The Politics of Vancouver’s Homeless Shelters

Over the past weeks, Vancouver’s homeless shelters have been over-flowing. In this article Maria Wallstam and Nathan Crompton argue that this year there are no new homeless shelters, despite government claims to the contrary. On the one hand, the few shelters planned to open this week are the same ones forcibly closed down last spring, when the Province made the empty promise to regularize funding for the shelters. On the other hand, there are fewer available spaces than last year, while the housing crisis becomes worse than ever before. In addressing “the politics of Vancouver’s shelters” — and the mutually beneficial publicity fights that break out between the city and the province at the beginning of each shelter season — this article reveals why the city and the province cynically do not want to see the regularization of shelter funding. -ML

Last night, just like the previous night, every shelter in Vancouver was full. Yet again Central Shelter, First United, Lookout, New Fountain, Belkin House, Crosswalk, Triage, Yukon, were each filled to maximum capacity. First United, Vancouver’s largest shelter and the city’s “shelter of last resort” has been turning away hundreds of people since last week.

Over the past years, First United church has sheltered up to 300 people each night and is the last place where a person without housing goes when turned away from all other shelters. But last week the building was hit with a city-enforced occupancy limit of 240. The by-law forced First United to turn away dozens of people and triggered, for the third year in a row, a publicity battle between the provincial government and the city. Like last year and the year before, the disagreement was only a disagreement on the surface, concealing the repeated formula that garners support for both for the city and the province.

On the province’s side, the formula is simple: each winter Minister Rich Coleman refuses to re-open shelter spaces closed down at the end of the previous winter, while at the same time threatening to withdraw funding for existing shelters like First United. In place of lost shelters, the province opens a handful of scattered ‘new’ shelter beds, while maintaining that the remaining shortfall will be filled in with new housing opened under the arrangement to build fourteen sites of social housing. None of these supposedly new housing spaces are new at all, since the desperately-needed fourteen sites were supposed to be completed by 2001 in some cases, and December 2009 at the latest. Neither is it the case that the shelters can be considered new, since they should not have been closed the previous spring in the first place.

Each time the shelters close and open there is ritual infighting between parties of the 1% — Vision and the BC Liberals. We have to consider why the city is so willing to play this seasonal political game. The answer is complicated but also simple, because shelter closures represent the only time of the year when the city can give an on-the-ground appearance of fighting against homelessness. In a brief but highly publicized pause on the city’s harsh neoliberal housing agenda, shelter closures provide a window for Gregor Robertson and Vision to play devil’s advocate.

All too willingly, Minister Coleman performed his side by giving the appearance of a dispute: “We seldom ever hear ‘thank you,’ and we seldom ever hear ‘we’re working with you.’” The truth is that ever since the election of Vision in 2008, the housing issues that matter to people’s lives — tenancy legislation, rent controls, tax cuts, the demolition of social housing, years-long delays of promised social housing — have been marked by consensus and a “tight bond” between the province and the city. The two sides have collaborated on making the situation worse: the province has done nothing to compensate for its decade freeze on the construction of housing, while the city has ramped-up gentrification and displacement in areas with the highest existing stocks of low-income housing.

The city’s criticism of the province’s foot-dragging is pretend, ending with, “Big thanks to the Minister and the Premier for coming through in the crunch here and making sure that we have adequate beds to meet the needs.” The fact is that there will not be adequate beds. Gregor Robertson knows that as well as the service providers and the people living on the streets.

Just as it happened last spring, the shelters will be 100% full on the day they are scheduled to close. And just as last spring, too, Vision and the Mayor will be equally willing to arrest those who refuse to move into the streets when those shelters close. Far from failing to thank the province, the city is the unquestioningly loyal enforcement arm of the housing crisis, using the police to guard empty buildings, criminalizing the poor every day, and — in lieu of housing — putting people in jail.

Three solutions to Vancouver’s housing and homelessness crisis

At the recent Homelessness and Affordable Housing debate (Nov 7, St. Andrew’s–Wesley Church), mayoral candidates Gregor Robertson and Suzanne Anton said a lot of things, but they didn’t debate much. They both admitted that they will not slow down or pause destructive market development in the Downtown Eastside (DTES). They agreed that a municipal tax on real estate speculation and non-resident property ownership would not be appropriate. They also agreed that inclusionary zoning, a soft and widely used development permit mechanism that forces developers to include affordable housing in all market developments, would not be good for Vancouver. They even agreed that the solution to the affordable rental housing and homelessness crisis caused by the real estate market is to be found back in the market itself. Put simply, their differences were of degree, not principle.

The most troubling thing about the mayoral debate was the way that both candidates addressed the low-income affordable housing and homelessness crisis: by passing the blame onto provincial and federal levels of government. Both Gregor Robertson and Suzanne Anton avoided the City’s role in building housing, as well as tools in its jurisdiction that could be used to save low-income housing. These are the top-three things the DNC believes a mayoral candidate would do if they were serious about ending the affordable rental-housing and homelessness crisis in Vancouver:

INTERVIEW | Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver’s Randy Helten

The Mainlander’s Sean Antrim sat down with their Mayoral candidate Randy Helten of Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver (NSV) to talk about affordability, accountability, the arts, and Vancouver’s future. It is a tall order for a political party that does not receive corporate and developer donations to get candidates elected. NSV has been fighting an up-hill battle.

Sean Antrim: What amount of development do we need in Vancouver right now? And the reason that I’m asking this question is because many people, and the mainstream press, have criticized Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver as being NIMBY-based. A lot of journalists have been around for a while, and in the 1990s with Gordon Campbell, NIMBY-ism was quite a problem.

Randy Helten: To tell you the truth, I don’t know the answer. In fact, I don’t think anyone knows the answer. The people who know the answer are concealing the answer. Because the City has removed from public access numbers that show the current zoning capacity. It used to be up and available, but it’s gone now. My understanding is that Professor Patrick Condon at UBC has done some studies, and he’s saying that for construction within the current zoning, the capacity for additional population density is enough for decades into the future. Construction could happen without any rezoning, to fill all of the incoming population.

The City has these numbers, and in January of this year [COPE Councilor] Ellen Woodsworth put forward a motion that was passed, according to which the planning department was supposed to release the numbers of zoning capacity to council some time in February. It’s off the map. Despite repeated requests there’s been no response out of the planning department. So no one knows the answer publicly. The information is concealed. My suspicion is that if you take the West End, for example, I think in the current zoning, without rezoning, we could accommodate another 5,000 people or so. That’s just a sense, because I know the areas that are zoned right now for six stories that are currently two stories. If you take the average of all that and you look at a long term thirty-year plan or a hundred-year plan, and look at the land area in the West End and long term population goals — steady growth, not too extreme, not too rapid — the West End could accommodate several thousand more people.

Sean Antrim: That’s the way most cities do rezoning — blanket rezoning — which is doing an entire neighbourhood at a time. Why do you think we have so many spot rezonings in Vancouver?

Randy Helten: My understanding of the dynamics is that a spot rezoning allows exceptions to happen within the existing zoning. In many cases it offers huge returns to the owner of those specific spots. If you go to the old adage “follow the money” and look at who’s making campaign contributions to our elected officials, it makes sense. They’re making the campaign contributions, the officials get into power, and they have control over land use decisions. They’re supposed to regulate the land on behalf of the entire public and balance all the interests of all of the stakeholders. Both Vision and the NPA as organizations are incapable of avoiding undue influence from that private money, and that’s what we’re seeing as the results of their decisions.

Mayoral Candidates Debate Against the Public | Injunction to be issued to Occupy Vancouver

Mayoral candidates debate against the public

Tonight’s mayoral debate on homelessness and affordable housing was a heated fight — not between the two candidates, but between the City and its residents. Mayor Gregor Robertson and mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton were supposed to face off and debate the issues, but the real debate was with the people of Vancouver.

Rather than reveal disagreements, the event brought to the fore the overlapping politics of Robertson and Anton. If before tonight there was a sense that the candidates’ two parties — Vision and the NPA — were different in their respective policy platforms, tonight’s debate showcased agreement on housing strategy: let the market do it. When asked in vague terms if the market could provide all the solutions, both candidates hesitated, and Anton frequently brought in her party’s history of buying sites throughout Vancouver for social housing — admittedly more than could be said for Vision. But on actual concrete politics, the candidates converged more than they differed. Most importantly, both candidates stressed that they do not support a speculator tax on housing and do not support inclusionary zoning in Vancouver.

Inclusionary zoning is an urban planning policy used in cities throughout the world — including Vancouver’s Oppenheimer district (“DEOD”) — mandating the inclusion of affordable housing in all new multi-unit housing developments. In exchange for pushing up property values and exposing low-income renters to evictions, developers are forced to build a percentage of new units as affordable. In Oppenheimer it’s 20%. Tonight, the question was: “Would an inclusionary zoning policy, one where you require developers to build a certain percentage of affordable units into their projects like Richmond does, be workable in Vancouver?” Gregor and Anton said categorically: no.

Gregor was referring to city staff’s current review of inclusionary zoning in the Oppenheimer district. Earlier this year head Planner Brent Toderian stated that the city will have to make “tough decisions” about inclusionary zoning in the Oppenheimer district. Tonight Gregor repeated this plan for affordability: replace affordable housing in East Vancouver with $300,000 condominiums. Like Anton, who tonight argued for a “common sense revolution” of “removing red tape” for the developers, Gregor wants further de-regulation to accompany more STIR tax breaks.

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Throughout the debate, however, dozens in attendance disagreed with Robertson and Anton, shouting slogans like, “Housing is a Human Right,” “Stop the Evictions,” “Drown Out the Developer Parties,” “Gregor Lies,” and “Three More Years of What?” A big theme of the night was the debate format itself, pitting two candidates “against” each other in a false opposition. Attendees — dozens of them from #occupyvancouver, arriving at the debate with the recent announcement that Mayor Roberston has ordered an eviction of Occupy — rejected the format of the debate, which excluded any political party or candidate not funded by developers.