$235,000 grant to aid homeless

Vision Vancouver is planning to vote to spend nearly a quarter-of-a -million dollars to find houses for nearly 50 people.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision slate-mates are expected Tuesday to endorse a grant of $235,000 to the Atira Women’s Resource Society, which will in turn renovate and reopen 47 rooms at the long-closed Argyll Hotel on West Hastings Street.

“That’s 47 people on the road to recovery, and for me that’s worth every cent,” Coun. Kerry Jang said Thursday. “It’s opening up another spot in a shelter.”

NPA Coun. George Affleck said he’ll be watching carefully every time council considers spending tax money to help house the homeless.

“I don’t think the city should be setting money aside for housing,” said Affleck. “In this case, it looks like it’s appropriate, but going forward I will be taking a close look at this.”

Spending money on housing is nonconventional, but renovating to reopen rooms is far cheaper than actually building new units.

“It means getting people off the street or people out of the HEAT shelters,” said Jang. “It’s the next step for people who moved from the street to shelters.”

Settling into their second term, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Visionaries are wasting no time in further expanding ways to spend city property taxes on their expensive and radical agenda rather than the core city services for which those levies are intended.

A pair of announcements in as many days hints at what taxpayers can expect in the coming months as these activists posing as politicians and their hand-picked senior civil service play gleefully with the city’s billion-dollar budget.

On Wednesday, Vision announced an $800,000 scheme to install 67 recharging stations around the city for private electric vehicles, a completely inappropriate use of city dollars.

City taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the tiny and elite group of private citizens who can afford or even use electric vehicles just because the mayor likes them.

Then Thursday, the mayor’s office announced the city would give $235,000 to the Atira Women’s Resource Society to renovate 47 social-housing units. Traditionally, the city provides land for social housing and leaves the cash side of those deals to senior levels of government. Vision’s commitment to social and “affordable” housing hints that more — and more expensive to taxpayers — deals are coming.

Municipal politicians shouldn’t be spending property taxes on narrow, political agendas.