In researching issues surrounding multi-barrier communities this autumn, I stumbled across an alarming projection. According to the Pivot Legal Team, Olympics-related development threatens to triple the number of homeless in Vancouver by 2010. While my work in the Downtown Eastside provides me with daily reminders of the extent of the poverty here, I found this number absolutely shocking.
According to a study released this week, the situation in Vancouver is not only going to get worse, it’s already worse than we are prepared to admit. While the government announced last fall that the number of homeless in B.C. to be less than 5500, the opposition declared this number grossly inaccurate. NDP housing critic David Chudnovsky claimed that the real number of homeless in British Columbia was double the govenment’s estimate. Now, researchers from Simon Fraser and the University of Calgary are confirming Chudnovsky’s statement, and then some. In their study, the researchers state that the number of homeless is as high as 15,500.
The study goes on to detail that currently the government is spending $664.3 million per annum on non-housing services to address issues of homelessness. Here we see the true cost of a province unwilling to admit that its level of poverty is reaching a grave crisis point. Returning to the projection offered by the Pivot Legal Society, one can only imagine how much more that annual cost will have to expand to accommodate the low-income residents who will be displaced by 2010.
Naturally, this leaves us with the question of, “so… now what?”
I’ll leave you with news of this progressive Austrian housing project. It offers a glaring contrast to the situation here in the GVRD, but hopefully also lends some normative inspiration.
IMAGE CREDIT: http://www.gnome.org/~federico/photo/street/4412-homeless.jpg
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This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under City, Controversy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Great article KT — I added a picture for you which might add to the presentation the data which is really good. Have a look at how I’ve done this — no downloading of images, simply a linking to a google image (through google search and clicking on images) and then just a resizing in the visual broser to 250pixel width. I hope you approve of the changes. Jark.