What role can Burnaby play in alleviating tensions in the Downtown Eastside?

As tensions continue to rise over housing and displacement in the Downtown Eastside, a CBC analysis indicates that Burnaby has not pulled its weight in terms of providing housing and shelter space for the homeless population.

In fact, along with Vancouver and Surrey, Maple Ridge, New Westminster, and Langley all have more units than Burnaby, despite the latter being the third-largest municipality in BC.

In his Metro Matters newsletter last week, CBC journalist Justin McElroy noted that the City of Vancouver has been the site of the vast majority of the homeless housing services in the region.

While the housing crisis, and homelessness in general, is a regionwide—and provincewide—issue, CBC noted that Vancouver, which accounts for a quarter of the region’s population, has nearly three-quarters of the emergency shelter and homeless housing units.

In all, that city has over 7,000 units, compared to 780 in Surrey, 192 in Maple Ridge, 189 in New Westminster, 164 in Langley, and 123 in Burnaby.

“Today’s focus may be what the City of Vancouver is or isn’t doing,” McElroy wrote.

“One wonders if it makes sense that the other 20 municipalities in the region are rarely part of the conversation.”

Mayor Mike Hurley said he’s not surprised by those statistics.

“We’ve been reaching out and trying to get more social housing, and to this point, the provincial BC Housing has focused mostly on Surrey and Vancouver,” Hurley said.

“And I think part of the reason for that is that’s where all the services are. The mental health services and addiction services are mostly focused in Vancouver and Surrey. … It’s not that we’re stopping them from building that.”

And he said it’s not particularly surprising that New Westminster has more homeless shelter and housing spaces, noting the Royal Columbian Hospital in that city is one of the region’s largest.

He added that there was “pretty much” no social housing before 2018, when he ousted Derek Corrigan as mayor. Indeed, Corrigan gained some notoriety for opposing building shelters in the city.

Hurley, by contrast, said he is open to the province building more homeless housing services and shelter spaces in Burnaby, but the province so far hasn’t taken them up on many of their offers. For instance, the city has offered up half a dozen city-owned properties for BC Housing to build on, but there has been little to no movement on any of them.

That being said, he added that housing needs to come with a wide array of supports, noting that the recently built 53-bed housing facility, run by the Progressive Housing Society, has just two full-time staff.

“It’s not nearly enough, and you see the results of understaffing,” he said. “There’s not much [Progressive] can do because they only get funding for that level [of staffing].”

He said the region and the province need to take a hard look at and consider a major overhaul in how housing is provided with the “same ferocity” that the province addressed the pandemic.

“What we’re doing is not working. And I think if you look at the Downtown Eastside, if you look at some of the issues that are on some of our streets right now, all over the province, it’s not getting better,” he said.

He noted that some countries have tackled the issue “reasonably” well, specifically pointing to countries in Europe.

“Obviously, you have to look deeper into it than that, but they seem to be having more success than our model here, [which] seems to be driving more and more people to the streets,” he said.

The City of Burnaby is eyeing launching its own housing corporation, but Hurley said he doesn’t see that as a solution.

Even if such a corporation is launched—something he said would be decided on after the election this year—he said the city would still not have the resources to provide that kind of housing.

Instead, it would likely provide more housing for low- and middle-income families.

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