Surrey mayor says Vancouver’s Ken Sim ‘unfairly’ finger pointing about housing plan

Vancouver has most of the region’s supportive housing because it got most of the funding, not because other communities don’t want them, says Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s proposal to halt construction of any new supportive housing in his city has set off a firestorm of debate, with Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke telling him to “do some homework” before accusing other municipalities of not building enough.

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Senior governments have disproportionately given money to Vancouver to create supportive housing, which is why Sim’s city has more than his neighbours, Locke argued.

“Surrey and other cities have never received the kind of dollars Vancouver has got to address issues around homelessness and addictions,” she said. “For him to finger point and say others aren’t doing enough is completely unfair.”

Locke said her large municipality “wants to do our fair share,” having created 450 new supportive housing units since 2022. She is in talks with the province about getting more money to address the growing number of homeless people in her city.

Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie also argued his city is “not trying to avoid our responsibility” and has various supportive housing projects in the city.

“I would be at odds with what Mayor Sim says if he’s relating it to Richmond.”

“We’re trying to get (that project) going again. So there’s a certain amount of frustrations,” Brodie said.

Richmond Coun. Kash Heed added the onus is on the province to spread out funding for supportive housing, and ensure that it gets built in other cities.

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said Friday that the Richmond project wasn’t planned for the right location, but promised it would eventually be replaced.

“We have a site where the lease is expiring in two years, and we need to move forward with a permanent site so that people have somewhere to go,” he said.

Kahlon insisted that any mayor who need more money for supportive housing “should give him a call,” adding he met last week with Locke to discuss several projects.

“We’ve had a number of projects on the books that just haven’t moved very fast,” the frustrated mayor said.

Little agrees with Sim that services need to be dispersed through all cities in the region, but that requires action from senior governments.

Sim was unavailable Friday.

Coun. Mike Klassen, a member of the ABC majority on Vancouver council, insisted the mayor was not “blaming anybody” with his comments, but rather ensuring vulnerable people can get services in the city where they live.

“This is not about exporting a problem to another community. It’s trying to build the supports where they are so (people) don’t get to the state where they are stuck in the Downtown Eastside being preyed upon by gangs,” Klassen said.

Klassen responded that provincial funding would not be turned away, but used to repair crumbling housing stock rather than building new spaces.

About 1,700 supportive housing units under construction in Vancouver will be completed, he said. “If there’s a project that’s already been approved, it is getting built.”

Klassen said Sim’s new plan does not affect below-market housing in the city, but is targeted only at supportive units, which have staff on site to help residents access services such as mental health and addictions counselling.

Sim also proposed Thursday the “hyper-concentration of services in the Downtown Eastside” need to be dispersed, and that the area needs a new mix of housing and businesses.

While Kahlon said he agrees the Downtown Eastside needs a different mix of housing, he is worried about the implications of Sim’s rezoning plan.

“I am concerned that if the pendulum swings too much, some wealthy people will make a lot of wealth, and some poor people will be left off poorer,” he said.

Sim’s plan to to pause new supportive housing was denounced by housing advocates who fear it will lead to more homelessness.

“Building less supportive housing in the City of Vancouver will not get more built anywhere else,” Abundant Housing Vancouver said in a statement.

Former Vancouver councillor Jean Swanson, a longtime poverty activist, compared Sim’s move to the policies of the new American president, calling it “Trumpian.”

She said about 3,000 people are on the city’s supportive housing waiting list, and people “will probably die on that wait-list,” if no new units are built.

https://x.com/PeterMeiszner/status/1882577634548420853

ABC Coun. Peter Meiszner, though, defended Sim’s plan, saying it was “a long overdue change of direction in city policy to build a healthier neighbourhood and help people get their lives back.”

Heed, a former Vancouver police officer, said he agrees with Sim that “Vancouver is bearing the brunt” of supportive housing,” largely because such social services are historically in the urban core of big cities.

As other Metro Vancouver cities grow, they need to offer more of these services, but some suburban residents are opposed to people with mental health and addictions living in their neighbourhoods.

It’s a terrible chicken-and-egg situation that needs senior government support to fix, Heed argued: The longer housing for vulnerable people doesn’t get built because of citizens’ fears, the more unhoused people without sufficient supports there will be in public spaces.

With files from Canadian Press, Joanne Lee-Young, Dan Fumano.