City councillor Kerry Jang, who is also a psychiatrist, stands outside downtown’s Bosman’s Motor Hotel. As part of a national trial, the hotel will soon be converted to housing for homeless people dealing with mental illness.

Credit: Doug Shanks

NEWS: Downtown hotel to become site of housing project

Bosman’s Motor Hotel will soon become the Vancouver site of a national research project on homelessness and mental illness. The hotel, located downtown at Howe and Helmcken Streets, will begin housing homeless people with mental illness in May 2010, as part of a three-year national trial led by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, a non-profit that received $110 million from the federal government last February to find ways to help the growing number of homeless people who struggle with mental illness. Vancouver is one of five Canadian cities participating in the trial, alongside Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg.

The trial will test what’s called the Housing First approach to homelessness against “care as usual” approaches: A total of 2,225 homeless people with mental illness from across Canada will participate in the trial, 1,325 of whom will be given a place to live; remaining participants will receive the “usual” health and social services afforded to people living on the streets or in shelters. The aim is to collect data that will inform new policies and service development for homeless people across the country.

“The rationale [of Housing First] is that you can’t get better unless you have a safe place to live,” says Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang, a psychiatrist and member of the Mental Health Commission.

The Vancouver arm of the project will be co-managed by the PHS Community Services Society, a local representative from the Mental Health Commission, and the Streetohome Foundation. When the Mental Health Commission project ends in 2013, there will be the possibility of expanding the Bosman’s project for up to five years, depending on future funding. After that, Jang says Bosman’s residents will, hopefully, move on to supportive housing.

Bosman’s will undergo a public-consultation process in changing its designation from a hotel to a rooming house, with a Development Permit Board hearing scheduled for October 5. The first open house to discuss the situation with neighbouring residents and businesses was held on August 25. So far, there seems to be less community resistance to the Bosman’s project than there was with the emergency homeless shelters set up on the north end of the Granville Bridge by the Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) last winter. Street activity outside the Howe Street HEAT shelter resulted in a number of complaints from people living in nearby condominiums and apartments, and the shelter was closed on August 5 as a result.

Rob Whitlock, the City of Vancouver’s senior housing planner, says he doesn’t expect similar community resistance to the Bosman’s site, although he admits there were security-related concerns expressed by some residential neighbours at the open house. But Bosman’s will be much better suited than a shelter to providing housing, he says. “The nature of a motor hotel building is much different than the sort of warehouses they were using for the shelters,” he says. “I think, on a broad basis, people support the need to provide housing, as it’s critical to resolving the needs of people who are out on the street and don’t have the resources. I think everyone understands and appreciates that.”

All 100 rooms at Bosman’s, each with a private bathroom, will be fitted for residential use for the trial. There will be a common dining room for meal services, as well as a secure outdoor amenity area for residents. Mental-health and addiction treatment will be administered on site by care teams comprised of nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, and addiction and mental-health support workers. Care will be rounded out by security workers and two on-site staff. “What we are comparing against, too, are typical models in which the homeless person is in housing but has to go out to get treatment,” says Jang. “In the Housing First model, it’s like a house call.”

Mark Townsend, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society, says he’s excited that the trial will include cities across Canada. “It’s a problem that’s affecting every single city. You can either just keep your head in the sand or you can do something about it,” he says. “The aim [of the project] is to make people who are suffering on our streets more stable, and, on top of that, to move them forward, to help them rebuild their life.”