Budget 2025 pledges $90 million to continue program launched in 2023 to help unhoused people. Advocates haven’t noticed a difference yet.
Budget 2025 pledged $90 million to expand a two-year-old program that the province says is helping unhoused people in 10 B.C. communities.
However, homelessness advocates in two of those cities say the program, run by B.C. Housing, has made little difference on the ground so far, and that much more needs to be done to help people living in encampments.
“We have heard of the HEART and HEARTH funding stream, we have heard that this exists,” said Brittany Maple, executive director of the Matsqui-Abbotsford Impact Society. “As far as we’re aware, the only impacts that it has structurally had in our community is that B.C. Housing has some outreach workers that are out offering people the same shelter spaces … that already existed.”
The government pledged $80 million in 2023 to launch the Homeless Encampment Action Response Team (HEART), employing new and existing outreach workers to provide support services to people living in encampments.
That money was also used to start Homeless Encampment Action Response Temporary Housing (HEARTH) in 2024. Budget documents say B.C. Housing partnered with 10 municipalities, including Vancouver and Abbotsford, to open 611 temporary homes or shelter beds at 15 HEARTH sites.
Budget 2025 has allocated an additional $90 million over the next three years to expand the program “to help people move inside and resolve encampments in communities.”
“We’re not seeing the enhanced encampment support in the spirit that we feel would be useful to people,” she said, adding homelessness is increasing. “It’s a life-or-death situation for people.”
“I wouldn’t say (the program) is well-known across communities who are responding to homelessness,” said Burrows, whose organization assists Downtown Eastside residents in the city.
“Is it just going to displace more people and just migrate homelessness to another neighbourhood?” she asked. “Unless there’s actual permanent, safe, affordable housing for people to transition into, I don’t know how this actually has the intended outcome of getting people housed.”
Nicole Mucci, who speaks for the Union Gospel Mission in the DTES, believes HEART and HEARTH are mainly operating in smaller communities where there are fewer support services.
“We have seen, provincially, homelessness across the board really increase over the last five years, and so having programming that supports a variety of communities in different ways is really important.”
Greg Richmond, co-executive director of Vancouver’s Raincity Housing, said the $30 million per year over three years committed to these programs in the budget should make an impact on the homelessness crisis.
“But if I was to guess, I would assume it’s inadequate when compared to the numbers in the homeless counts, which are, of course, always an under-representation of the real numbers,” he said.
Richmond added he’s concerned that HEARTH’S beds are “not permanent housing, which is the core need.”
Neither Raincity nor UGM have HEARTH funding for the shelters they operate.
HEARTH’s shelters are intended to be low-barrier, to include spaces for active substance-users who may need to exit and enter throughout the night, Mucci said. UGM’s shelter spaces are higher-barrier, she added.
Burrows said she was happy, though, to see the government pledge in Tuesday’s budget $75 million this fiscal year and $150 million annually after that to boost rental supports for lower-income families and seniors.