Sim says Vancouver has pitched 5 supportive housing sites to province, but won’t say where they are

Changes could be on the horizon for the Granville Strip, with the mayor callon on the province to move notorious social housing sites.

Vancouver’s mayor says his office has provided the province with a list of five city-owned sites that could be used for supportive housing, but he won’t share any of the locations publicly.

In a statement released Thursday, Ken Sim said the five unnamed sites could be used to replace the three “inadequate” supportive housing facilities currently located in the city’s Granville Entertainment District.

Those facilities – the St. Helen’s Hotel at 1161 Granville St., Luugat at 1176 Granville St. and Granville Villa at 1025 Granville St. – have a total of 283 units between them, but account for a disproportionately high number of calls for police and fire service, according to the city.

In 2024, there were a total of 1,364 calls for police service at those three Granville Street addresses.

“This meant that those three buildings were responsible for one in every 125 police calls in the city, despite only housing one out of every 2,500 residents of Vancouver,” Sim said in his statement.

The mayor added that there were 74 fires and 2,203 calls for Vancouver Fire Rescue Services at Luugat and St. Helen’s between January 2020 and May 2025.

“The sites submitted to the province by the City of Vancouver are for five smaller-scale facilities, each with 55 to 65 units,” Sim said. “This model is consistent with best practices, allowing for more focused care and better outcomes, in contrast with the warehousing approach that we have seen with the existing three sites.”

The mayor’s statement does not specify any of the five locations submitted to the province for consideration. When CTV News asked the mayor’s office for the list, a spokesperson declined to provide it.

“The locations are confidential at this point in time,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that the purpose of the mayor’s statement was “to put it on the public record that responsibility for the next steps of transitioning supportive housing out of the Granville Entertainment District now sits with the provincial government.”

Last month, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon committed to moving supportive housing away from the Granville strip, but no timeline for doing so has been made public.

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“The City of Vancouver has done its part to provide viable sites for future facilities and the responsibility to transition these units out of the GED now sits with the province,” Sim said in his statement.

“We look forward to hearing from them on a plan for carrying this work out quickly.”