At an October 28 debate, council candidates from three of Vancouver’s civic parties presented the public with significantly different strategies for addressing the city’s housing crisis. One area of sharp disagreement arose over whether to allow more homeless shelters in Vancouver.

“While we don’t think that shelter beds are the solution, it is an important part of the temporary measures we think are necessary to start to provide some shelter for people living outside,” Vision Vancouver candidate Geoff Meggs told an audience of 200 at the Think City Debate ’08, held at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch. “We don’t see any virtue in using people living in the streets as shock troops in the current government’s fight against downloading.”

Non-Partisan Association candidate Michael Geller, who is a developer, told the audience he has been volunteering in the Downtown Eastside, and has spoken to housing activists about the need for shelters. “I was so distraught about seeing people sleeping in the street,” Geller said. “I was told that shelters are not the answer. As I’ve reflected on it—although it seems counterintuitive to me—what I think I’m hearing is that building shelters to solve homelessness is like building more roads to solve traffic congestion. It’s just not the way to go.”

Coalition of Progressive Electors candidate Ellen Woodsworth, a former councillor, said there is a health epidemic spreading in the Downtown Eastside because of homelessness, and all means must be pursued to address this. “It’s a lot cheaper to house people than it is to leave them on the streets,” Woodsworth said. “We’ve got lots of good statistics about that. I think it’s an intellectual response to say we can’t do shelters, we need to do affordable—we need to do all of these, and we need to move on it quickly.”

When asked for the top three changes he would enact to provide affordable housing, Geller responded that he favours setting maximum numbers of parking stalls in multi-unit buildings, allowing secondary suites in townhouses and apartments, and reducing the minimum size of suites in the city.

At other points in the debate, Geller said he favours nonprofit organizations and developers forming partnerships to build rental housing on city land. He also advocated giving density bonuses to developers who want to build more condominium units on a site if they’re willing to include rental units. “I believe there is support for these sorts of approaches,” he said.

Meggs, a former journalist and labour activist, said he favours guaranteeing a maximum turnaround time for new developments with affordable housing on arterial roads, as long as these projects are built under existing zoning. He also said he supports mandating, though not requiring, communities to proceed with infill and laneway housing. In addition, Meggs said it’s important to bring forward “very strong protection” for existing rental units, though he didn’t elaborate on what he meant by that.

“We think the city should really step up and press the province to change the residential-tenancy laws so that there is much more protection for renters from the loophole that’s being exploited by a lot of landlords to do so-called renovations—slap on a coat of paint and give you a ruinous rent increase,” Meggs said. “That has to stop.”

Woodsworth said she thinks it’s “appalling” that there are more than 2,000 homeless people in Vancouver. “We need to make sure that we have 20 percent of any new developments be affordable housing or low-income housing,” she said. “We need to talk to the province about using the existing facilities at Little Mountain—over 200 units are sitting empty that could be used right now.”

Geller, however, said he did not support filling the vacant Little Mountain housing cooperative units, which are part of a massive redevelopment plan, near the corner of 33rd Avenue and Main Street. “There is going to be a replacement of all the existing oldest public housing with new social-housing units,” he said. “And there is going to be a lot of money left over to build new housing where it is in great need.”

That prompted a rebuttal from Meggs. “The reality is there could have been a phased process, even if we liked the current proposal, that could protect housing so people could stay until it was needed for another purpose,” he said, later adding: “Finally, I don’t think it’s wrong at all to look for more from a $200-million development than a one-for-one replacement.”

Geller said he opposed the creation of a municipal housing authority, saying he thinks that nonprofit organizations are in a much better position to deliver affordable housing. Meggs said Vision Vancouver hasn’t included a housing authority in its platform, but did promise to look carefully at all options proposed by the sustainable-development group Smart Growth B.C., which favours the idea. “The answer to the question about the housing authority is ‘perhaps’,” Meggs said.

Woodsworth didn’t respond directly to the question about a municipal housing authority.