Nearly five years after Vancouver city council approved a massive housing and detox complex on the city’s east side, shovels have still yet to break ground — and housing and addiction advocates want to know why.
The facility, which will include 97 affordable housing units and 51 detox beds is slated for construction on the north side of East 1st Avenue just east of Clark Drive.
In March, B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told Global News he was confident construction would be underway by this fall.
“There is no other facility like that here that I know of that has that many beds. Of course it would be needed,” Les Kaczorowski, who identified himself as a drug user, told Global News.
“I’ve been in a shelter for four years waiting for housing … Any day I could become homeless again, I could lose my shelter bed for many different infractions.”
The mixed-use development was approved in February, 2019 on city-owned land.
The City of Vancouver said the original building permit application were submitted under the outdated 2014 Vancouver Building Bylaw (VBBL), which was updated in 2019.
“Given that by June 2022 multiple outstanding permit requirements had not been met, the City met with (BC Housing) and agreed that the application must be updated to meet the 2019 VBBL,” a city spokesperson said in an email.
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“The City has offered to work with the design team to work through any challenges in order to have the permits issued as soon as possible.”
Sarah Blyth, executive director of the Overdose Prevention Society, said every day the facility is delayed, the drug deaths mount on the city’s streets.
“We can’t really wait any longer. There’s a list of 200-plus people always waiting to get into detox and recovery,” she said.
“We need these facilities years ago. It takes a lot to get people to go into recovery.”
Blyth said the province has taken steps to make accessing detox easier for drug users, but said simplifying the system doesn’t do much if there are no beds for people who are ready for treatment.
As a front-line worker, she said she meets people every day who are ready to access services, and that a facility of this size would be a “game changer” in terms of being able to direct them to detox within a few days of making a request.
What’s more, she said the housing component of the facility will also help save lives by giving more access to stable housing after people have gotten sober.
“Having a place for them to go after they’ve detoxed that’s not out on the street is also really important, and if we don’t have that they just go back onto the street and its really hard to be sober and back on the street again,” she said.
“Whatever red tape it is, I hope people will concentrate on it.”
Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon was not available for an interview on the project’s stalled progress Thursday.
But Premier David Eby said the province was making progress when it came to simplifying permitting at a provincial and municipal level.
“We understand there’s important work to do but we’re showing progress, our approvals are 33 per cent faster than they were this time last year,” Eby said.
“We have new legislation in place coming this session to support municipalities around faster approvals for the housing we need, get those in place so they can act faster, some of the restrictions on cities on getting things approved where they have to go through processes that are required by provincial law, so we’re getting there.”
But that progress is cold comfort to many living on the streets in the city’s Downtown Eastside.
“I would give it a go. I would try it. I would try anything,” drug user Misty Martin said.
“We need beds, not just to get out, we need a program in place because once you’re out on the street we don’t have anywhere to go. We only have shelters that take a certain amount of people on the spot.”