliminated the national co-op housing program in 1992. It was equally wrong for the Chretien Liberal administration, in 1993, to eliminate the national affordable housing program, that resulted in the loss of some 500,000 affordable homes, including supportive housing, that would otherwise have been built.
The hard truth is that the Federal government's heavy reliance on the private sector to deliver the housing that Canadians need over the last 3 decades has failed. It has seen young people priced out of the market and reno-evictions and demo-evictions skyrocket. During the Harper Conservative era, Canada lost an additional 800,000 low-cost rental homes. This was followed by a loss of over 300,000 low-cost homes under the Liberals. Even today, research from housing experts indicate that that for every 1 unit of affordable home built, 8 existing affordable units are lost.
Housing profiteering ran rampant when the Federal government opened the door to the financialization of housing with special tax treatment to housing profiteers, paving the way for the cost of housing to skyrocket that led to the housing crisis that Canada now faces.
Despite a renewed 2015 National Housing Strategy under the Liberals, the Federal government is still failing to put the necessary measures in place to curb housing profiteering, and to ensure affordability is a key tenet of Canada's National Housing strategy.
Instead of pitting communities against communities, let’s stop treating housing as a commodity to maximize profits. Let's work collaboratively with all the necessary partners and put forward our collective efforts to create a comprehensive housing strategy that is truly affordable with an approach that ensures stable, predictable funding for both capital and operating subsidies along with the appropriate wrap-around services to meet the community’s needs.
I urge you in the strongest terms to vote against this motion.
Thank you in advance for the opportunity to respond.
Sincerely,
Jenny Kwan
Member of Parliament for Vancouver East
1
Note: The City's report acknowledges that the homeless number is likely an underestimation. The numbers from the BC Ministry of Social Development & Poverty Reduction suggest that about 3,500 people in Vancouver who receive social supports have No Fixed Address, and Dr. A.J. Withers and Our Homes Can’t Wait estimate that there are more likely at least 4,094 homeless people in Vancouver.
