Surrey announces plan to tackle homelessness in the city

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The city laid out its “Homelessness Prevention and Response Plan” in a press release, targeting the growth in Surrey’s unhoused population, which has seen a 65 per cent increase since 2020. 

“A functional end to homelessness doesn’t mean that nobody ever experiences homelessness, but what it means is when somebody does experience homelessness, it’s no longer recurring or long lasting,” says Christa Brown, city lead for the project and non-market housing and homelessness services manager for the City of Surrey.

The plan has seven goals — to increase non-market housing, build culturally safe housing supports for Indigenous Peoples, diversify non-market supportive and affordable rental housing, ensure efficacy of emergency response solutions, encourage prevention-driven solutions, improve access to health and support services, and for the city to understand the scale and complexity of what the community needs. 

“One of the pieces is improving the number so less people are living in the shelter system or less people are unhoused,” Brown says. “The other piece of the puzzle is really trying to make sure that people who may be in precarious housing situations don’t lose their housing.” 

The goals to achieve their target have been broken down into 19 objectives and 60 action items to be rolled out over a five-year period. The city has also divided the actions into four different sections, Brown adds. 

Some of the goals are focused on processes at the city, while others are focused on partnerships. Additionally, there are policy actions which can be achieved at the city level and support or advocacy actions in areas where the city does not have direct jurisdiction. 

“No one level of government can tackle homelessness on their own. There really needs to be cooperation between all three levels of government and First Nations governments as well,” Brown says. “We also very much need to be in partnership with those in the non-profit world who are the ones who really take a lot of the actions.” 

One of the first actions on the docket is to address the non-market housing supply, which is housing that is subsidized and intended for low-to-moderate income individuals and families. 

Brown says the city plans to expedite non-market housing projects quickly through the approvals process, so construction can begin much sooner than it would otherwise. The city has already begun providing waivers of development cost charges for non-market rental projects to increase their financial viability, she says. 

“It’s a very sound approach in terms of the kind of recognition of what the city can realistically do,” says John Rose, a geography and the environment instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University with a particular interest in housing and homelessness. 

Rose says he would have liked to see specific targets for increasing the non-market housing supply to not only provide for the current population but also the anticipated future population that might be unhoused. 

The report acknowledges demand has outpaced supply consistently since 2010, and the city is working to understand exactly what the needs of the community are. 

While Rose commends the city for its “refreshingly ambitious and extensive” plan, he says it is unlikely the city will reach the target of a “functional end to homelessness” over the next five-year period. 

“It sounds very cruel to say so, but I don’t believe that’s probably a goal that will be attained,” Rose says. “If the situation in the market is not going to be changing any time soon, then it’s probably not likely that we’re going to see the end of homelessness anytime soon either.”