Stanley comes to the rescue (again)

Housing bureaucrats must be getting tired hearing about the Stanley/New Fountain Hotel.

The aging Downtown Eastside hotel has appeared on more than a few government press releases over the years, and today it popped up on another: A quick announcement that the province and city will collaborate on creating 200 emergency shelter beds this winter, including 30 or so at the Stanley.

It's a good news story for Gregor Robertson and his 'homeless emergency action team.' He's now announced 350 emergency shelter spots since taking power last week. No, it's not making a dent in homelessness but the moves suggest to the public that he is capable of following through on his promises.

But for the Stanley/New Fountain, life as a winter emergency shelter pales in comparison to what was previously planned for the 101-year-old structure.

Just a few years ago, Stan was to have been renovated into a few dozen studio units of social housing - the kind that social planners like, where every tenant gets his or her own room and a private toilet. The funding was slated to come from the B.C. government's then permanent social housing program, Homes B.C.

But in 2002, Homes B.C. got the chop when the Libs cut costs and the project was put on hold. Indefinitely.

There was still life for the hotel, though. As it turns out, Stanley and its then owners, the non-profit Portland Hotel Society, would step in to house the squatters from nearby Woodward's. PHS agreed to flip the property to the city while the non-profit would run the building and house the squatters, charitably described by Portland's Mark Townsend as a "very difficult, very hard to house" crowd. (Frances Bula provides a little recap of that time period.)

Instead of cash for a demolition and conversion, the province, through B.C. Housing, put up $500,000 for repairs.

The province's contribution today will be less than that, with a half-million split between three separate sites. The building - well, buildings, really, since Stanley/New Fountain is a pair of conjoined twins that were once, two separate SRO hotels - remains an SRO hotel in a less than ideal setting, housing people with less than ideal challenges - many have mental illnesses, meth and crack addictions, and HIV.

In less than a decade, the plans for Stanley/New Fountain have changed from new permanent social housing, to a crumbling SRO hotel run on band-aid resources and now, at least in one section of the building, emergency overnight shelter beds (the rest of the building's SRO units are occupied).

A few temporary shelter beds aren't a bad thing during winter, but the city and province once had more significant plans for old Stanley.