Social agencies to run rooming hotels

Source: the Vancouver Sun

Province picks non-profits for role in Downtown Eastside
Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, October 29, 2007
Eleven Downtown Eastside hotels will be turned over to non-profit social agencies to run as of Dec. 1, in a move the province and the agencies say will mean more and better rooms for the homeless and hardest to house.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman is set to announce today the 10 non-profit agencies that have been chosen to run them.

A wide variety of agencies will be named, including one that specializes in native housing, another that deals with women's housing and two that handle housing specifically for the mentally ill. One agency will operate two hotels.

The non-profits, all of which run other buildings targeted to particular groups of people who are the most vulnerable to homelessness, will gradually add new tenants who are part of their target group to the existing mix.

Two hotels, the Park and the Marble Arch, will be added to the stock of "dry" housing that City Centre Care Society offers for people trying to live without drugs and alcohol after they've come out of a detox program.

Most of the others are not like that, instead providing safe and supportive homes to women, aboriginals with HIV, the mentally ill, the addicted or a mix of any of those categories.

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