Miloon Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, may receive an unusual request from activists when he comes to Vancouver in October. According to Jean Swanson, a veteran Downtown Eastside antipoverty advocate, they will not only ask Kothari to "put as much pressure on the provincial and federal governments as he could to start funding some housing".

"We might even ask him if there's another country that could donate to housing for homeless people," Swanson told the Georgia Straight . "We're at our wits' end, right?"

The coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project noted that it wouldn't be hard to make a case for Vancouver's homeless to Kothari when he makes his visit to Canada. "We have 2,000 homeless in the city," Swanson said. "The provincial government has a surplus of $4.1 billion. The feds have a surplus of $9.2 billion for this year. Canada has signed several UN covenants around the right to housing, and they're violating the human rights of poor people."

Pivot Legal Society is arranging the Special Rapporteur's consultation with nonprofit organizations based in Western Canada. Pivot's David Eby met Kothari in Geneva in June this year when the Vancouver lawyer spoke before a workshop by the UN-funded group Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.

"He's investigating housing conditions in Canada in order to report back to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights about Canada's compliance with their international obligations," Eby told the Straight .

Aside from federal, provincial, and city officials across the country, Kothari will also confer with nongovernment groups in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. Eby noted that the UN official's investigation will cover homelessness, women, aboriginal housing issues, and potential housing impacts caused by the 2010 Olympics.

NDP MLA Jenny Kwan told the Straight that time is running out to fulfill the pledge made by the federal, provincial, and city governments to deal with the issue of homelessness as an Olympic legacy. "I think we have a story to tell," Kwan said of Kothari's visit. "We have an opportunity to put the pressure on thegovernment to do the right thing."

Last March, the community-based Inner-City Inclusive Housing Table issued a report that listed several measures needed to deal with the current and anticipated housing problems. These include building 3,200 units of social housing in the years leading to the Games.

In a June 28 meeting, Vancouver city council voted 6-5 in favour of a staff report that recommended general support to the ICI Housing document, instead of a stronger demand to have the social-housing units built. The staff report stated that "provincial funding constraints make it questionable whether or not this goal can be achieved in the short term".

Kwan pointed out that rent supplements being provided by the B.C. Liberal government won't address homelessness. At present, families of four members or more and earning $28,000 a year or less can receive from the province a maximum monthly rental assistance of $563.

"Rent supplement is a component piece in the housing continuum solution required to address our homelessness problem, but certainly within that mix, the first priority is building safe, secure, affordable housing," Kwan said. "Bricks and mortar is the solution to the housing crisis."

Until 1993, a national affordable-housing strategy created more than 650,000 housing units that now shelter over two million Canadians, according to the June 26, 2007, report titled Homelessness in a Growth Economy: Canada's 21st Century Paradox .

"After cutting its national affordable housing program in 1993, Canada's collective response to the boom in homelessness since the early 1990s has largely been to create homeless shelters, emergency services and other 'front line' services which have managed the homeless crisis and, in some cases, facilitated the rapid growth of homelessness in Canada," stated the report prepared by journalist Gordon Laird for the Calgary-based Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.

The report suggested that Canada should consider a "paradigm shift" and look at the "Housing First" strategies currently underway in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

"In Canada, the 'streets first' strategy of processing and warehousing people prior to finding employment and housing is dated at best: today's homeless person, on average, is likely to already have some degree of employment and/or capacity for independent living," the report stated.

It noted that instead of building more shelter beds, teams of social workers now go out into American cities to get chronically homeless people into subsidized apartments and supportive housing. The report also pointed out that getting people into housing is cheaper compared with providing shelters and other services for people on the streets.

Citing federal estimates of a Canada-wide homeless population of 150,000, the report stated it is costing taxpayers between $4.5 billion and $6 billion to provide "health care, criminal justice, social services, and emergency shelter" for these people.

Kwan said that although the B.C. provincial government has been crowing about its budget surpluses, it has actually incurred a "social deficit". As an example, she pointed to the doubling of the number of homeless people in the Greater Vancouver region from 1,121 in 2002 when the B.C. Liberals assumed office to 2,174 persons in 2005. "If people were smart with money, they'll address the social deficit because it would save taxpayers' money in the long run," Kwan said. -