Vancouver mayor plans freeze on new supportive housing in Downtown Eastside

VANCOUVER — Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim has unveiled a plan to revitalize the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside that includes pausing the construction of net new supportive housing units.

He said he wants to integrate the neighbourhood into the rest of the city and “break the cycle of hyper-concentrated social services,” while cracking down on gang activity.

Sim announced the plan on Thursday at the Save Our Streets forum, held by a coalition concerned about crime and public safety in B.C.

“For too long, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent without delivering meaningful change,” he said in a statement.

“It’s time for a new direction, one that prioritizes recovery, inclusivity, and public safety while integrating the (Downtown Eastside) into the broader Vancouver community.”

The mayor said Vancouver has 77 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s supportive services, including housing and shelters, yet only has about 25 per cent of the population.

He said pausing construction of more supportive housing would allow the city to “focus on renewing and revitalizing the current aging housing stock” for the needs of the community “until supportive housing availability increases across the region.”

Abundant Housing Vancouver, an advocacy group that supports housing supply, said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the proposed supportive housing freeze.

“The solution to homelessness is housing; building less supportive housing will just result in more homelessness,” it said in a statement.

In addition to the supportive housing pause, the other two platforms of Sim’s strategy were a crime crackdown and updating the Downtown Eastside Area Plan to “encourage a mix of housing, businesses, and services,” instead of a focus on supportive housing, shelter services, and social services.

“This allows for the integration of the (Downtown Eastside) neighbourhood into Vancouver’s broader community, ensuring a more balanced, supportive environment for residents, businesses, and visitors,” a statement from the city outlining Sim’s announcement said.

Sim said the city and Vancouver police would launch a crackdown on organized crime and gangs operating in the Downtown Eastside.

“This initiative aims to address street-entrenched violence by dismantling criminal networks that exploit vulnerable residents and undermine community safety,” the statement said.

Sim and a slate of councillors under the ABC Vancouver party were swept into power in 2022 with a promise to improve public safety.

Save Our Streets chair and co-founder Clint Mahlman said Sim’s proposal to address the concentration of social services and supportive housing in the Downtown Eastside was in line with “best practices” in countries such as Switzerland.

“One of our experts that had studied in Switzerland described that getting people out of a concentrated area — where it increases the potential for exposure to people that would pull them down again — was a huge part of the success of the Switzerland model,” Mahlman said.

Mahlman, who is the president and chief operating officer of retail chain London Drugs, said there was more to be done about public safety.

“It remains at a crisis point,” he said. “And I think that was expressed by the citizens in the last provincial election as one of the many issues … (where) they need change.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 23, 2025.

Chuck Chiang, The Canadian Press