On January 23, 2025, Vancouver’s Mayor, Ken Sim, made the most outrageous pronouncement of his tenure.
At a public safety forum organized by Save Our Streets, he announced that effective immediately, he would not approve any new supportive housing in the city until other municipalities also began building more such units.
Reaction was swift, with most condemning Sim’s move.
Sim’s point that other municipalities should do more, must never mean that Vancouver should do less. Sim’s approach will only make an already bad situation worse. If ever there was a need for more supportive housing everywhere, it is now.
According to research quoted in The Mainlander, an estimated 4,094 unhoused people live in metro Vancouver. This estimate is likely low as too often homeless statistics fail to count those who are “couch surfing” and the count ignores those who are precariously housed.
To say the least, it’s not easy to make sense of how (or if) provincial and municipal housing policies actually work. More towers providing much more housing are being built throughout the region, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. More people are homeless each year and rents remain too high for most. Vancouver’s rental housing costs are the highest in Canada.
Clearly there is a crucial need for more affordable housing, due to factors such as:
- Too many workers with relatively low incomes trying to manage high rents.
- The demolition of low-rise, affordable apartments to make way for mostly unaffordable tower developments.
- A persistent belief in the theory of “trickle-down housing”. In other words, the idea that people with money will move into new, higher cost units, leaving older, less costly units for those with lower incomes. “Trickle down” has never worked for the general economy and doesn’t work for housing.
Supportive housing is a subset of affordable housing. While it includes housing with supports for those with addiction and/or mental health issues, as Councillor Pete Fry noted in response to Mayor Sim’s announcement, supportive housing also includes housing for seniors, for people with disabilities, and recovery housing.
Social housing and supportive housing are not the same thing, but the terms tend to be used interchangeably, and most social housing buildings now include supports for residents. And what is meant by social housing in this city is deceptive.
Fry, among others, has long criticized Vancouver’s definition of social housing. Here, a building is defined as 100% social housing if it is owned by a non-profit or government agency and includes only a minimum 30% of units affordable to households on social assistance.
Individuals living on government pensions are almost totally dependent on obtaining social/supportive housing or housing subsidies as income support levels don’t come close to covering local costs. A report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has calculated that the “living wage” in Metro Vancouver is $27.05 per hour, or somewhat over $4,300 per month. The current maximum shelter allowance for one person on social assistance is $500 per month. The highest maximum monthly rate is $1,140 for 10 people. Vancouver’s average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,490.
Mayor Sim’s current salary is $210,444 per year, plus benefits.
There may, however, be a silver lining in this black cloud. Mayor Sim made his announcement just as campaigning has begun for the April 5th Council byelection. My fingers are crossed that the Vancouver electorate will be so outraged by the mayor’s heartless announcement that neither of the two City Council vacancies will be won by candidates from his ABC party.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (February 3, 2025): 426.28ppm
One year ago (February 2, 2024): 422.21ppm
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I don’t see a log in button so I hope this gets to you. Mayor Sim needs to take a philosophy class. His arguments/decisions don’t make sense . He is saying I am going to cut off my right arm to spite my left arm. His decision to not build any more social housing in Vancouver is absurd. I am on disability and there are days that I go hungry. Federal gov gives me $1200/month for CPP Disability. The Provincial gov gives me $300. My rent is $1200. I live with a room-mate. $300/month for food, toilet paper, tide etc. On top of that, I have to pay $65. for a landline phone (cell phone gives me seizures) and up to $100 for CC payment which I have to use to survive the month. There is nothing left for food. I can go without food but I have to have a roof over my head or today, I would have to build an igloo. Mayor Sims is so out of touch with the reality in Vancouver, it is scary. I was going to send you a letter on another topic but I guess now is a good time. Regarding, Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, BC. The title itself is an oxymoron. I called them regarding “emergency money” and the male who answered the phone must work from home because I could barely hear him. All I could hear was his television. He said twice, I can’t hear you and hung up. I called back and 10 minutes later a woman answered and I said can you hear me ok? She said yes, it’s fine. I told her what happened with my previous call and asked if I could report it somewhere or talk to a supervisor. She said, I will put it in my notes. I said ok, all they have to do is listen to the recording. She said, “we don’t record phone calls”. I was stunned to hear this. The City of Vancouver records all calls and so does BC Housing. I assumed all government agencies and big bussinesses automatically recorded calls so if there was a complaint with each person having a difference about what happened, there would be factual information, like a police officer wearing a camera. It would prove that the employee was doing his job correctly and not hanging up the phone to watch TV. Not recording calls puts the caller immediately at fault with no way of proving what was really said, what really happened and ensuring that the agency has good employees. She said, “we get thousands of calls a day and the ministry can’t afford that so you should record the call”. There is nothing to prove that she even “put it in her notes”. What is wrong with this province? Common sense seems to have evaporated into thin air.
Sincerely,
Buffie Duval
This is absurd. It is not even logical. It is like cutting off your right arm to spite the left. Most people I know rent illegal basement suites to survive. People who are on Disability and the elderly don’t eat every day because there is no money left from the pittance they get from the Federal and Provincial government. Desperate people do desperate things and some people turn to crime and prostitution to pay the rent. The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction is an oxymoron in reality. I called social services/welfare and the man who answered said a couple of times that he couldn’t hear me and hung up. It was odd because I was in a room that was silent on a landline phone. I could hear his TV in the background loud and clear. I phoned back and 15 minutes later a woman answered the phone and I asked her if she could hear me and she said, it was fine. I told her about the previous employee who hung up on me. I said you can play the call back and hear his TV in the background. She said that she would put it “in her notes” and that they don’t have recordings because the ministry couldn’t afford it and that I should get my landline to record calls. I was stunned actually because the City of Vancouver and BC Housing records all calls. I thought all businesses did to ensure the employee is doing a proper job and as a record of facts rather than 2 people disagreeing or lying about what was said. It would be similar to a police officer wearing a camera. While you are waiting for a ministry employee to answer there is a recording that plays telling the caller that the employees will not tolerate any harassment or abuse from the caller. Well how would they know if the caller was abusive or their employee hung up so that he could finish watching the soccer/football game? There is an extreme lack of accountability, no checks and balances and a huge deficit of common sense in this province.