Housing forum hears City must do more to get people off Vancouver streets

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A round table event on Vancouver’s housing crisis has heard calls for the City to do more to help people get off the streets.

“The Big Conversation – The Future of Housing in Vancouver” is a forum aimed at giving Vancouverites a voice on the future of housing affordability in the city.

Jean Swanson, an advocate with Carnegie Community Action Project, addressed the event and says the first step in addressing housing affordability must be helping the homeless population.

“It costs less to house people than to leave them on the streets,” she says.

Swanson was happy to see the City of Vancouver step up recently and relocate tenants from the dilapidated and structurally unsound Balmoral Hotel, a rooming house on East Hastings.

But she says more can be done to address Vancouver’s housing woes. Swanson believes the province and federal government could help by raising welfare rates and implementing rent control.

And she says the City can play a greater role.

“They need to immediately enforce Section 23.8 of the Standards of Maintenance by-law, which allows them to go into hotels that aren’t maintained properly, do the work and bill the owner. ”

Swanson also wants the City to increase shelter for the homeless in colder months.

Housing supply holding our economy back: Mayor 

Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson told the event that modular housing is the quickest option to shelter those on the streets, and he is looking to work with stakeholders to get an immediate strategy going.

“The scale of the challenge has only magnified over the years, dramatically. And that’s unfortunately due to real estate speculation, a lot of real estate investment generally, a booming economy like we’ve never seen before.”

“Most cities welcome the opportunity to have the kind of job growth that we’ve had, but it creates that pressure on housing, and right now housing supply is basically what is holding our economy back.”