Low-income renters at risk: Report
VANCOUVER: Housing survey of DTES paints picture of housing shortage, rising rents
Social-housing activists on Monday painted a dire picture of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, warning that the escalating cost of renting a hotel room is putting low-income and government-subsidized renters on the street.
“One hotel is advertising a SRO (single-room-occupancy) room for $1,500 a month,” said longtime activist Jean Swanson, one of the authors of the Carnegie Community Action Project’s annual hotel survey and housing report released Monday.
“This is what our fear is. If they don’t build new social housing, the Downtown Eastside will be condos all over the place and homeless people living in the street,” she added.
With Metro Vancouver experiencing an unprecedented rise in housing costs, it will impact the vulnerable who call the DTES home and live in SRO rooms, the project’s Maria Wallstam said.
She notes that the City of Vancouver’s Single Room Accommodation (SRA) Bylaw has failed to live up to its intent, which is to prevent loss of low-income housing stock.
“Flipping a property in the Downtown Eastside is not hard,” she said. “This trend directly contradicts the purpose of the SRA bylaw and the city is not doing anything about these changes. Basically, rents have gone way up and what is happening is there is no place to rent ... People are being warehoused and being forced to sleep on the streets.”
Swanson called for rent controls for SRO hotels and the immediate creation of more non-market rental units to house the poor.
“If you are homeless right now, you can’t get into a SRO,” she said.
According to the report, there are at least 839 people homeless on any given night in the DTES, with a further 907 homeless nightly in other parts of Vancouver. Many residents living off social assistance of $610 a month are paying the lowest average rent of $517, leaving them $93 a month for all other expenses such as food, the report notes.
Harold Lavender, 65, has lived in the DTES for 13 years on a disability subsidy and said the room shortage and high rents have residents on edge.
“This community could be wiped off the face of the map,” he said. “It is a terrible situation down here right now.”