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Affordable Housing and Homelessness

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Vision has made affordable housing and homelessness our top priority, and we will continue to do so. The lack of affordable housing impacts people across the city, from people forced to sleep outside, to students trying to find affordable rental apartments, to young families trying to buy a house, or seniors wanting to downsize. A Vision Vancouver government will make the development and protection of affordable housing a top priority in the next term.

Vancouver is a great city, but its lack of affordable housing is holding us back. It keeps people from moving to our city. It forces our workforce to commute from the suburbs. And it compounds our homelessness challenge. We need a wide-range of new affordable housing, mixed with strong protection for existing housing, to make Vancouver more livable and affordable for everyone.

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What we've done: 
  • Secured funding for 1,500 new units of low-income affordable housing
  • Opened new low-barrier homeless shelters, including the Stanley New Fountain and 201 Central Street, to provide immediate help and shelter to our most vulnerable citizens
  • Created the first new co-op housing in nine years in Vancouver at the Olympic Village, to provide affordable housing options in our city’s newest neighbourhood
  • Introduced laneway housing, an opportunity for homeowners to develop small units on their lots, providing new housing opportunities in neighbourhoods across Vancouver
  • Action on homelessness led to the first decrease in homelessness in over a decade – 110 less people – from 2010 to 2011
  • Approved over 400 new units of rental housing – the first in over 3 years – throughout Vancouver through Vision’s short-term incentives for rental program
  • Deployed - for the first time in the City’s history -legal injunctions on landlords of Downtown Eastside single-room occupancy hotels, requiring them to fix and maintain their buildings and protect tenants
  • Expanded options for the construction of secondary suites, making it easier for homeowners to add additional units in their homes
  • Partnered with BC Housing and Bladerunners to convert the former Remand Centre in the DTES into 90 units of low-income housing
  • Collaborated with the YWCA to build 20 units of housing designated for women and children as part of a new library in Strathcona
More to do: 
  • Implement the City’s Affordable Housing and Homelessness strategy, which outlines key targets to achieve the goal of ending street homelessness by 2015
  • Use city-owned land to leverage funding from senior governments and the private sector to build new social housing
  • Expand new rental housing by fostering new laneway housing and secondary suites, and using city incentives to spur new rental buildings
  • Continue to fight for renters’ rights and use city by-laws to force landlords to maintain their buildings
  • Work with the private sector and non-profits to find new ways to support affordable home ownership options in Vancouver

Vision Delivers

The Vision team has delivered for Vancouver. Click the map above to see what we’ve accomplished in 3 years.