Introduction
For more than two decades, the number of people living without a home in Vancouver has continued to climb. No level of government has addressed the issue with meaningful policy reforms, the necessary funding, or other housing safeguards, nor with the overall urgency it deserves.
Instead, right wing and centre-left governments have opted for pro-market supply incentives and real-estate subsidies. This has been coupled with an aggressive strategy of police violence and forced displacement of unhoused individuals, communities and the encampments where many people live.
The immediate causes of eviction into homelessness, such as gentrification, demovictions, eviction and rent control loopholes, and the absence of rent control on vacant units, have not been addressed. Nor has there been an attempt to alter a housing system which funnels housing wealth upwards to create an ever-widening chasm of housing haves and have-nots.
Number of Unhoused People in Vancouver
There are an estimated 4,094 unhoused people living in Vancouver, according to the Mapping the Carceral Housing Assemblage research project. This research project is a partnership between Dr. A.J. Withers and Our Homes Can’t Wait and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.1
The City of Vancouver’s homelessness counts show an average increase of 7.7% per year of people living without housing over the past 10 years. Without major intervention, the trend can be expected to continue at this rate or worsen given the context of the near doubling of average rent since 2012, with renters now paying an average of 60% of their income on rent. A full one third of unhoused people in Metro Vancouver are Indigenous, even though Indigenous people comprise roughly 2% of the overall regional population.
To accurately predict the rise of homelessness in Vancouver, there are a number of factors to consider. Variables as diverse as toxic drug deaths and new housing construction can contribute to the rate of homelessness. Toxic drugs continue to kill people at record high rates due to the lack of safe supply. Meanwhile, the construction of new welfare-rate social housing has been at a near standstill.
Homelessness Growth Forecast: SRO Demolition and Redevelopment
One measure that might slow the growth rate of homelessness is a recently-approved Vacancy Control bylaw for single resident occupancy units (SROs) in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).
There are roughly 6,000 SROs in the DTES area, many of which will be protected by the new vacancy control measures. However, half of these units have already been gentrified, with some renting as high as $2,000 per month. It is also unclear how enforceable this legislation will be, in the absence of public rent rolls.
Another key damper on optimism is the imperilled future of the government-owned portion of existing SROs. These buildings will be subject to the province and city’s SRO revitalization strategy. While renovations and improvements to these SROs are essential, the DTES Official Development Plan (ODP) only requires that one third of all renovated buildings remain at welfare shelter rate. The rest of renovated units can be rented at market rates, according to the DTES ODP, making them far out of reach for people facing or experiencing homelessness.
There are an estimated 4,094 unhoused people living in Vancouver
The revitalization strategy will impact 20 government and non-profit owned buildings out of approximately 146 SRO buildings in Vancouver. Vacancy control will not protect these buildings from redevelopment. Under our current housing system, demolition-related eviction (“demoviction”) is a key means by which landlords can circumvent rent controls stipulated in the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA). Section 49(6)a of the RTA gives landlords the right to end tenancy for the purpose of demolition.
In short, the SRO “revitalization” plan will cause an overall loss of welfare-rate housing if the one-third model outlined in the DTES Official Development Plan is used.
Homelessness Growth Forecast: Gentrification
There is concern that any kind of revitalization effort that does not include housing the people who currently live in the DTES will bring further gentrification. This self-defeating approach results in a net loss of affordable units.
Recent blanket rezonings and developer handouts around transit hubs will make matters worse because they target already-dense and affordable rental apartment areas, through what amounts to state-backed gentrification. The same is true for related policies like Eby’s multi-million dollar developer tax exemption for neighbourhood gentrification and “revitalization.”
A previous generation of housing activists called this the “Woodward’s effect,” where a gentrification project causes a net loss of low-income units in the immediate area (at least 400 units lost to higher rents through market conversions and upscaling, in the case of Woodward’s). Almost four times the number of affordable units lost their affordability than were built in order to create Woodward’s.2 New redevelopments have done the same, as we will discuss lower down.
With David Eby’s “social mix” model of replacing private SROs, provincial funding will go towards the replacement of units rather than addressing the ever-expanding number of people who are currently (and will become) homeless. While it is true that private SROs are generally inadequate places to live, redeveloping this housing without adequate funding on hand is reckless.
There is No Meaningful Definition of Social Housing
Social housing was once acknowledged as a necessary safety net for those evicted and excluded from the private market. Instead, we have witnessed the hollowing out of the definition and funding of social housing, to the point that the term is now meaningless at both provincial and municipal levels.
In a city like Vancouver, where the twinned housing and homelessness crises are worsening, there is still currently zero requirement for welfare-rate units in so-called “social housing” complexes outside the DTES. The income threshold to access this social housing has been gradually lifted higher, with journalists reporting on so-called “social housing for the rich.” The formula requires one third of units to rent at below the housing income limits (HILs) rate, which means a person needs a maximum income of $58,000 a year for a 1 bedroom or $72,000 for a 2 bedroom (this includes large numbers of people who have many more housing options than do people on social assistance and fixed incomes). The remaining two thirds of units can be rented at full market price.
In the DTES and Chinatown, one-third of total units are required to rent at welfare-rate in new developments; the remaining two-thirds of units can be set at market rates. However, A Better City (ABC) city councillor Rebecca Bligh has put forward a motion that aims to weaken this constraint and “align” the DTES definition with the province’s definition. The province’s definition of social housing only requires government subsidy (unspecified amount) and for the landlord not to be a private entity. The proposed harmonization will remove the requirement in Vancouver for social housing to include 33% of all units at lower than market rate.
Social housing was once acknowledged as a necessary safety net for those evicted and excluded from the private market.
At a city council meeting in April 2023, the ABC-majority council argued that Vancouver has too much low-income housing compared to other municipalities. ABC put their attack against low income housing into practice a few months later by writing the death certificate for 750 units of Temporary Modular Housing, starting with the vote to close Larwill place. The 98 units that made up Larwill have now been torn down. After pressure and advocacy, the province agreed to relocate the units to the municipality of Barrière.
Added to all of this is the province’s weak definition of affordable housing. As the BC Parliamentary Budget Office has frequently reminded us, the province of BC lacks a clear definition of “affordable” housing. What remains is a very small sliver of welfare-rate housing units. Now built as “supportive housing,” this is the last bastion of welfare-rate housing and comes with restricted tenancy rights.
How Much “Social” Housing is Planned?
For all their bravado about being a social-minded party, the BC NDP’s housing expenditures have been roughly on par with those of the BC Liberals in the 2010s. Eby has not reversed BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell’s corporate tax cuts and upper-income tax breaks. Consider the fact that today the BC NDP subsidizes the annual homeowner grant to a greater extent than the entire province-wide budget for supportive housing.
Developers have been given at least $2 billion in low-interest loans and leases by the BC government, roughly twice the annual BC Housing budget. Additionally, the rate of growth of affordable housing always needs to be measured against the alarming rate of decline through demolitions and redevelopment schemes. Since 2016, Vancouver alone has lost 47,055 units of affordable housing under $1,000/month, “a rate of loss outpacing any added affordable stock by orders of magnitude,” writes housing researcher Daniela Aiello.3 Aiello points to research by Steve Pomeroy, who has found that for every unit of non-market housing built in Canada, we lose 15 units.
After almost ten years of housing austerity, the province has announced a very slight uptick in unit creation. Last year the province announced that in the coming years they will build 3,900 additional supportive housing units and 240 “complex care” housing units across British Columbia. This would not even be enough to address the current number of unhoused people in Vancouver, let alone the entire province. If the past is a predictor of the future, we can also expect delays, broken promises, and a lack of delivery unless we fight and organize.
The current provincial 5-year target for supportive housing in Vancouver is 583 units. In an interview with The Mainlander, housing activist Jean Swanson puts this figure in context. “The inadequacy of this number is illustrated by the fact that there are 3,000 people on the Vancouver supportive housing wait list, and over 700 units of Temporary Modular Housing (TMH) at risk of being lost because the city won’t renew leases or find new sites.”
Swanson recently published a report with Devin O’Leary with the Carnegie Housing Project called This Isn’t Working: 2024 Call for Government Action to End Houselessness. Their research found that planners anticipate a total of 1,255 shelter rate units coming to Vancouver by 2030. That’s based on a city memo from December 2022 that listed all the shelter rate units planned. “One of the planners told us that about 75% of these units actually will get built, so we took 75% of the total to get our figure of 1,255.”
There are 3,000 people on the Vancouver supportive housing wait list, and over 700 units of Temporary Modular Housing (TMH) at risk of being lost because the city won’t renew leases.
Inflated Government Housing Figures
We have witnessed a string of housing announcements that demonstrate the provincial government’s loose use of numbers and figures. Take, for example, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon’s statement: “We’re acting to break the cycle of homelessness in BC by creating 142 units at the Stanley in Gastown – including 80 supportive housing units.”
Kahlon uses misleading language that included the supportive units in the creation of ‘new’ housing, even though 78 of these units were replacement units after the 2016 demolition.4 Only two new units of supportive housing were actually created. Further, government delays and the lengthy building process created the space for the public to forget how many units were lost – perhaps even by design – while a number of the original tenants passed away in the process. And there you have it, the illusion of “new” units, to say nothing of the units being demolished in the DTES at a far greater rate. Certainly renovations like these are welcome and necessary, but they don’t create an increase in the dwindling affordable supply.
A further problem is that renewals, including of the Stanley Hotel, are most often premised on a “social mix” partnership with a private developer. The private developer Westbank, in the case of the Stanley, will be able to create and sell 140 market-rate units as part of the redevelopment, along with boutique retail on the ground floor, replete with poor doors (i.e. separate entrances for low-income tenants). This process will in turn prime the neighbourhood for further gentrification by creating market pressure on the surrounding area, pushing out low-income residents who are suddenly unable to pay for food or rent. It is also likely to create an uptick in anti-poor treatment on the part of new residents (violence, vigilantism, calls to 911, and so on).
David Eby captured the market problems with this type of development in a 2006 co-authored report:
The arrival of new residents has a snowball effect that leads to a transformation of the traditional neighborhood as old low-income housing is demolished and redeveloped or simply converted into higher-priced accommodation. Simultaneously, landlords increase rental rates to respond to the boost in demand for housing by those with greater affluence.5
Eby knows very well that these kinds of housing policies displace existing residents in the neighbourhood.
From Modulars to Work-Camp Hellscape
In March of 2023, Eby and Minister Kahlon linked arms with Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim to announce that 330 “new homes” would be built in the Downtown Eastside. Journalist Dan Fumano looked more carefully and found that only 20% of the 330 were net new units. A full 89 of the units were also temporary “work camp” units.
Interestingly, it was just a few days earlier that Eby had reiterated his commitment to “get rid of the SROs,” citing among other things the inhumanely small size of the average SRO unit. Ironically, Eby’s “work camp” units were significantly smaller than the average SRO, with shared bathrooms and dining facilities for up to 90 low-income temporary residents. These units are smaller than what the Red Cross says the minimum for a prison cell should be – so much for the BC NDP’s benevolent pretensions in declaring that SROs need to be replaced due to their small size.
Previous governments used to pursue “stop gap measures” like Temporary Modular Housing (TMH). TMH is dead, according to the city and province – but now we are subject to this even more temporary model of “work camp” housing. SROs are certainly not a high benchmark for dignified housing, but unless the government makes a U-turn, only the most naïve observer thinks this declining supply will be replaced with anything other than private condos and overpriced micro-loft rentals, mixed in with the occasional prison-size work camp unit. Other carceral solutions will include the decampment-to-prison pipeline, whenever residents violate Eby’s decampment injunctions.
Why Such a Fervent SRO “Replacement” Agenda?
When Eby was BC’s Housing Minister in 2021, he started up talks with then-Mayor Kennedy Stewart and other housing agency stakeholders about ‘phasing out’ the SROs, citing the poor conditions and small size of the units. Eby has since reiterated that he wants to get rid of the SROs while giving less specifics about his motivations. What is the impetus behind this? Why is Eby, a one-time defender of the SROs as a last stop before homelessness, now so passionate about razing them?
It was then-Mayor Kennedy Stewart who let the cat out of the bag. The SROs need to be torn down, he said, because they’re no longer economically profitable:
Gradually [the SROs] became less and less profitable for private sector operators. The model was built for something completely different, and it’s a square peg in a round hole now…It’s just collapsing in terms of a housing option.
Hundreds of DTES SROs now sit in the way of the profitable redevelopment of those remaining areas of the neighbourhood not yet gentrified and redeveloped. Prior to his time as Mayor of Vancouver, Kennedy Stewart gave his blessing to the mass demolition of rental housing in his own Burnaby riding as a BC NDP MLA.
According to Stewart’s own account, the support between him and the development industry was mutual throughout his Vancouver mayoralty – until his losing campaign against the more right wing Ken Sim.6 Vancouver’s largest developers made sizable individual donations to Stewart to support his candidacy in 2018. A similar approach seemed to be on track when a list of private fundraising targets was accidentally leaked in 2022.
Now that developers like Bob Rennie have become Eby supporters and enthusiastic collaborators with the BC NDP’s developer agenda, history is repeating itself. The political lessons are clear. Politicians like Eby and Stewart occasionally say they want something better than SROs while proactively facilitating evictions and creating worse housing and worsening homelessness for those displaced.
Moving Forward
Work camp housing, shelters and dilapidated SROs are not acceptable housing. A massive influx of decent and actually affordable housing needs to be built to address the current crisis. Based on the estimated number of unhoused people, the rate of increase and loss of SROs and modular units, the Mapping the Carceral Housing Assemblage research project estimates a minimum of 15,912 units need to be built in the next 10 years – an estimated cost of just under $8 billion.
This would only be a minimum number of units needed, only enough to end homelessness. Far more would be needed to tackle the wider housing crisis in Vancouver. To end homelessness we need to tackle root causes. A City of Vancouver report from earlier this summer finds that an additional 79,100 renter households are living in “unaffordable, inadequate or unsuitable housing.”
Building and renovating 100,000 units of housing might seem like an impossibility given our continued era of government austerity and neoliberal budgetary constraints. Municipalities can play a role. Historically they have spearheaded everything from social housing to rent control. Municipal funds also need to be shifted from policing unhoused people to housing them. But more fundamentally, the province and federal government need to step in. Thirty years on, the 1993 decision to terminate federal funds for co-ops and social housing needs to finally be reversed.
All of this is possible. We simply need governments with the will, imagination and desire to put poor people’s needs ahead of the rich.
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Endnotes
1 This figure is based on an analysis of two recent counts for Vancouver, each showing a slightly different number. The City of Vancouver’s official 2023 count shows an estimated homeless population of 2,420 people. This number is a point-in-time homeless count. These counts are recognized to be undercounts of the actual unhoused population. The BC Ministry of Social Development & Poverty Reduction, however, shows a higher number of 3,500. This latter figure is calculated through the number of individuals receiving social assistance with No Fixed Address (NFA), living within the City of Vancouver. The City of Vancouver’s official count, concluding 2,420 individuals, indicates that only 83% of the individuals in their count were receiving social assistance. In short, an estimated 17% of people living on the street are not currently collecting social assistance. This means that in addition to the 3,500 people with NFA status receiving social assistance, we should add another 17% (i.e. 595 individuals). This brings the total number to 4,095.
2 For a comprehensive breakdown of the 400 units lost in privately owned SROs in the immediate block surrounding Woodward’s, see CCAP Annual DTES Hotel Report, Carnegie Community Action Project (2012). For a more recent discussion see Clint Burnham’s incisive analysis on CBC, “SFU professor discusses how Woodward’s department store gentrified Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside,” CBC News (Jan 4, 2024), link.
3 Daniela Aiello, Flipping the Script on Vacancy Control: A Critical (Re)evaluation of Rent Control Literature and Policy in the Struggle for Housing Security in B.C. (September 2023) p. 5, link.
4 PHS Community Services 2022 Annual Report. Also see BC Housing’s announcement.
5 David Eby and Christopher Misura, Cracks in the Foundation: Solving the Housing Crisis in Canada’s Poorest Postal Code (Vancouver: Pivot Legal Society, 2006), p. 11.
6 Stewart blames his 2022 election loss on meddling by the Chinese government rather than on his own move rightward in a failed attempt to out-compete a more pro-developer, right-wing candidate. He told the Globe and Mail: “It is pretty common for the development community to have a little breakfast or lunch and have 25 people come and they’d buy their tickets for $1,200. Then it just stopped and part of my suspicion is that much of the financing for development in the city comes from China…It is Chinese investors who are financing different projects, especially luxury buildings downtown. And all of a sudden the folks that I had worked with for four years … the money wasn’t coming in.” Stewart quoted in Robert Fife, Steven Chase and Nathan Vanderklippe, “China’s Vancouver consulate interfered in 2022 municipal election, according to CSIS,” The Globe and Mail (March 16, 2023).