VANCOUVER- It's two days in a row of good news housing announcements from the city and province.

A day after breaking ground - albeit almost a year after first proposed - on the first of an expected 14 new supportive housing sites in Vancouver, B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson dug out the ceremonial shovels again yesterday, this time to dig in to a new $31-million facility for the Union Gospel Mission. Read more…

VANCOUVER - City councillors congratulated themselves this afternoon at news that renovations to some of the Downtown Eastside's most notorious hotels were on track to meet or exceed maintenance standards -- but nonetheless they authorized the use of legal injunctions against those buildings' owners if work was not completed. Read more…

MUSQUEAM FIRST NATION - Federal stimulus spending got the credit for new on-reserve social housing in this First Nations community near Vancouver at a ground-breaking ceremony this morning, but local leaders warned that much more is needed to address their housing shortage. Read more…

As construction begins on a 40-unit supportive housing development in Kelowna, two other partner sites committed to last year remain on hold.

One of the sites has been delayed by a legal challenge from local merchants over a loss of parking while the third site is still waiting on funding from the provincial government. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Organizers of the 2010 Winter Games denied rumours today that the Little Mountain Housing project will become an Olympics parking lot after it’s demolished.

“I haven’t heard anything about that,” VANOC executive vice-president of services and operations Terry Wright said. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Residents near a controversial homeless shelter in a Downtown neighbourhood say they haven't heard a peep from city officials, despite the fact it's been two weeks since the start of an apparent 30-day consultation process. Read more…

VANCOUVER - The province and city officials are eyeing the site of Vancouver’s former jail to house people who are homeless.

The old Vancouver Pretrial Centre near the north end of Main Street could hold 100 units of supportive housing. “We’re just working within government to identify that particular facility can be transferred to housing,” Housing Minister Rich Coleman told 24 hours in an interview. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Gary Sherwood is among a handful of people who have been camping outside a south downtown emergency shelter for the last week, despite the fact it shut down following complaints from neighbours.

"Some of us don't want to go to the Downtown Eastside," Sherwood said. "Some people feel it would be a trigger." Read more…

VANCOUVER- A Vancouver City Councillor is demanding a concrete timeline for the implementation of affordable housing in Vancouver.

“We’re in a crisis. We have thousands of people homeless on the street, we’re spending up to 8 million to put people in shelters up until after the Olympics. Why aren’t we putting that money immediately into housing?” asked City Councillor Ellen Woodsworth today in an interview with The Tyee. Read more…

VANCOUVER - B.C. Minister of Housing and Social Development, Rich Coleman announced today that three of the five controversial HEAT shelters will remain open, with one more to be assessed.

“What we’re not going to do is take a step backwards. We’re not going to walk away on our responsibility to the people who are homeless,” Coleman said today in a press conference with Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Mayor Gregor Robertson is renewing the call for the provincial government to fund shelters and housing for Vancouver's neediest residents.

The HEAT shelters currently housing over 450 people a night are slated to close next Tuesday, and a city council-approved proposal for temporary housing units remains deadlocked awaiting provincial funding. Read more…

VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is finding housing for people with addictions to drugs and alcohol by pushing out people with mental illnesses, says a Victoria psychiatrist.

“You can take advantage of the chronically mentally ill and get away with it, that's my take on it,” said André Masters. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Single room occupancy hotels in the Downtown Eastside are getting pricier and are now unaffordable for many low-income residents, according to a new report from the Carnegie Community Action Project.

“We’re standing in front of the hotel that most Downtown Eastside residents consider a symbol of despair,” said report co-author Wendy Pedersen, speaking outside the Balmoral Hotel near Vancouver’s Main and Hastings intersection. Read more…

VANCOUVER - The bulldozers are coming to demolish one of Vancouver’s oldest social housing projects. Although only 12 of the site’s 224 units at the Little Mountain Housing project are still occupied, the news evoked strong response from critics.

“It has been a botch job from start to finish, with Rich Coleman, the minister responsible, deciding he’d rather be a land speculator than Minister of Housing” said David Chudnovsky, former NDP critic for homelessness and health. Read more…

VANCOUVER – If this city was a student, it would receive a B in most subjects, but would be headed for remedial classes in housing and income equality.

That report card was issued by local youth who marked the city on its quality of life for the Youth Vital Signs survey. Read more…

VANCOUVER – The smoking gun that was expected prove the truth of Vancouver’s most famous story about itself – that our downtown condos are dark at night because there’s no one living there – has found no plague of empty condos.

Instead, the examination of BC Hydro records by Andrew Yan put a dent in the urban myth of empty condos, but showed other problems being created by current patterns of condo-building and investment ownership downtown. Read more…

VANCOUVER - Transient youth looking for work and play during the 2010 Olympic Games should have more housing options thanks to VANOC's announcement of a temporary 400-bed hostel.

“Really its being built as a safety net,” said Donna Wilson, VANOC Executive Vice-President of People and Sustainability. Read more…

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson seems confident he'll meet his self-assigned “gargantuan task” of ending homelessness in Vancouver by 2015. To hear him and city councillor Kerry Jang speak yesterday, it was as if all that stood in the way of a city where everyone has a warm place to sleep was a lack of provincial funding.

But the academic who invited the politicians to participate in a panel discussing health issues affecting the homeless was less optimistic. “That's a general direction” said Dr. Michael Krausz as he thanked the mayor for his speech, “but now we need to work out the details.” Read more…

VANCOUVER – Peter Ladner and Suzanne Anton are not impressed. That’s the politest way of putting the Non-Partisan Association reaction to yesterday's news from the Vancouver Police Department that no charges can be laid in the case of the missing Olympic village documents.

“If you want to bury this thing, [election day] would be the perfect time to announce it,” said Ladner, the former NPA councillor and mayoral candidate. “And I’d say anyone who didn’t take a polygraph, but gained politically is suspect in my view.” Read more…

VANCOUVER - Spencer Herbert, the province's youngest MLA, handily brought the NDP to victory in the new riding of Vancouver-West End with 7,663 votes with 146 of 154 ballot boxes reporting. Read more…