How to say yes to homeless shelters

It's called a "Yes, in my backyard" (or "YIMBY") tool kit—the opposite of NIMBY. Vancuver's Pivot Legal Society has put a manual together to give tips and strategies to groups supporting projects such as homeless shelters, drug treatment centers, and low-income housing.

The manual, summarized here by Pivot, was developed through the collaboration of shelter providers and advocacy groups. The Globe and Mail reports that the manual is partly a response to attitudes that caused two homeless emergency action team shelters to be closed in 2009 in Vancouver's False Creek North neighborhood. The newspaper says neighbors complained of crime, vandalism, and public disorder after the city opened the shelters without consultation, placing them next to a day care center and housing for the elderly.

Advocates for the homeless have lobbied for such facilities, arguing the city and the province have not built enough "social housing" to meet the needs.

An opposing argument

Opponents cited research by Dr. George Galster, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University, who has studied the impact of supportive housing projects on neighborhoods in the United States. Information posted on the website NIABY.com (Not in Anyone's Back Yard) suggests that Dr. Galster is not against all such projects.

In remarks posted on the NIABY site, Dr. Galster said studies of small-scale group homes "almost without exception find no adverse impact on crime or [property] values." He said a "sensible, conservative, scientifically proven approach would be to keep each site at 12 units or less." He argued that larger projects—like some Denver projects ranging from 53 to 164 units, which he examined in a HUD-sponsored study—have been found to be associated with "a statistically significant increase in criminal nuisance police reports."

On its website, NIABY contends, "The current City of Vancouver policy of expansion and dispersion of large supportive housing (30 to 100 plus apartments) into residential neighbourhoods for the mentally ill drug addicts and drug addicts means that neighbourhood harm is likely to occur in host neighbourhoods."

In a Sept. 17, 2008, letter to the mayor and City Council of Vancouver, Dr. Galster, author of a 2003 book, Why NOT in My Back Yard?, said his work "has shown that various types of assisted housing need not have adverse consequences on the nearby neighborhood, but only if it is not done at too large a scale, with too large a concentration of assisted residents." He expressed concern that "supportive and social housing developments of between 51 and 147 units" that were planned in Vancouver would amount to too heavy a concentration.

Information on Vancouver's policy as of 2008 is available here.

Galster is author of "The Impact of Supportive Housing On Neighbourhood Crime Rates" in the  Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 24, No 3 (2002).