Vancouver emergency services strained by SRO and supportive housing calls: statistics

Between 2019 and 2023, a five-year span, five affordable housing properties within downtown Vancouver, classified as single-room occupancy (SRO) or supportive housing, collectively generated an astounding 30,904 calls for policing services.

This equates to an average of approximately 6,180 calls per property over the entire period, Daily Hive Urbanized reports exclusively.

In 2023 alone, these five properties accounted for a total of 5,888 calls, averaging 16 emergency policing calls each day.

The relentless demand on emergency services diverts vital resources away from the broader community, potentially delaying response times elsewhere in Vancouver.

Such delays can have serious repercussions, increasing the risk to lives and compromising the overall safety of residents.

As these challenges mount, it becomes increasingly clear that addressing the issues within SROs and supportive housing is crucial not only for those living in these facilities but for the well-being of the entire community.

These figures were generated by Daily Hive Urbanized filing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) this past summer, seeking statistics related to calls and incidents at a select number of properties known to experience a high degree of operational issues.

The properties examined include the 150-unit Hotel Canada SRO (518 Richards Street), the 105-unit Murray Hotel SRO (1119 Hornby Street), and The Metson Rooms & Shelter (1060 Howe Street), which has 100 self-contained supportive housing units and 40 shelter spaces.

The remaining two properties were previously tourist hotels until 2020 when the provincial government acquired them as a pandemic-time emergency measure to rapidly generate more supportive housing. These are the former 110-unit Howard Johnson hotel (1176 Granville Street) and the former 80-unit Ramada Inn hotel (435 West Pender Street), which have seen each of their hotel rooms converted into single-occupancy supportive housing.

These figures represent calls and incidents situated on the immediate street frontage of the property.

More than one call for service every four hours

For the highly controversial Howard Johnston property, the data shows a 118% jump in the total number of calls for service over the five-year period, growing from 733 in 2019 to 1,596 in 2023.

There was a 525% surge in weapons calls at the Howard Johnston over five years, rising from one such call about every 46 days in 2019 (eight per year) to one per seven days in 2023 (50 per year). During the intervening years, the number of weapons calls per year reached 25 in 2020, 41 in 2021, and 34 in 2022. Based on the most recent data for the current year, there have already been 24 weapons calls over the first eight months of 2024.

Overall, the total number of calls to The Metson Rooms peaked at 1,684 in 2023 — up by 65% compared to 1,021 in 2019.

For the combined total calls for service at the Howard Johnston and The Metson Rooms throughout 2023, the combined average reached nine calls per day — 1.5 calls every four hours on average — based on the combined annual tally of 3,280 calls. To say the least, this frequency of calls to just these two properties consumes an enormous amount of policing resources.

The number of weapons calls at The Metson Rooms also saw a notable 174% increase from 19 calls to 52 calls in 2023. Already, over the first eight months of 2024, 25 weapons calls have been recorded.

The Ramada Inn experienced a 64% increase in the total number of calls from 484 in 2019 to 793 in 2023. With 731 calls already recorded over the first eight months of 2024, the Ramada Inn is on track to far exceed each annual total over the past five years.

Ramada Inn’s weapons call count reached 37 in 2023, up from 13 in 2019, representing a 185% increase. As of the end of August, this property had recorded 18 such calls already in 2024.

There is also a concerning rising trend in the volume of urgent response calls to such properties. The VPD defines a Priority 1 call as one that “requires urgent attention, life-threatening” and Priority 2 as “requires immediate attention, serious, may not be life-threatening.”

Priority 1 calls to the VPD at the Howard Johnston have increased by 78% over the same period from 73 calls in 2019 to 130 calls in 2023, while Priority 2 calls have doubled from 171 in 2019 to 342 in 2023. So far in 2024, over the first eight months of the year, the VPD has already recorded 72 Priority 1 calls and 184 Priority 2 calls.

The volume of Priority 1 calls to The Metson Rooms more than doubled from 74 in 2019 to 153 in 2023. When Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls are combined, this represents an increase of 76% from 290 to 511 calls over the same period to this single property.

Over the first eight months of 2024, there have been 212 Priority 2 calls to The Metson Rooms — comparable to the annual totals of 2019, 2020, and 2021. There were 275 such calls to this property in 2022 and 358 in 2023.

Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls to the Ramada Inn were also notable, rising by 68% from 189 in 2019 to 317 in 2023, which includes a 74% increase in Priority 1 calls to 85 and a 66% increase in Priority 2 calls to 232.

This relentless volume of Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls not only strains emergency resources, but also underscores the ongoing crisis faced by residents of these facilities.

One weapons call every 1.68 days

As well, the sharp rise in weapons calls is particularly troubling. Such potentially life-threatening situations involving weapons have more than doubled in frequency among the analyzed properties, escalating from one call every 3.4 days in 2019 to one every 1.68 days in 2023. This distressing trend highlights the urgent need for comprehensive interventions to address the challenges confronting both residents and emergency services.

Even locations that exhibit decreases in calls and incidents continue to record alarmingly high rates.

For example, despite a decreasing overall call trend for Hotel Canada, 74 Priority 1 calls filed by the VPD in 2023 are still sourced to this SRO property, representing one potentially life-threatening emergency every five days. When it comes to Priority 2 calls, there was, on average, one such call to Hotel Canada every day in 2023.

Calls to Murray Hotel have also been on a five-year declining trend from 1026 to 889, but an increasing trend is apparent in more recent years, rising from 799 in 2022 to 889 in 2023 and 814 as of the first eight months of 2024. Urgent calls at Murray Hotel are also elevated, with 74 Priority 1 calls in 2023 and 53 over the first eight months of 2024, and 222 Priority calls in 2023 and 138 so far in 2024.

The persistently high figures at these analyzed properties highlight the chronic nature of the safety crisis within and near such housing buildings, suggesting that while current interventions may have yielded some positive impact, they remain far inadequate to tackle the full scale and severity of the challenges at hand.

This has had second-order impacts on the surrounding residential neighbourhoods and retail/business districts, with increased crime and disorder rippling out from such facilities. This is concerning for residents, especially families with children, who are unknowingly at significant risk by being in proximity.

Even supportive services are struggling with violence and public disorder. Daily Hive Urbanized’s FOI also produced VPD data on the City-operated Gathering Place Community Centre (609 Helmcken Street), which serves as a community, food, and social service hub for individuals experiencing homelessness and other low-income people and doubles as a homeless shelter.

Gathering Place is also immediately adjacent to the New Continental Apartments senior social housing building. From spring 2021 to early 2022, Vancouver Coastal Health’s highly controversial Thomus Donaghy Overdose Prevention Site (more commonly, if informally, referred to as the Yaletown OPS) was located just across the street. In April 2024, this OPS was relocated to the rooftop of the two-storey rear parkade of The Metson Rooms, fronting the laneway.

Over the full five-year period, Gathering Place’s calls for service have generally been on a downward trend, falling by 16% in 2023 from 1,642 in 2019. However, a more recent upward trend is apparent, with 1,279 calls recorded in 2022, 1,411 calls recorded in 2023, and 1,216 calls already logged in the first eight months of 2024.

This upward trend at Gathering Place is also reflected in weapons calls, with such potentially life-threatening calls nearly doubling from 22 in 2019 to 41 in 2023. The number of such calls over the first eight months of 2024 is already at par with the entire annual total for 2022.

In 2023, there were 107 Priority 1 calls to Gathering Place, an average of one such urgent call about every three days, while Priority 2 calls totalled 302, an average of nearly one every day. Over the first eight months of 2024, the VPD recorded 50 Priority 1 calls and 172 Priority 2 calls to this location.

It remains to be seen what kind of full impact the on-site co-location of the OPS with The Metson Rooms could have, but this location has already recorded 1,230 calls over the first eight months of 2024. The number of calls to The Metson Rooms in 2024 has already exceeded the annual totals from 2019 to 2022, and it is on pace to reach and exceed the five-year high of 1,684 logged in 2023.

67 times higher risk of fire in SROs

Another significant strain on municipal emergency services revolves around fire rescue.

In particular, when it comes to broader public safety concerns, the extreme fire risk present in such housing buildings, especially in older SRO buildings, compounds these challenges.

City-wide statistics previously released by the municipal government show a concerning increasing trend of SRO building fires, reaching a high of 191 incidents — or an average of about one incident every two days — in 2023, up from 127 incidents in 2022, 147 in 2021, 110 in 2020, and 85 in 2019.

SRO residents are confronted with a staggering 67 times higher likelihood of experiencing a fire in their residential building compared to those in other residential settings.

The rate of fires among SRO residents in 2023 reached 22.5 per 1,000 individuals, representing a 125% increase in fire incidents over the five-year period.

Other sets of data previous shared by Vancouver Fire Rescue Services shows firefighters responded to a total of 1,164 structure fires in SROs over a seven-year period between 2016 and 2022, with the numbers increasing during the pandemic.

For the first three years of the mental health and opioid overdose crisis, the number of fires hovered consistently at slightly over 100 incidents annually. This spiked to 169 incidents in 2019, 202 in 2020, 254 in 2021, and 223 in 2022.

Of these fire incidents in SROs, 70% were the result of “smoking materials” and the mishandling of lighters, candles, and matches, while 5% were electrical and battery-related, and 9% were kitchen related.

Currently, within just the City of Vancouver and concentrated in and around the downtown Vancouver peninsula, there are approximately 7,000 SRO units in roughly 160 buildings, which does not include permanent supportive housing and temporary modular structures used as supportive housing.

Vancouver is witnessing a rapidly escalating fire safety crisis, characterized by an unprecedented level of risk that resembles living in a constant fire hazard zone — an alarming reality unmatched in any other residential category.

Even under conditions labelled as “improved,” SROs and supportive housing continue to pose an unacceptably high level of risk and demand for both policing and fire rescue emergency services. This ongoing situation reflects deeper systemic issues that have yet to be adequately addressed, revealing the fragility of the improvements made thus far.

The troubling reality of persistent emergencies highlights not only the vulnerability of residents but also the strain placed on emergency responders tasked with managing these crises. This relentless demand for services calls into question the practicality of current measures and operations in these settings.

Consequently, it becomes increasingly clear that there is an urgent need for immediate and comprehensive interventions aimed at addressing the root causes of these challenges. Such actions are essential to ensure the safety and well-being of residents and to alleviate the pressure on emergency services, which are stretched thin in their efforts to respond effectively.

Without decisive action, the cycle of risk and demand will continue, perpetuating a cycle of crisis that affects the entire community.

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