Solving a problem as big as affordable housing is going to take big investment and direct involvement from government, said Wes Regan, the Green Party candidate for Vancouver East. In a telephone interview, he argued candidates in this October’s federal election shouldn’t shy away from making that case.

“I think we need to have government that grows a moral backbone and properly funds public housing,” Regan told the Straight. “We want to see the creation of new funding tools from the federal government to assist, not just housing, but to connect housing to transportation and other infrastructure issues.”

He went on to say that’s especially true for the Downtown Eastside, an area that falls within the Vancouver East riding. He acknowledged that neighbourhood is an especially tricky case, given its mix of low-income residents and challenges related to new developments and gentrification.

In March 2014, Vancouver city council approved a local area plan (LAP) that was designed to guide development in the Downtown Eastside for the next 30 years. A social-impact assessment prepared for the LAP states that 60 percent of the neighbourhood’s 18,500 residents are low-income and 731 were homeless in 2013. It also notes that property values in the Downtown Eastside more than tripled between 2001 and 2013.

That document goes on to present a variety of concerns from low-income residents that range from losing social services to feeling alienated as high-end shops and restaurants move into the neighbourhood. “The biggest fear residents have about housing is that they will lose their current housing or be displaced from the neighbourhood due to new development and rising rents caused by gentrification," it states.

Regan, who worked on the LAP, said that to meet challenges related to gentrification, options for affordable housing in the Downtown Eastside should be preserved and expanded in ways that ensure long-time residents have more than a space to live.

“If you want older people or lower-income residents to still feel welcome in their community, it is not enough to just build housing for them,” he explained. “You also have to ensure that public spaces are inclusive and that the retail and food and beverage options that are available to them are also inclusive.”

In that context, Regan was critical of government’s increasing preference for public-private partnerships. He argued that while such arrangements are conducive to attracting capital for affordable housing, they fall short in other areas.

“The social enterprise models that we see here are great for enhancing government investment, but they shouldn’t be seen as some sort of a replacement,” he said. “Often times, we put too much expectation on the ability of non-profits to be entrepreneurial when it comes to such a massive public good as housing.”

To that end, Regan said he would like to see more discussion of ideas presently receiving little attention. For example, community land trusts that could be used to buy properties for the purpose of keeping rates low for the long term. Or tax-increment financing that could serve as a subsidy for redevelopments and renovations on existing supportive-housing buildings. A third idea Regan called attention to is the sort of social enterprise initiatives that the Portland Hotel Society has pioneered in the Downtown Eastside.

“There are certain things that the market will just not be able to produce,” Regan continued. “We need government to be a more proactive partner in shoring up those deficits. We’ve been seeing the federal government stepping further and further away from its commitment to housing for decades. That needs to be reversed.”

Regan acknowledged the NDP and Liberal candidates competing against him in Vancouver East—Jenny Kwan and Edward Wong, respectively—are both suggesting government take a larger role in housing than the Conservative administration. But Regan said the Greens have outlined policies that take that notion further because that is what the challenge requires.

“The economy does not do it on its own,” he concluded.