The ThunderBlogs

While apartments and townhouses are in the process of being built, homeless individuals in the area of Marpole struggle to find a place of refuge.

“Rezoning Application”, said a glaring yellow sign stood in front of the large Safeway parking lot on Granville Street. At 3pm in the afternoon on Saturday, September 11th, a homeless man in a black hoodie laid underneath this bright-coloured board. He glanced up briefly to look at others passing by or reading the sign, and then quickly went back to sleep.

The Marpole Safeway is a locus for activity. It is the only large chain grocery store in the area. Families shop here for groceries. The homeless often beg for change in front of its entrance and hang out in the parking lot.

According to the sign, there are plans for the Marpole Safeway to be re-developed. This project is being conducted by the City of Vancouver Planning Department Rezoning Centre. According to the website displayed on the sign, this project involves “redevelop[ing] the site with four major building elements which includes replacement of the Safeway grocery store on Granville Street, a 24-storey rental tower, a 14 storey market condominium tower, and a 9-storey slab building consisting of townhouses at street level and condominium units above.” This project is considered under the Short Term Incentives for Rental Program, which responds to low vacancy rates and the lack of new purpose-built rental housing.

A few months ago, the ATM machines inside the Bank of Montreal branch at Granville Street and 67th Avenue were removed and replaced by a machine outside the building. A customer service representative said that there was a problem with homeless people sleeping inside the bank in front of the machines, and customers could not get access them.

Laura Poon, Manager of Customer Service at the HSBC branch a block away, said that they do sometimes discover homeless people sleeping inside the bank in front of the ATM, especially when the weather is cold.

Rick Hofs, the homeless man on 70th and Granville said there had been trouble in the past with the Royal Bank branch in the neighbourhood, as “guys from downtown” would sleep in there. An employee inside this branch, Stephanie Merinuk, said this problem happened a few years ago, and they no longer had this problem.

Hofs said he usually sleeps behind the stores on Granville Street in his blue sleeping bag.