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Coun. Kari Gares

Vernon council will not be doing an impact assessment study on supportive housing and barrier-free projects downtown.

Coun. Kari Gares put forward a motion to review the impacts of supportive housing, citing resident and business concerns over unintended consequences from supportive services.

When introducing the motion at Monday’s council meeting, Gares said she supports housing initiatives for vulnerable people. Her motion sought an analysis of crime rates, emergency service demands, business viability, housing market effects, neighbourhood impacts, community feedback, and the effectiveness of existing supportive housing models.

“Now that we are six years into this council, and we have built a significant amount of units within our community, we have had significant feedback from neighbourhoods, communities, [and] businesses that are dealing with some of the ramifications of that,” said Gares.

Gares said she wanted a study done so council could have a tangible presentation to upper levels of government when talking about the impacts and concerns stemming from supports for vulnerable people.

Long discussion by council

Gares’ motion prompted long responses from most other members of council.

Couns. Kelly Fehr and Brian Guy both said multiple studies have been done on the impacts of non-market housing, on the provincial, national and global scale.

Fehr said a study would be fiscally irresponsible, and instead called for council to be proactive in identifying and securing properties across the city for non-market housing, including supportive housing.

Notably, Fehr is also the executive director of operations for Turning Points, a group which runs supportive housing and shelter facilities throughout the city.

Coun. Brian Quiring, an architect by trade, said while he felt the motion was on the right track he couldn’t support it as is.

“Personally, right now, we're trying to get more of these facilities through BC Housing. We're begging BC Housing to give us the go ahead on these projects. So for that reason alone, I can't support the motion because I think it has the potential to create a relationship with some funders that may appear as though we're not in favour of this specific type of housing, and I think we actually are.”

Mayor Victor Cumming said the problems Gares was addressing in her motion were not coming from people living in supportive housing — an idea Coun. Akbal Mund backed up by saying it was the people who don't want housing causing problems.

Gares said her intent was to try and get a clear picture of what’s going on, saying RCMP and bylaw reports on crime stats don’t address the whole situation.

“It doesn't need to be an all or nothing, but we're only considering one segment. Our role is to consider everyone, and yes, to have an impact assessment is going to cost money, but is it something that is going to allow us to have strategic conversations about where we want to support and put these supports, because right now, we're not really doing that,” said Gares.

“We need the services. I don't think anyone here is going to deny we do need those services…but we need to recognize that there are community members here that are feeling the impact. Do we not owe them the same level of responsibility that we do for everyone else? And that's really what this conversation is about.”

The motion was defeated, with Gares the only councillor voting to support it.