I read in the news recently of a very exciting study called the New Leaf Project that was done by Foundations for Social Change, a Vancouver-based charitable organization, and UBC. Starting in 2018, a number of homeless individuals were each given $7500. Their spending was then tracked over a year and compared to a control…
$30 million for housing is welcome. But how far will it go?
Recently, Mayor Kennedy Stewart proposed that the city spend $30 million addressing the homelessness emergency crisis arising from the pandemic. The funds are for buying or leasing hotels, apartment buildings and single-room occupancy hotels to provide housing for those on the streets or squeezed out of shelters with COVID-19 distancing requirements. I’m so pleased to…
“Pinnacle” landmark to a failed political party isn’t what Vancouver needs
City council will decide Wednesday Sept. 30, whether or not to approve Pinnacle International’s rezoning application for a proposed 55-storey luxury high-rise at the north end of Granville Bridge. (Over the years, the project has crept up from 52 to 54 and, now, 55 storeys.) By the time you read this blog, city council may…
Our legal system needs many more RBGs and Beverley McLachlins
On Friday, September 18, my attendant, Cory Wilson, gave me the bad news — he’d just received a text from his wife that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. RBG was an icon in the American legal community, and far, far more. Before being appointed to the US Supreme Court by then-president Bill Clinton, she’d…
Sharing the gold gleaned from real estate development
Last week, Mayor Kennedy Stewart called a special city council meeting regarding a motion he was introducing to address Vancouver’s homelessness crisis, especially the 300 or so unsheltered people now living in Strathcona Park. I’m pleased to see that at this Monday’s council meeting, councillors directed staff to look into and report back on the…
The NPA’s Christopher Wilson should be run out of town for his hate speech
Even in a democratic society, there are limits to freedom of speech. We have laws that prohibit libel and slander for good reason. Libel is when you write an untruth — something demonstrably false — about someone else. If you say Danni is dishonest, when they’re not, that’s libellous. Slander is the same thing, but…
BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT: “The price of failure is just too great to imagine.”
Most of you may know that I’m a very big fan of Bernie Sanders. I don’t normally pay a lot of attention to politics south of the border, but the 2016 primaries totally grabbed my attention. Senator Bernie Sanders seemingly came out of nowhere, then went on to nearly capture the Democratic nomination for president….