‘Not everybody needs the space,’ NPA councillor says
Frances Bula
Sun
VANCOUVER – The city should look at building dormitory-style housing as one way of getting people off the streets or out of the city’s “Third World” residential hotels.
That’s one suggestion from a package of proposals coming from the city’s Non-Partisan Association councillors this week.
The councillors are trying to come up with city responses to the growing homelessness problem and the continuing reluctance of federal and provincial governments to fund old-style social housing.
“It’s wonderful to have a Cadillac model but it doesn’t work if the dollars aren’t there,” said Coun. Kim Capri. “And not everyone needs the space that we mandate.”
At the moment, the city’s minimum standard for self-contained units is 400 square feet, with permission in some cases to go down to 320 square feet.
Capri and Mayor Sam Sullivan say they’d like staff to look at options for different forms of housing down to 100 square feet, the size of many existing residential hotel rooms.
“Not everybody needs the space,” said Capri. “That rule is limiting our options. We could look at a dormitory style with shared amenity spaces.”
While Capri said she sees something like that as transitional housing, Sullivan seems to see new small-unit housing as a form of permanent housing, one that would be better than the “Third World” residential hotels where some Downtown Eastside people now live.
Sullivan says a project being built now on East Hastings is costing $200,000 a unit because it has to be built to the existing guidelines.
If rooms were built smaller, the city could get four or five units out of that $200,000 instead of just one.
Capri’s motion, which has been worked out with the NPA caucus, will also propose that:
– The city ask the provincial government to amend the Vancouver Charter so it can give tax breaks or bonus space for “affordable or supportive housing.”
– The city “fast track” three of its current 19 lots available for social housing to take advantage of Housing Minister Rich Coleman’s recent offers of money for transitional housing.
– The city ask for more flexibility in opening emergency winter shelters, which currently can only take in people when the temperature drops below 4 degrees C.
– The city ask for money to help landlords of existing residential hotels keep them up to a livable standard.
Capri and Sullivan said the Homeless Action Plan, a 105-page document with 85 recommendations that was approved by the last council, is good but puts too much emphasis on things the federal and provincial governments should do.
They said they wanted to look more at what the city can do, especially in light of Coleman’s recent announcement of money for supportive housing — $10.7 million for 450 units — and his recent public comments that municipalities often create barriers to social housing.
But Vision Vancouver Coun. Heather Deal, who has not yet seen the proposed motions, said she has doubts about the package.
Much of it seems to be recycled from the existing homeless action plan, such as the request for more flexibility in when the winter shelters are opened.
She questioned why Sullivan and his caucus aren’t simply acting on the plan, which called for the city to do whatever it could to add 800 new units of social housing a year to the existing stock, including buying one residential hotel every year.
The city currently has 292 units of social housing under construction, 200 at Woodward’s and 92 at 65 East Hastings, which were announced during the previous council.
“Mayor Larry Campbell and Jim Green lobbied and got housing for this city, even after the housing programs were shut down. Why isn’t Sam doing that?”
Deal said she also has serious concerns about dropping the allowable room size to what Sullivan appears to be proposing.
“That’s stacking them like cordwood. Creating transitional housing is a good thing if there is something for people to transition to. But if you create a large, large stock of substandard housing, that’s what people will have to live in.”
Deal said small units mean people have to share washrooms, which many women don’t like because they feel unsafe.
Vancouver has always been one of the province’s most energetic municipalities in looking for ways to create social housing, no matter what the political party, with about 21,000 units in the city. That’s about eight per cent of the total housing stock.
When the Homeless Action Plan was being developed, the city’s housing staff proposed dropping the minimum unit size to 275 square feet, but the Campbell council decided it wouldn’t accept that.
At the time, staff also cautioned that the city should never allow too many small units to be built, as only about 20 per cent of the existing low-income population indicated they would be satisfied living in a room that had no bathroom in it.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
