B.C. government plans to transition supportive housing out of Granville Street, mayor says

The provincial government has announced plans to transition supportive housing out of the Granville Street entertainment district, according to Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.

This announcement comes after a fire broke out in a single-room occupancy building on the strip on Wednesday, leaving two people needing treatment for smoke inhalation.

The fire broke out in the former Howard Johnson hotel that now serves as a single-room accommodation housing facility.

The B.C. government bought the building at 1176 Granville in 2020, and controversially converted it to housing as it sought to shelter the city’s homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic quickly.

It has since generated thousands of emergency calls, with residents setting fires, pulling fire alarms and setting off the building’s sprinkler systems.

2:25 Fire at Vancouver Granville Street SRO

“We want to support the entire community, the business community, with our resources,” Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai said at a press conference on Thursday.

“The resources are finite, and we have to be responsible with those resources. So, attending one residence or one building, I think, since COVID, some of the stats show that we’ve been here almost 4,000 times to one facility.

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“And when you cram people into one building… and there’s tension amongst the residents, this spills out over into the streets. It impacts the businesses.”

Thursday’s announcement pertains specifically to three provincially owned supportive housing sites in the Granville entertainment zone: the Luugat (110 rooms), the Granville Villa (77 rooms) and the St. Helens (93 rooms).

The city said it will continue to work on a long-term strategy to replace SROs through the SRO Replacement Program. This initiative includes six SRO buildings in the core area and is contingent on securing funding from the federal government.

5:13 Big changes in the works for the Granville entertainment district

Sim said the city will help the provincial government identify and provide city-owned lands to build supportive housing that are capped at 40 units that provide on-site security.

“Initiatives that will include Road to Recovery, so it will help the residents that will live in these units, an opportunity to get better, and overall wraparound services that will address mental health challenges that the residents face,” he added.

There are currently eight SRO buildings, containing about 600 rooms, along the Granville Strip.

B.C.’s Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told Global News that the next move is in the City of Vancouver’s hands.

“They’ve committed to us that they will find three net-new locations for supportive housing and once they’re able to do that, we’ll get going on that,” he said.

“In the end, our priority is two things. One, we want to see a healthy and safe community but we also want to make sure that people have housing and they have the supports they need. In this plan, we believe we can do both.”