Over the past month, housing officials and community groups scrambled to find homes for dozens of people who set up tents on a vacant lot in the Downtown Eastside to highlight homelessness during the Olympic Games.
As of Thursday, homes had been arranged for all but a handful of protesters, and the once-bustling site was nearly empty - to the likely relief of city officials and property owner Concord Pacific.
The tents may be gone, but with money for three provincially funded shelters set to run out on April 30, concern is growing about where the hundreds of people who use those facilities will go.
The province and the city have had some discussions, but the financial prospects for the shelters are unclear, city councillor Kerry Jang said Thursday.
"All three of the original … shelters have been full to capacity no matter what the weather," Mr. Jang said. "That's because of their reputation of being a safe place, with decent food - they are clearly filling a need. So these are the ones we are quite worried about."
Provincial Housing Minister Rich Coleman was not available for an interview. But a Ministry spokesman said the shelters "will be phased out by the end of April, 2010."
The shelters - First United Church (with a 250-person capacity), New Fountain (40 beds) and Northern Street (100 beds), all in the Downtown Eastside - are among a group of shelters opened by Mayor Gregor Robertson's Homeless Emergency Action Team, or HEAT, in late 2008 and early 2009.
Originally funded with $500,000 each from the province, the city and the Streetohome Foundation, HEAT shelters were meant to keep people from freezing to death in cold weather. But the facilities have been full since they opened and the province has twice kicked in more money to keep them open.
Two shelters set up near the Granville Street bridge resulted in furious protests from neighbours and tension between the province and city hall. Last June, the province shut down one of the sites (the other closed in August) and announced a funding extension for the three others until April, 2010.
Shelter operators hope the city and the province will reach an agreement that either keeps the shelters open or provides an alternative, such as downtown's Dunsmuir House.
That facility, opened last August, is leased by the province and was upgraded with $500,000 from the city. Costs at the 166-unit building amount to about $570 a month per person, compared with about $2,000 a month per person at the shelter it replaced.
"I'm assuming that the province is not going to make those people homeless and there is a plan," said Mark Townsend of the Portland Hotel Society, which runs the New Fountain Shelter. "Just at the moment, we don't know what the plan is."
"We can't imagine ourselves not being open," Sandra Severs, minister of Hospitality and Programs at First United, said yesterday, adding that shelter staff are anxious to hear about the funding.
The city has set aside $500,000 to run four small, cold-weather shelters next winter, but can't afford to keep the provincially run shelters open, Mr. Jang said. Four city-funded shelters that ran at various sites in the city are also scheduled to close at the end of next month, adding to concerns about dramatically reduced shelter options for the city's homeless.
The province has spent millions in the past few years to buy and renovate single-room occupancy hotels and has also promised to build hundreds of units of new supportive housing, some of which are under construction.
In the meantime, however, the packed HEAT shelters demonstrate a need for approaches such as Dunsmuir House to fill the gap, Mr. Jang said.
"Shelters are expensive to run, and these deadlines cause great anxiety, over and over again," Mr. Jang said. "We have identified other sites that could be used for interim housing. We have done our bit and now it is up to the province."