Poverty 'deepening,' group says

Seriousness of social ills compared to Downtown Eastside
Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, October 31, 2007

SURREY - Surrey has problems with homelessness, poverty and aboriginal issues as profound as those in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, says a Surrey coalition of non-profit groups, businesses and government.

"There are deepening signs of poverty in this, one of B.C.'s fastest-growing municipalities," said the Vibrant Surrey coalition in its first report, issued on Tuesday.

"[There are] increasing rates of homelessness and . . . close to 20 per cent of residents without sustainable incomes."

The report notes Surrey is growing at an explosive rate and many of those moving in are poor, aboriginal, single parents, or new immigrants, which the city will have to deal with.

But the facts in the report are only part of the story.

Equally important for some is that Surrey has built a broad-based coalition that is aggressively highlighting its social problems and looking for innovative ways to grapple with them.

That's after years in which the sprawling city, three times the area of Vancouver, has been relatively silent on those topics.

"There's been a whole shift in the last couple of years," says Al Vigoda, a former community-development consultant who has worked in Asia, Africa and eastern Europe and is now the director of Vibrant Surrey. "Surrey is coming of age as a community."

Read the rest here.