Municipal leaders are pushing back against Ken Sim’s plan to transform the Downtown Eastside.
The Vancouver mayor announced Thursday that he intends to reject any new supportive housing projects in the city, until other municipalities step up and build more.
But Sim’s proposed freeze on that type of housing in his city is not going down well with some of his fellow Metro Vancouver mayors – who feel their counterpart is not giving them credit for the work they are doing.
“I was pretty disappointed, to be frank,” Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke told CTV News outside Surrey city hall on Friday. “We are supposed to be working together as mayors in this region…(Sim) needs to take a look at what has happened. Not just within the last two years that he’s been the mayor, but what has happened for the last number of decades.”
Locke insists her community is doing its part in other ways.
“When it comes to other areas, like recovery homes, for example, Surrey has more recovery homes than all of Metro Vancouver put together,” Locke said. “And you can’t start picking and poking and pointing fingers to different cities. It doesn’t work that way.”
West Vancouver’s mayor says it’s not as simple as a municipality wanting to build – sometimes things happen beyond their control.
“I think the irony of it is, we were working with somebody who was working with BC Housing to do exactly this in an area of West Vancouver, and we just found out that BC Housing has canned the project,” Mark Sager told CTV News on Friday.
The mayor acknowledges he’d like to see more supportive housing on the North Shore, saying he has a foster son who lives in the Downtown Eastside
“He doesn’t do drugs, he’s not a criminal – he’s a very good guy,” Sager said. “If there were more housing available, closer to the North Shore, he’d be a prime candidate to move to it.”
Sim is expected to put forward his motion on a supportive housing construction freeze next month.
CTV News contacted a number of ABC councillors to get a sense of whether Sim has the support of his party.
Councillors Peter Meiszner and Lenny Zhou indicated they would be backing Sim – but it appears the mayor does not enjoy complete support on this issue.
ABC Coun. Rebecca Bligh told CTV News that cutting off the supply of housing in a homelessness crisis doesn’t make sense, describing this as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem.
