Minister lashes out at Vancouver council over housing
ROD MICKLEBURGH
Globe and Mail
June 30, 2007

VANCOUVER -- Provincial cabinet minister Rich Coleman yesterday rejected calls for 3,200 new units of social housing to be built in the city as part of an Olympics bid commitment, saying he won't be bound by "some goal set by a bunch of people sitting around a table."

Mr. Coleman, the minister responsible for housing, was responding to growing concern that Vancouver will fall short of providing 800 additional units of social housing a year for the next four years, a number which city council and housing activists say is required to provide the "affordable housing legacy" promised in the official bid book presented to the International Olympic Committee in 2003.

The target was set last March by a roundtable of community-based advisers, who met for several months to determine what was needed to live up to Vancouver Olympic organizers' unprecedented commitment to establish an inner-city social legacy from the 2010 Winter Games.

Their call for 3,200 new housing units to house - mostly - the homeless was endorsed unanimously late Thursday night by Vancouver City Council.

A report to city council this week, however, said it was "questionable" the goal could be met because of "provincial funding constraints."

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