The City of Vancouver spends an estimated $46.7 million per year in the Downtown Eastside on operating costs related to efforts to ameliorate the impacts of homelessness, and help people living with a mental illness, drug addiction, or both.
The estimate, which staff calculated in the fall of 2024, does not include policing costs, one-time costs such as tenant improvements or the city’s non-market housing operations, according to a staff report that went before council Tuesday.
What the provincial and federal governments spend was not included in the report.
The $46.7 million cost breaks down this way:
• Community services — $21.5 million: Inner-city social service centres; annual grants to social non-profits with a service focus on ameliorating impacts of homelessness; the city’s homelessness services department; a grant to Vancouver Coastal Health for its mental health and substance use work; staff working on poverty, mental health and addictions, the low barrier economy such as vending and other related programs.
• Vancouver Fire Rescue Services — $10.8 million: Overdose response and fire calls associated with mental health and addictions, along with the “urban issues team” that inspects single-room-occupancy hotels for safety violations.
• Engineering — $9.1 million: Incremental operational costs such as flushing, sweeping streets and sidewalks, abandoned items collection, bylaw compliance and annual grants to non-profits to support “micro-cleaning.”
• Parks — $5.3 million: Bylaw compliance to manage overnight sheltering and daytime use and incremental janitorial, parks and facilities repair.
'Intelligently and wisely'
Coun. Brian Montague wants a more comprehensive list of non-profits and non-governmental organizations operating in the Downtown Eastside — and their funding sources — to get a true handle on the cost of services in the area.
Montague was successful Tuesday in getting the support of Mayor Ken Sim and four of his ABC Vancouver councillor colleagues to direct staff to compile that list.
His request asks staff to collaborate with the provincial government “with the goal of gaining a comprehensive understanding of service provision and service delivery outcomes, including those that align with the goals of enabling recovery and improving mental health, in order to best support and improve the lives of those in need.”
Montague said he acknowledged that “a ton of work” was being done in the Downtown Eastside not just by the city, but by senior governments, non-profits, non-governmental organizations and community groups.
“But I think it's critical that we understand whether or not dollars are being spent optimally,” he said. “We're making investments with public money, and let's make sure those investments are being done intelligently and wisely.”
'Colossal waste of time'
Coun. Rebecca Bligh, who was expelled from the ABC Vancouver party two weeks ago, opposed Montague’s request, saying it was “a colossal waste of time,” noting staff had presented a comprehensive report Tuesday on work being done in the Downtown Eastside.
“The services are not the problem,” said Bligh, who was joined by councillors Lisa Dominato and Pete Fry in opposing Montague’s request.
“Homelessness is, poverty is, having no food is, untreated health conditions is. The idea that people of any political power are suggesting that the problem is housing for folks who would otherwise be homeless, or is services that are making sure that people get a meal, should really think twice about why they're in this chamber.”
Dominato said she would prefer staff spend its time developing a map of the services in the Downtown Eastside.
“What I hear from residents and from organizations in the Downtown Eastside is not needing an accounting of the funding, but actually service mapping to identify the gaps in services,” she said.
Sim supported Montague, saying transparency is “incredibly important” and “shouldn’t be feared.”
“This is a great motion,” the mayor said. “I think it will daylight a lot of things — good or bad. It may daylight the fact that we don't have enough resources going to these organizations, but we don't know until we look at it.”
VPD report
The Vancouver Police Department released a controversial report in November 2022 that said an estimated $5 billion was being spent annually across the city by governments and charities on services and supports to address needs of vulnerable citizens.
The Downtown Eastside is referenced frequently in the report, with its authors finding that $406 million in charitable investments was directed to organizations with addresses in the community.
That investment represents more than $1 million per day.
The $5-billion figure reached in the report authored by HelpSeeker Technologies — a Calgary data analytics company — was based on public data for 2018 and 2019 and collected from several local and national agencies.
'Lots of money in the system'
Data from the police department, Government of Canada, Canada Revenue Agency, the City of Vancouver, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Vancouver Coastal Health and Statistics Canada was used in the calculation to arrive at $5 billion.
Dr. Alina Turner, co-founder of HelpSeeker, cautioned at a news conference that the data was incomplete and had its limitations but said it was a starting point for understanding the investment in social services and community supports in Vancouver.
The VPD commissioned the report at a cost of $149,000. At the time, Police Chief Adam Palmer said the purpose of the audit was to attach a financial cost to the social services provided in Vancouver to add evidence to the department’s repeated calls for governments to better serve the city’s vulnerable population.
“This HelpSeeker’s analysis suggests that there was already lots of money in the system, and by their analysis $14 million a day is spent just to fund Vancouver’s social safety net,” the chief said.
“But there's also an increasing body of evidence that suggests this money isn't being used in a way that best serves the people who need it the most.”
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