Essentially dormant for its first year of existence, Vision Vancouver has woken from its sleep and feels it has an issue: housing. An outburst of Vision sponsored media statements, public meetings, and a Tim Stevenson-sponsored emergency motion in council on the topic make it clear that Vision wants this issue as its own.

A recent ad had Jim Green participating in a forum at Video Inn regarding housing eviction. Tim Stevenson has introduced a motion in council calling for the City to stop conversions of single room occupancy rooms in hotels to other forms of housing. Meanwhile, both Stevenson and Green took up space in a recent Georgia Straight on the topic of conversions. Tim Stevenson moaned that "One of the pillars of our Olympic agreement was that there would be no evictions, yet that is precisely what is happening now."

But, a review of Vision Vancouver's involvement in housing-related issues throughout their time with COPE, from whom they separated in order to found Vision, documents the hypocrisy of the group in embracing this issue now. Indeed, Vision's sudden promotion of housing to the top of their "to do" list clashes with its own members' past actions.

Start with the Single Room Accommodation bylaw, proposed and sponsored by Jim Green. Passed in the fall of 2003, it mandates a $5,000 penalty for each hotel room converted to other uses (tourist or redevelopment). Judging from the city's own documents, it has been a failure. According to the "Single Room Accommodation By-law: 18 Month Report Back" by Celine Mauboules, submitted in February 2005, at that time 10 different SRO buildings had applied for conversion or demolition permits, involving a total of 455 rooms. In return, the report states the City would receive at least 129 rooms as well as a large amount of money donated to the affordable housing fund. The Grand at 24 Water Street, which the owner had left vacant for 30 years, had no charge levied against it as it went ahead, together with a larger redevelopment project, for a loss of 44 rooms.

To give you a sense of the kind of deals made, consider the Passlin Hotel at 746 Richards, where 43 rooms were lost, and 32 tenants evicted, in exchange for 46 units of new low cost housing. According to the report, "Negotiations resulted in an agreement to bonus the new development with 99,639 square feet of additional density, and an investment of $720,000 in Downtown South Development Cost Levy funds in the project, in return for the developer giving the City 46 units of low-cost housing worth approximately $5,765,000." While the value of the new low cost housing is impressive, remember it amounts to only an additional three units over what was lost. And consider what the developer got: nearly 100,000 square feet of additional density and a large investment in the project.

Clearly, the by-law had no effect on conversions, which actually increased over this time frame. While it could be argued that at least the City got something in exchange for the loss of the affordable housing, the money involved amounts to spare change relative to the size of the developments. In practice, the by-law was a pay-for conversion by-law, not a moratorium on conversion, which is what was needed. The Vision website quotes Stevenson as saying, "If we can exercise our power to prevent conversion in the business district, surely we can do the same to prevent SRO conversions, which hurt our city's most vulnerable." True, but why, when they are out of power, does this occur to them only now?

Consider Green's role in attempting to evict homeless people camped in Thornton and Portside Parks in the summer of 2003. The Parks Board at that time wanted to seek an injunction to force the homeless campers to remove their tents from the parks. But because of a complication (the City had jurisdiction over the park, due to a lease agreement with the Vancouver Port Corporation), they had first to get City Council to transfer the lease of the park to the Park Board. A meeting was called, but councilor Tim Louis did not attend the meeting, thus denying the meeting quorum. At the time Louis said he'd had previous commitments and because, as he said at the time, "The solution to homelessness is not in getting an injunction. An injunction does not provide shelter."

Larry Campbell, Jim Green and Heather Deal, all future members of Vision Vancouver, responded to Louis's non-attendance with anger. Campbell called it "undemocratic." Deal, then on the Park Board, said the evictions of the homeless would have to wait until the full council reconvened. Green's slippery response was revealing. Criticizing Louis for shirking his duty, Green went on to say, "We were not there to vote on an injunction." That was true, they were there to vote on a move to make the injunction an available tool for the Parks Board to use. The effect would have been to facilitate the use of the injunction.

But ultimately, it is the 2010 Olympics that propels the current round of conversions, redevelopment, evictions and large rent increases. Vision's unelected leader, Jim Green, and two of its councilors, Tim Stevenson and Raymond Louie, all voted for the Olympics. As they knew when they voted for it, the Olympic games are synonymous with exploding property values, rent hikes, and evictions. Then a COPE councilor allied to rabidly pro-Olympics Mayor Larry Campbell, Green played a typically oily role during the debate, coyly avoiding coming out either for or against the Olympics, while trying to use his reticence as a bargaining chip in the negotiations over the Woodward's development. The one or two hundred social housing suites that will come with that development will not come close to compensating for the loss of SRO rooms the Olympics will cause, or the even more substantial damage to the overall affordable housing stock the Olympics will wreak.

Last week's evictions at the American Hotel, and the series of evictions in the West End are all tied to the Olympics. Property taxpayers and working people who rent should understand that the plight of the homeless is intimately tied to their own. We are all-homeowner, tenant, SRO hotel dweller-subject to the same crazy property market.

Like Green's feeble pay-for-conversion plan before it, Stevenson's new motion to stop the conversion of SRO suites is wholly inadequate. We need a complete moratorium on conversion of all affordable housing, SROs, and regular rental suites in Vancouver. But that would mean confronting the development industry, and that is not something Green and his fellow Visionaries will do.