Urban Vancouver

A new study whose executive summary has been released by VCH suggests that supportive housing significantly reduces hospital use by individuals who were previously homeless and have mental health issues. An excerpt is below:

OUTCOME EVALUATION UPDATE - HOSPITAL UTILIZATION

MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORTED HOUSING
VANCOUVER COASTAL HEALTH June, 2008

[. . .]

This report brings together information related to 402 individuals who entered Vancouver Coastal Health funded mental health supported housing in the years 2003, 2004 and 2005. This study compares their emergency room visits and hospital bed use in the year prior to entry to supported housing and the year after housing entry.

[. . .]

The study found that for the 402 individuals in the year after moving into supported housing:

- Hospital admissions reduced by 35% (from 209 admits pre to 126 post)

- Average length of stay reduced by 40% (from 21.6 days pre to 15 post)

- Hospital bed days reduced by 55% (from 4,522 days pre to 2,045 post)

- Psychiatric admissions reduced 54%( from 4,043 days pre to 1,845 post)

- Medical admissions reduced by 58%( from 479 days pre to 200 post)

Findings were less conclusive for impacts on emergency room visits. [. . . ]

The provision of supported housing to these 402 individuals resulted in 2,477 hospital bed days (6.6 beds) being made available for others in need of these acute services. Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Had the chance to speak with VPD's Superintendent Warren Lemcke today when he told me that the officers he's in charge of for the North end of the city, including the DTES, won't be involved in any Olympic sweep of the homeless.

"You can quote me on this," said Superintendent Lemcke. "None of our officers will be involved in moving any of the homeless for the Olympics, except if it's into safe and adequate shelter."

So quoted, and glad to hear it.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

From Pivot Legal Society.

-------------------------------------

Vancouver – Pivot Legal Society released 5,000 of its new Tenant Rights Card today, providing Downtown Eastside tenants with a wallet-sized list of legal rights to assist in interactions with landlords. Despite the empowering tone of the cards, the rights listed come with a strongly worded warning.

“Tenants may have rights on paper,” said David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society, “but we’ve been told many times that these rights are rarely meaningful for tenants. Sometimes even a lawyer can’t help.”

The card points out that the Vancouver Police Department policy to refuse to intervene in situations of illegal evictions may result in tenants who insist on their rights being kicked out and left without a remedy. It also says that the City of Vancouver’s policy is to condemn a building, rather than use its bylaw powers to force a landlord to do repairs.

“If you’re illegally evicted because you insist on your rights, you can’t call 911,” said Eby. “You’ve got to fill out multiple forms, wait for weeks, take time off work, and have a phone or bus fare so you can take your claim to the Residential Tenancy Branch.“

Pivot’s Tenant Rights Card is based on its extremely successful Police Rights Card. More than 75,000 copies of the Police Rights Card have been distributed by Pivot and its partner agencies across Canada.

The final text on the Tenant Rights cards was the result of feedback from the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA), the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre (TRAC), First United Church, the Vancouver Associated Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and Downtown Eastside residents themselves in focus groups. The Rights Card project was sponsored by the Vancouver Foundation and the Central City Foundation.

To see the wording on the card, visit http://www.pivotlegal.org/pdfs/2008-07-03-tenantrightscard.pdf Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Yes, Geoff Plant, Civil City Commissioner for the City of Vancouver, lead a group of CEOs on a tour of the "grittier" side of Vancouver, apparently catching his jacket on some razor wire in the process.

Mr. Plant was reported as saying "It would have been nice to spend more time talking, but people need to see for themselves what it is really like here."

In the interests of helping those CEOs see what it is "really like" in the DTES, may I suggest some destinations that probably weren't on the tour.

First, I would hope Mr. Plant took the CEOs on the tour of the container at Carrall and Hastings where the VPD, enforcing City of Vancouver bylaws, by all appearances under Mr. Plant's direction, store the seized belongings of homeless people.

Second, I would hope the private guards in public spaces who "move along" the homeless that sleep on the street because the shelters are full (and were funded with city tax dollars as part of Mr. Plant's initiative) were also part of the tour.

Finally, a great closer on the tour would be Mr. Plant taking the CEOs past the quite plump stack of invoices to the City for his work "solving" Vancouver's homeless problem, which would hopefully be beside the stack of pay stubs he received as an MLA "causing" Vancouver's homeless problem through his government's cuts of the early 2000's.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

BC Housing is now closing 3 of the SRO (residential hotel) buildings it purchased in its recent buying spree. The Park Hotel (56 rooms), Walton Hotel (50) and Savoy Hotel (28) will all be, or have already been, completely emptied.

During a meeting with BC Housing, reps from that organization told me that the buildings had to be closed because the renovations were far more extensive than expected. They assured me, and the other tenant advocate groups that were present, that they did not expect any further closures. (As a caveat, dear reader, you should know that they had provided that same assurance at our last meeting three months ago when they announced they were closing the Walton and Savoy.)

Combined with the closure of Marie Gomez Place, BC Housing has now been responsible for fully 35% of the 585 room closures (not counting Little Mountain) in the DTES since June of 2007.

Although the news seems super grim, it isn't quite as grim as it seems. The BC Housing reps said that they have been opening previously closed rooms in the Drake Hotel and at other SRO buildings, increasing the stock somewhat to replace the now 210 closed SRO rooms or equivalents. And, of course, the rooms will re-open once the renos are done, which I'm told will be sooner since workers can now do the whole building at the same time.

We'll see. I'm expecting some stats from BC Housing on the closures and re-openings soon, and will post them when they arrive.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

In neighbourhood news briefs, David Malmo-Levine's "Herb Museum" is moving out of the DTES and into North America's marijuana headquarters at Cambie and Hastings. Surely it wasn't the drugs that drove them out of the neighbourhood.

In other news, construction has started on the second half of the Carrall Street Greenway between Hastings and Pender Streets. No word yet on whether the VPD and City of Vancouver will move their container full of homeless belongings to facilitate construction once the project crosses Hastings.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Tim Louis has announced that he'll be seeking a seat around the City Council table this coming election. Rumours are that Ellen Woodsworth will soon follow suit. Another candidate showed up in the Georgia Straight commenting on the carbon tax, and I can't find that feature on their website to share her name with you.

Here's one person wondering whether a deal with Vision is in the cards anymore.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Whoa.

According to her blog, Frances Bula, a very, if not one of the most respected reporters in Vancouver, has resigned from the Vancouver Sun.

Frances knows her stuff. I remember, as a cub housing activist, doing my first interview with Frances. She stopped me mid-sentence explaining what an SRO (residential hotel) was, and said, "Just so you know, I've been around the neighbourhood for a while."

And it's true. Frances has an encyclopedic knowledge of DTES issues in particular, and Vancouver municipal issues generally. For her to leave the Sun is, well, pretty shocking.

Without making this sound like an obituary, because surely she's got something cooking somewhere, and certainly of a journalistic flavour, she was one of the greatest reporters in this town, and her sharp and breaking news articles will be missed sorely by readers of the Sun.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

In one more of the endless parades of studies generated by the Vancouver Agreement, the demographics of SRO residents have now been exhaustively catalogued.

Or actually, they were catalogued in April, but the report was released on the Friday of the Canada day long weekend. This weekend, of course, is known for its importance in the communications world as a great time to release a study you don't want reported on.

The results are available on the City of Vancouver website here.

While nobody can be housed in the results of the study, unless they build an (illegal) shelter out of the research paper, some highlights of the results are as follows, which can roughly be summarized by telling you the shocking findings that SRO residents are disproportionately poor, sick, and aboriginal, and they think their housing sucks.

Stop the presses.

- 79% were male while 20% were female; 1% were transgender;
- Average age was 46 while 64% were between the ages of 35 and 54;
- 68% were Caucasian while 21% were Aboriginal or Metis;
- 90% lived in single person households;
- 13% were born in Vancouver and 4% elsewhere in Metro Vancouver;
- 60% received Income Assistance (i.e. welfare); 21% were employed;
- 12% received a federal pension; and 7% had other income sources;
- The average total monthly income from all sources was $1,109;
- 77% reported incomes of under $15,000/year;
- 68% reported rents of $375/mo. or more with the average being $395;
- 45% had lived in the DTES for 5 years or more;
- 45% had lived in their current housing for less than 1 year;
- 71% reported their previous home had been in the City of Vancouver;
- 11% had arrived directly from an emergency shelter or from the street;
- 52% had previously been homeless and 52% had stayed at a shelter;
- 43% had previously been married while 46% had children;
- 30% had previously applied for social housing;
- 28% assessed their health as poor or terrible;
- 79% reported health concerns with 47% identifying multiple concerns;
- 40% visited an emergency room in the past year; 21% were hospitalized;
- 52% reported using drugs including 28% who used drugs frequently;
- 77% reported smoking including 52% who smoked frequently;
- 41% said their current housing was worse than their previous housing.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

The B.C. Supreme Court has ruled that the prosecutors who refused to criminally charge involved VPD members in the death of Frank Paul must testify before the Frank Paul Inquiry.

The Attorney General of B.C. had set terms of reference for the inquiry that included having the prosecutors examined for their role in the disaster that was Frank Paul's death and the subsequent investigation; however, he flip flopped and hired nationally recognized lawyers at the Inquiry to argue that the prosecutors need not testify.

When the Commissioner ruled against the Attorney General and said that the prosecutors had to testify, the AG appealed to the Supreme Court, which has now upheld the decision of the Commissioner.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

The Carnegie Community Action Project has been doing a great job raising attention about the Concord Pacific development shaping up at 58 West Hastings.

Although the "Greenwich" development is on West Hastings nominally, it is in the heart of the DTES, sandwiched between a Portland Hotel Society hard to house building and the Grand Union Hotel. Across the street is Save on Meats.

Interesting remarks from the Concord folks came out of the development permit hearing the other day, with Concord rep Peter Webb reportedly telling Frances Bula: "We're not going to race ahead. We're going to reflect on what was said here."Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

According to the BC Cancer Agency, DTES residents are almost ten times more likely to have oral cancer than non-DTES residents due to alcohol and tobacco use, poor nutrition, and lack of access to dental care.

They're launching a free outreach testing service in the neighbourhood to address the issue and try to identify cancers early.

So, I guess that's about as bad as the news can get. Sorry about that. I guess the upside is that we've reached bottom.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Six rich West Van families have paid a million dollars to have West Van become an Official Olympic Venue City. No news from Surrey, who paid two million dollars for the same privilege, including paying for construction of an Olympic Volunteer Centre. The City says it took this approach because municipal taxpayers were overwhelmingly sick of paying for Olympic stuff.

Now there's a funding model we can support.

Unfortunately, as always, there's a totally screwed up lining to this silver cloud. According to the North Shore News:

Although the freestyle skiing and snowboard events will be held at Cypress Bowl in 2010, West Vancouver has had no say in their planning to this point. With venue status, the municipality can now send a representative to the relevant meetings to ensure the community's concerns are heard.

In other words, you have to pay at least $1m (more if you're Surrey) to find out how VANOC is going to work over your town during 2010.

Man oh man.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

At yesterday's VPD board meeting, the issue of ticketing the homeless was raised by Pivot Legal housing lawyer Laura Track following a bylaw enforcment crackdown people along the Hastings corridor that started last month.

CKNW's poll of the day asks: Should police ticket homeless people for sleeping on city streets?

You can vote on it here, it's in the bottom right hand side of the homepage.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

This will be a slow week as I'm out of town for most of the week. However, I expect to be posting, just not at my regular pace. Expect VANOC to get up to all kinds of trouble, since they don't have to monitor this blog as regularly as normal.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

As likely all of you very well informed and hyper sharp readers of the Official Vancouver 2010 Olympics Newswire are aware, Gregor Robertson has seized the Vision Vancouver nomination in a landslide.
I was at the event for most of the day, and Frances Bula provides a great description of how thing went down on her blog. It was my first political nomination meeting, and well, I'm not sure how they normally go, but there were some pretty tense moments and some remarkably inappropriate comments flying between the various campaigns. But, by the end, everyone had apparently made up, as the vote count was indisputable.

Raymond Louie's team ran a remarkably well organized campaign, and it was super-inspiring to see so many Chinese seniors showing up to vote. It was apparent they were Louie supporters given the Louie campaign stickers that appeared to be all the rage. In addition, the South Asian Canadian community was out in force, although they were less apparently all out for one particular candidate. In short, the ethnic diversity of the meeting was pretty great.
Now that Gregor's got the nomination, what's next? Expect candidates for council to be declaring themselves over the next little while, and expect some intense talks between COPE and Vision as they figure out whether the progressives will run one mayoral candidate or two. Here's hoping, for the future of Vancouver as something other than a resort town, they can sort it out.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

Gregor Robertson, Al DeGenova, and Raymond Louie are facing off this weekend at the Croatian Cultural Centre, 3250 Commercial Drive, in their contest for the Vision Vancouver leadership.

Predictions are all over the place, with the consensus being that Robertson has the most people signed up, but that if they all don't turn out to vote, the game could be anyone's. This is especially true if Al DeGenova throws his support behind Raymond Louie as is expected under Vision's preferential ballot system where people can choose one candidate or their two favourites.

What makes all of this even more interesting is that there is significant potential for the candidate selected by Vision to become COPE's mayoral candidate as well, if the two parties can work out some kind of a deal. David Cadman is, wisely, holding back his announcement that he plans to run until after Sunday's vote.

For those of you who are signed up Vision members as of May 15, 2008, voting is happening at 3250 Commercial Drive at the Croatian Cultural Centre from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, which is also Car Free Day on the Drive, as well as Father's Day. Make it a family outing!Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

The City of Vancouver, home to B.C.'s largest off-reserve aboriginal population in the Downtown Eastside, is celebrating National Aboriginal Day on June 16 with some speeches and, apparently, hip hop.

Local aboriginal people seem hard pressed, however, to forget the treatment of aboriginal people at the hands of local police and in jails, or to forget that they are disproportionately represented in the street population in the City and in the SROs of the DTES.

Proposals for the City to actually celebrate National Aboriginal Day:

(1) Stop issuing bylaw and provincial Trespass Act tickets to the homeless, who are disproportionately aboriginal and who have nowhere to go because the shelters are full, and instruct all Downtown Ambassadors that they have no legal right to move the homeless along;

(2) Use the Standards of Maintenance Bylaw to do repairs in the SROs of the DTES and bill them back to the landlords that let their buildings fall apart;

(3) Require all VPD officers to attend funded anti-discrimination training held by urban aboriginal groups; and,

(4) Turn city owned land that is occupied by social housing operated by non-profit groups like Lu'ma Native Housing on lease over to their ownership, so that they may borrow against it and build new housing.

Now that's a celebration everyone can get behind.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

A new development by UBC called "Pacific Spirit" is being touted as "affordable," which shows how much that term means these days. For a reality check, Jim Frankish, a prof at UBC, has done some number crunching that shows just how "affordable" UBC property is these days:

Around UBC, a million dollars has become a low price for a home. The RealtyLink website on January 25th, 2008 in the UBC area showed 4 houses for sale at minimum cost of $929,000 and a maximum of $7.68 million. For 13 available townhouses, the minimum was $458,000 and the maximum was $2.38 million. The 57 listed apartments had a minimum price of $348,000 and a maximum of $1.87 million. [. . .]

At the above prices (with two incomes per household), none of the almost 12,000 employees had a sufficient household income to purchase the average listed house ($3.9 million).

Only two per cent could qualify to buy the average townhouse ($1.2 million). Sadly, only 11 per cent could buy the average apartment ($724,000).

Finally, UBC had just over 5,000 people in six unionized groups. None of them could afford to buy any of the 74 properties above.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.

The new VPD homeless outreach program, where homeless people are given by-law infraction tickets for selling the things they dig out of our trash, has been a huge and continuing success along the Hastings corridor.

In the most recently documented incident, captured by The Blackbird and posted to Flickr, two of our city's finest collar a suspected comic book seller, issue him a ticket, and throw his stuff into the VPD lockup at Carrall and Hastings.

Not pissed off yet? It gets better.

The guy had a his comics on the sidewalk while he waited, fourth in line, to collect his camera from the Hope in Shadows calendar and photography project. Everyone in line was given the once over by the cops, and this guy was the unlucky loser. The rest of the people who decided to participate in documenting their lives and community were appropriately intimidated.

Not enough for you? Just wait.

The whole incident was filmed by documentary filmmakers who are following the VPD around to make a movie about how hard our cops work to improve the lives of people in the DTES.Visit pivotlegal.org for more information about Vancouver's low-income housing crisis.