Like many North American cities, Vancouver started to see an increase in homelessness in the late 1980s. Some of the reasons relate to cutbacks in federal government funding for new social housing, tightening of the social welfare system and de-institutionalisation.

When Vancouver entered its bid for the games, many people were worried about things such as significant rent increases, people being evicted, and low-cost housing being converted into temporary accommodation for games visitors. In response, the city, with the support of the 2010 Bid Corporation, worked with the community to draw up a series of aims that became part of Vancouver’s official bid and are known as the inner-city inclusive commitments.

These were to: protect the rental housing stock; provide as many alternative forms of temporary accommodation for winter games visitors and workers as possible; ensure people are not made homeless as a result of the winter games; ensure residents are not involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the winter games; and provide an affordable housing legacy.

To protect the existing stock, the city and province acquired more than 1,800 units of existing low-income housing (mostly house shares). This will provide stable housing for our most vulnerable citizens.

Roughly 1,900 units of new non-market housing have been built or are in the process of being built. While additional housing is needed to solve homelessness, this is a significant achievement.

Seven temporary winter shelters have also been opened, accommodating roughly 500 homeless individuals.

A new city bylaw was enacted to control the conversion of house shares to tourist hotels. And to create additional accommodation options for games visitors, owners were allowed to rent their homes on a temporary basis, as long as they weren’t evicting tenants to rent their units. A tenant registry was established for tenants concerned about games-related evictions.

The city funded a non-profit organisation to assist tenants through the official dispute resolution process in the case where tenants felt they were unfairly evicted due to the games. Concerns about evictions did not materialise and very few tenants required assistance.

The city also worked with the Vancouver Organising Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games to open a temporary hostel during the games to ensure visitors without pre-arranged accommodation didn’t put pressure on our existing shelter and low-income housing stock.

Unfortunately, homelessness has increased in Vancouver, though it is difficult to correlate this increase to the games. The values enshrined in the housing-related inner-city inclusive commitments guided our work before we were awarded the games and will continue to do so now that the games are over. Ending homelessness continues to be a priority for the city as we work to address its underlying causes - poverty, mental health problems and addictions and, increasingly, unaffordable housing.

Celine Mauboules is a housing policy planner for the City of Vancouver

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