VANCOUVER I City will need 2,200 units for addicts and the mentally ill
Frances Bula
Sun
Vancouver will need 2,200 units of housing in the next 10 years for people who are mentally ill and addicted to drugs, and most of those units should be outside the downtown core, says a staff report.
This, said one councillor, is a challenge to Vancouverites to show they are willing to accept these residents.
“There’s a widely held opinion throughout the city that we need to do more for the homeless,” said Coun. Peter Ladner. “Our challenge now is going to be ‘Are you willing to help people who are out on the street?’ Anybody who wants to deal with homelessness should be willing to have this in their neighbourhood.”
Ladner said it will be a problem if neighbourhoods decide to oppose supportive housing.
“If we don’t do this, we will not have a livable city.”
The report, written by housing planner Jill Davidson, spells out exactly what Vancouver has to be prepared for over the next 10 years when it comes to accommodating supportive housing. By that, she means housing that includes live-in or day staff who help the mentally ill and addicted stay on track, take needed medications, develop living skills, and integrate into their neighbourhoods.
Davidson’s report is intended to give residents as clear a picture as possible of what they’ll be asked to accept in the future, so they don’t feel that housing projects have been sprung on them, that the city is operating secretly, or that they are the victims of experimental projects.
Those were the accusations that surrounded a supportive-housing project eventually approved for 39th and Fraser over a site at 16th and Dunbar, which the city owns and could potentially develop for supportive housing.
The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, which funds supportive housing in the city, provided Davidson with the estimate of units that will be needed over the next 10 years.
“Our piece at the city is to figure out where these are going to land and to talk about how we can successfully integrate this housing,” she said.
About 1,500 units will probably never be noticed. They’ll be provided through private rentals, where residents will get supplements to pay their rent and receive support from visiting health-care workers.
Another 200 units are in the process of being built.
But the city will need to help health authorities and non-profits find sites to accommodate another 450 people in dedicated buildings. That will take city permits and meetings with local residents.
Over the next two months, city housing staff will be holding public forums to present their information on supportive housing and get feedback from residents about what the city can do to allay their fears about the potential impacts.
Ladner said those meetings will be important “to demonstrate to the neighbourhood that there are many fears about this kind of housing that, as far as I know, are ill-founded.”
Some of the information city staff will be including is the location of the city’s 37 existing supportive-housing sites; which areas in the city are zoned for apartments and are potentially the sites for future supportive housing; a list of the sites the city currently owns, which might be developed for supportive housing; crime statistics around the existing sites; and an explanation of the process for approving sites.
Although the city sites may be used for other purposes — seniors or regular social housing — Davidson said staff included the locations of those sites so no one would think the city was trying to hide them.
Davidson said city staff have culled police crime statistics and examined the impact on property values to see whether there is anything noticeable around existing supportive-housing sites. That research has found no correlation, she said.
It’s estimated that the 2,200 units needed will have to be accommodated in about 10 to 15 buildings over the next 10 years. Only three of those should go into the downtown area, which already has most of the city’s supportive housing, the report says.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007