BC Housing CEO Shane Ramsey has announced his retirement, saying he no longer has the confidence he can solve the complex problems facing the agency. The Canadian Press
The man who led B.C.’s housing agency for 22 years is resigning, saying several recent incidents of violence against homeless people, as well as an increasingly threatening environment for politicians, have made him question whether he can continue to propose solutions.
In a lengthy resignation statement, Shane Ramsay said the job of providing homes for those who need them most was at risk because “small but vocal groups of people are increasingly angry and increasingly volatile”. .
The career bureaucrat, appointed to the role of CEO of BC Housing in 2000 under the then-NDP government, said he became disheartened after seeing numerous incidents where homeless people were attacked or vilified by people who didn’t want them living nearby.
“While one community faces the almost certain prospect of poverty, ill health, violence and premature death, others are now unwilling to provide a welcoming space, a space that can save lives,” said Mr Ramsey, who has lived in the center of the city The very Eastside for 12 years. He also said he was upset about a recent incident in which police shot and killed a man at a homeless encampment in Vancouver.
“I no longer have confidence that I can resolve the complex issues we face at BC Housing.”
His resignation, effective Sept. 6, comes just over a month after a provincial government review outlined several problems at the agency, including a lack of criteria or documentation for why some nonprofits in some programs are awarded contracts.
Last week, Mr Ramsay faced a group of angry Kitsilano residents over his presentation to the city council on a social housing project in the area. They were angry at him for denouncing NIMBYs and misinformation while he was begging the council to approve the project. (It was eventually approved, with conditions, by an 8-3 vote.)
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In his statement, Mr Ramsay cited the collision as one of the recent embarrassing events that tipped the scales for him.
“The city’s security services have since said that after reviewing the video they believe the swarming and threatened strike constituted an assault,” he wrote. “This time it was angry words and a fist, next time it could be worse.”
Mr Ramsey said in his statement that he was watching with increasing concern the violence being perpetrated against homeless people. He said “something changed” for him in May as he watched police converge on a downtown Eastside park where a man lay fatally stabbed, an incident that happened just minutes after Mr. Ramsey left the area. while walking his dog.
In the past week, he noted, people who were homeless and formerly homeless died during a six-hour killing spree in suburban Langley, British Columbia. In another incident, a woman was deliberately set on fire just a block from where Mr Ramsay lives.
“These incidents are not isolated, nor are they the only incidents that have kept me awake at night,” Mr Ramsey wrote.
Still, his resignation came as a surprise to some and drew praise for his work from former Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation CEO Evan Siddall, many in BC’s not-for-profit housing sector, an occasional resident of BC Housing and current and former politicians.
“His influence cannot be overstated and I want to thank him for his tireless advocacy,” said Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart, who said thousands of people in British Columbia have been given safe homes thanks to Mr. Ramsey.
Mr Ramsey’s impending departure has also raised concerns about where the agency will go now.
“Shane has become the most successful housing executive in the country,” said Tom Armstrong, chief executive of the British Columbia Co-operative Housing Federation for almost the same period as Mr. Ramsey. “He has done more on housing outcomes than anyone else. I always thought of him as a housing activist in bureaucratic clothes. This is truly an important day – it will change the reality of how housing is built in British Columbia.”
Mr. Armstrong said he now worries the province will put someone in charge of the agency who is only concerned with budget efficiency.
“And if the place is going to be run by accountants, they have no chance of achieving their results.”
Others welcomed the news, saying Mr Ramsey and his agency had come down hard on neighbors who had raised legitimate concerns about social housing being built near them.
BC Housing has come under public scrutiny recently as the NDP government has embarked on an aggressive mission to build massive amounts of new affordable housing and address visible homelessness in many communities.
This has led to clashes between the province and local residents in many communities, from Grand Forks, Penticton and Maple Ridge to the recently upscale Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver.
In addition, some NDP politicians and government bureaucrats have raised concerns about how BC Housing is managing a huge expansion in its mandate and budget, which grew from $785 million in 2017-18 to $2.247 billion in 2022-23.
A provincial review by the accounting firm Ernst & Young identified a number of problems at the agency, some as subtle as having inadequate information technology systems, others more serious, including contracts that were signed with various for-profit housing groups where there was no documentation of how and why decisions were made.
Shortly after that review was published, then-Housing Minister David Eby announced he was replacing the entire board of BC Housing. The replacements were largely former deputy ministers and bureaucrats with financial experience, compared to the previous board appointed by the NDP’s Selina Robinson, who had more experience in housing advocacy.
The agency has seen many resignations of senior managers over the past few years, some frustrated by increased scrutiny of their work by the Treasury Board, which has made it more difficult to make real estate purchases. Others were frustrated by internal tensions.
Mr. Armstrong acknowledged that Mr. Ramsay “really ran a program of equity and inclusion” and that made some people at the agency uncomfortable.
After the NDP formed government in 2017, BC Housing was mandated to build 29,000 of the 114,000 “affordable” homes over the next decade that were promised in the campaign.
In recent years, Mr. Ramsay’s team has awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
BC Housing also launched an aggressive campaign during the pandemic to buy hotels and motels to house homeless people — something that drew backlash in some communities.
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