We spoke up - Council listened

Richmond Citizens’ Association candidates were in council chambers, correcting misinformation and warning councillors of the consequences of closing Aster Place.

Council voted Monday (July 20) to keep the supportive housing facility open after hearing from RCA candidates Tamás Revóczi, Alton Cheung, Keefer Pelech and Milly Yee as well as from experts and Richmond citizens.

“The modular housing units were always meant as temporary housing for residents before they moved on to permanent homes. But as a community, we have failed to create those permanent options,” Pelech told council at the July 20 public hearing. “If we are concerned about having an unhoused population in Richmond, we should be doing everything we can to address it by providing more supports to vulnerable residents, not by removing the ones we already have in place.” 

Pelech, part of an RCA team that met with Aster Place residents and staff, said the residents there have the same concerns as everyone else when it comes to being safe at their homes and having a community free from litter.

Aster Place not only keeps vulnerable people off of Richmond streets but also connects them with vital services like daily meals, job training and mental health services. To close Aster Place would add 40 more people with complex needs to Richmond’s streets with nowhere else to go.

Revóczi said during his visit to Aster Place he learned many residents have cars, have stable jobs and the majority are not in recovery from substance abuse. Revóczi also met with neighbours who live in the area and they told him their concerns with crime in the area.

Based on what he saw, Revóczi does not believe Aster Place is the source of the problems for the area.

“I haven’t seen any issues with Aster Place, by all reports that I’ve heard, and by everything I’ve seen, it’s a well-run facility,” he said. “At the same time, I think we need to study the situation in that area to really understand all the other issues going on that aren't connected to Aster Place.”

“There seems to be a lot of "smoke" around this topic, but where’s the fire? I know that smoke makes one want to panic, but Aster Place is not the source of the fire... or the smoke! I urge everyone to fight the Fear and keep their minds, eyes, ears and hearts open and approach this matter with Hope and Courage.”

While other speakers tried to fearmonger at council, their voices were overshadowed by facts presented by RCA and those who work with vulnerable people in the city. Many of the issues raised by those bad-faith actors aren’t from Aster Place but are, in fact, due to a lack of available housing and support systems.

“Thoughtful leadership requires us to look at the evidence, consider the consequences and choose solutions that improve outcomes for everyone. That brings me to one important question: if the permit isn’t renewed where will the residents of Aster Place go?” Yee asked council, noting they’d lose their homes. 

“Displacement is not the solution. It doesn’t solve the problem. Taking down one site does not make homelessness, addiction or mental health challenges disappear, it only makes those problems more visible in our community.” 

She added people want to see less homelessness and less drug use in Richmond, the only way to accomplish that is for places like Aster Place to exist.

Cheung noted that having a facility like Aster Place allows service providers a single point of contact to meet with people and address their needs.

“If we want our city to do better, we must first do no harm to it,” Cheung told council, saying it would be objectively worse to close Aster Place. “Instead of putting roofs over people's heads, you would be creating more homelessness. Instead of a contained situation, you would in return get an uncontained situation.”

Richmond was recently in the news for all the wrong reasons after failures on housing policy led to a 76-year-old living in Brighouse Park as he had no other options. Richmond needs to make sure all of our most vulnerable people have a roof over their head and the support they need, whether they’re seniors, suffering from mental health conditions or just can’t afford a home in our extremely expensive city.

RCA does have one concern regarding Aster Place: residents have nowhere to go after they’re ready to move on to permanent housing. While some have railed against how few people have left Aster Place, claiming the supports aren’t working, RCA candidates know that the only reason those residents aren’t in long-term housing is because of how expensive it is.

The residents of Aster Place are our neighbours, they’re Richmondites and they deserve a place to live.

Some bad-faith political actors talk a big game about cleaning up our streets but shutting down housing like Aster Place will do anything but that. On Oct. 17, vote RCA to make Richmond a safer place to live.