Vancouver Magazine

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A Complicated Kindness - continued

By Frances Bula published Feb 5, 2010

No one thinks Streetohome’s members aren’t genuine in their concern. It’s clear that many of those at the foundation are ready to write personal cheques the minute they’re asked. And none joined for the glamour of being on the board or because they couldn’t think how else to fill their spare time. “I know that they sincerely do want to make a difference. I just think they’ve been frustrated in their attempts,” says Alice Sundberg, a consultant who has worked in the nonprofit housing area for 30 years and who also sat on one of the foundation’s committees.

People also accept that the business community has a valuable role to play in motivating donors to give. Local housing groups, except for faith-based groups like Union Gospel Mission or the Salvation Army, get negligible amounts from donations. Many people—the same ones who donate to hospitals and health programs—believe it’s the government’s job to house the homeless. Even if they don’t believe that, housing seems like too incomprehensible a project. It’s hard for them to see what $10,000 or even $50 million does. If the city’s business leaders can convince them otherwise, they will have accomplished something.

Two weeks after the group released its 10-year plan, it held yet another meeting. In a boardroom high above Granville Street, Penny Ballem, Vancouver’s city manager and successor to Judy Rogers, was holding out for the city to get more money for temporary housing from the promised $25 million. The city had been hammering at the demand for weeks—leaving people on the streets for two years while permanent housing is being built is a no-go. Ballem was firm but polite, careful not to express the sense of disappointment and betrayal other staff felt at the sight of a group the city had launched and funded preparing to dedicate its fundraising efforts to helping out the province.

Foundation staff, meanwhile, grumbled that the city was trying to “take over.” And BC Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay argued the money would be better spent on permanent housing, since the city likely wouldn’t even be able to find temporary housing before new buildings started opening. Bob Rennie, in his broker role, tried to make the case that giving money to the province would leverage more but that the foundation wouldn’t do itself any favours by alienating the city. Giustra was in Colombia, but his representative took notes on the arguments over where his boss’s money and fundraising efforts were supposedly going to go.

By the end, it looked as though the group was closer to an agreement that future provincial projects—those that met the board’s standards—would get $20 million and the city would get $5 million. The discussion was exhausting. And, McLernon and Greene acknowledged later, the foundation is going to have to find a way to demonstrate next year and the year after that their money made a difference, because there is no easy mechanism to prove it.

Such arguments have occasioned much soul-searching among board members and occasional doubts—echoed by potential donors surveyed—about whether it’s even possible to eradicate homelessness. Don Fairbairn, the guy who helped create the idea of the foundation and is now a board member, said there is only one other problem any of them have faced that has the same kind of complex business-case parameters: climate change. “It requires individuals to act, it requires what looks like a lot of money, and there’s uncertainty as to whether you’ll get a return and who will get a return,” he said, slowly and deliberately spelling out all the complicating factors. He and others on the board remain optimistic that their team has the persistence and drive to break free of the paralysis that kind of murky ambiguity can induce. But he doesn’t downplay the impact it can have on others. “It’s easy to walk away.”