By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
In Vancouver, the supportive housing saga continues to develop. On July 3, mayor Ken Sim announced that his office has identified five unnamed potential city-owned locations for new supportive housing. This statement comes as the city looks for alternatives to three current supportive housing sites in the Granville Entertainment District as part of Vancouver City Council’s new revitalization plan. Supportive housing is “subsidized housing with on-site supports.”
These three present locations have not been without issues. The Vancouver Sun reported that the Luugat and St. Helen’s Hotel have had a total of 74 fires in the past five years, per mayor Sim. These locations, plus the Granville Villa, have “also been responsible for 1,364 police calls in 2024 alone, according to the city.” The Luugat also saw six deaths, three of which were overdoses, in 2024, according to Atira Women’s Resource Society, which operates the facility.
The Peak corresponded with the mayor’s office and city councillor Pete Fry for more information on the past, present, and future of supportive housing in Vancouver.
As to why the potential site names remain confidential, “any information related to potential City of Vancouver real estate transactions” requires a Council vote before disclosure, press secretary Taylor Verrall told The Peak. “Releasing the locations could have a significant commercial impact on the properties in question.”
“There is an effort to kind of sanitize it and gentrify it, which ignores the lived experience and historic reality of what Granville Street has been.” — Pete Fry, Vancouver city councillor
Fry recognized that Vancouver is disproportionately home to more supportive housing than other nearby areas. “The supportive housing in Vancouver is almost exclusively in the Downtown Eastside, which is frankly often to the detriment of the residents,” he added. “There is something to be said for more equitable distribution of supportive housing throughout the region.” Fry told the Vancouver Sun that “many single room occupancy residents wanted to stay in the area, but didn’t want to be housed in the Downtown Eastside.”
However, the Vancouver councillor said mayor Sim’s decision to freeze construction on net new supportive housing with the hope that other areas would step up may have had a reverse effect.
On whose interests this relocation serves most, “it’s the business interests in the Granville Entertainment District,” Fry said. He also expressed worry that the housing closures could “create a more bland entertainment district that really panders to a very elite subset of the population that doesn’t have the broader kind of accessible appeal to folks.
“When we’re contemplating relocating folks who have lived there, most of that housing predates any of the nightclubs,” Fry added. “In fact, before Granville Street became the Granville Street Entertainment District, there were mostly beer halls and single room occupancy-type hotels,” he said. “So there is an effort to kind of sanitize it and gentrify it, which ignores the lived experience and historic reality of what Granville Street has been.”
With these considerations in mind, Fry explained his greatest concern regarding the plan to relocate these sites is “where we shift them to, and if we end up kettling even more supportive housing and more vulnerable populations in the Downtown Eastside. That is a disservice to the city of Vancouver and on those people we would be relocating,” he said. Doing so “ultimately just compounds a lot of the challenges we have with the Downtown Eastside.”
