BURST
Provincial government efforts to get people help with homelessness and substance-use challenges are running into opposition and the rejection of supportive housing facilities across B.C., including recent cancellations of projects in Burnaby and Abbotsford.
Viewed as a better and safer alternative to tent camps by provincial officials, supportive housing is meant to provide vulnerable people with a roof over their head, as well as services such as 24/7 staffing and help obtaining employment and mental health support.
But there are concerns about a perceived rise in drug use and safety problems in neighbourhoods where such facilities are established, and operators have warned about a lack of funding to provide the services their residents need, as well as an inability to evict problematic tenants.
Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens said that in the case of a proposed 42-bed temporary modular facility for homeless people over the age of 45, a decision to vote it down was due to complaints about its location near an elementary school.
Siemens said concerns had been raised from both the school board and the parent advisory council about the site, which, unlike other supportive housing located near schools in the community, was not going to be abstinence-based.
“I think that this one came down more to the drug use and some of the other off-site things that that attracts, which is very problematic, especially for schools and when they don’t have other services in the area,” said Siemens.
The mayor said the problem in a community such as Abbotsford is that 72 per cent of the land is part of the Agricultural Land Reserve, leaving little room for supportive housing.
In Burnaby, B.C. Housing pulled funding from the provincial budget for a new development in the Royal Oak neighbourhood that would have included 40 supportive housing units and 10 complex care units.
A petition targeting the development received over 14,000 signatures.
Last year, Vancouver council said the city would be putting a pause on funding for new supportive housing.
Mayor Ken Sim pointed out at the time that Vancouver houses the lion’s share of the Lower Mainland’s supportive housing and services for people struggling with mental health and substance-use challenges, with 77 per cent of the region’s supportive housing located in the city despite Vancouver only having a quarter of the total population.
“We need to rethink hyper-concentration of services in the Downtown Eastside,” he said. “For too long, multiple levels of government have enabled and encouraged the concentration of supportive housing, shelter spaces and dozens of social service, non-profit organizations in this small, four-square-kilometre neighbourhood.”
The freeze has impacted B.C.’s largest city at a time when homelessness continues to rise. There are 5,000 people who are without a roof over their head, said Keir Macdonald, CEO of Coast Mental Health.
“Vancouver continues to be one of the communities with the highest representation of homelessness, where Metro Vancouver continues to have over 5,000 people without a home,” he said. “It’s been deeply troubling that we know it is a priority area. We need to continue to deliver solutions for those who don’t have adequate safe places to be.”
Penny Gurstein, a professor emeritus and former director of the school of community and regional planning at UBC, said she warned the city while it considered whether to pause supportive housing that instead of having the desired effect of forcing other municipalities to build more such facilities, it would give them an excuse to turn down projects.
Gurstein said that one of the main problems with the sector is that there is little standardization around what constitutes supportive housing and how to provide it.
She said the concept of supportive housing began in the early 2000s as people with severe mental health challenges were moved out of psychiatric institutions. The problem has grown exponentially during the almost 10-year long toxic drug crisis that has left many more people needing care.
“Supportive housing has really been underfunded ever since its inception. So that means that the kind of staffing you need, and the kind of quality of staffing you need for this population is just really not available,” said Gurstein.
“What’s happening now is that there are people in supportive housing that really need complex care, but they have to stay in supportive housing because there isn’t any alternative. They are impacting the other residents and the staff and the functioning of the society because of that.”
Operators say they understand the public’s concerns about supportive housing and are working with the province to address the public safety risk surrounding their sites.
Bob Hughes, CEO of ASK Wellness Society in Kamloops, said that current regulations make it is almost impossible for operators to manage their facilities. He believes that new legislation brought in by Housing Minister Christine Boyle that allows facilities to evict problematic tenants for possessing weapons or threatening staff will help.
“Issues of weapons being held by a very small portion of the people that we provide services to were directly impacting the safety of residents, staff, and frankly, the neighbourhood,” said Hughes, before saying the primary issue is about drug use.
“I think that the public’s frustration is around drug use and around the impacts of addictions for people in terms of their behaviours. And so I think the next real place that needs to go is to say, what are we doing to treat people’s addictions in supportive housing?”