The federal government is taking a big swing with a promise that might sound familiar to Vancouverites.
The Liberal budget, delivered on Thursday, has set aside $11.2 billion over the next four years in a bid to end homelessness in the next 10 years.
It’s an echo of the promise then Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson made in 2008 — and was ultimately unable to fulfil.
Is Ottawa’s promise to end homelessness within 10 years possible?
Speaking in Winnipeg on Friday, Robertson, now federal housing minister, said he didn’t have the right tools at the time.
“We did not have the support,” Robertson said.
“As a city, we set the goal — the federal and provincial governments were not co-ordinating, were not investing in the scale that was needed to solve the challenge in Vancouver.”
As housing minister, Robertson is now driving the bus, and he says the federal government is on board.
Ottawa’s plan targets homelessness prevention, expanding access to housing and funding new mental health infrastructure. Components include more support for unhoused veterans, helping low-income people cover rent and building new mental health and addiction treatment facilities.
Metro Vancouver’s 2025 Point-in-Time Homeless Count estimated the region’s population of unhoused people at more than 5,200. The city’s own homeless count found more than 2,700 of them were in Vancouver itself.
Newly-elected Vancouver Mayor Pete Fry says he will reverse the previous council’s freeze on new supportive housing in the city. (CBC)
Newly-minted Vancouver Mayor Pete Fry says he’s already been in conversation with Robertson, and that the pledge is “aspirational, but very possible.”
“The reality is, it requires investment in housing and shelters for folks who are unhoused and triage and supportive housing and all the things that seem to be commitments in this budget,” Fry said.
He said it will require close partnerships between Ottawa, the provincial government and the city.
A key step in that, he said, will be reversing former mayor Ken Sim’s freeze on supportive housing in the city.
Homelessness has also become a flashpoint in British Columbia’s capital.
Newly re-elected Mayor Marianne Alto agreed the goal “absolutely is” possible — provided that senior levels of government cooperate with municipalities and provide enough resources.
Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto speaks at a July 2, 2025, news conference. Alto says she hopes her city’s existing homelessness programs can be integrated with new federal funding. (Mike McArthur/CBC)
Alto pointed to Victoria’s Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan, as a model. The program aims to transition people off the streets, through shelters and supportive housing and into independent housing.
“That’s the type of program that we hope will be included in this federal funding and with the support of the province,” she said.
“And if that’s the case, then we know that there will be success because we’ve already proven it.”
Alto said the city needs hundreds more supportive and below market units, which will require senior government funding.
Back in Vancouver, the head of one of the region’s busiest homelessness and outreach service providers said he was feeling “hopeful” about the announcement.
United Gospel Mission president Dean Kurpjuweit said Ottawa’s pledge sets out a clear timeline without attaching some of the strings that came with previous promises of capital funding.
But he said once that funding is used to build units, it will need to be matched by operating funds from the provincial government to provide ongoing care and support services for the people they house.
“Probably my biggest fear is that the provincial dollars either won’t come or the provincial dollars won’t come adequately,” he said.
“Or, you know, they come, but they only come for a period of time and once that period of time is over, that’s the end of it.”
B.C.’s new Conservative government has yet to be sworn in, and incoming premier Lorne Doerkson did not address the homelessness pledge in his response to the federal budget this week.
All eyes will now be on the new government’s first provincial budget, to see if its strategy to address homelessness lines up with Ottawa’s.
