Go Fish or Go Home.

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish at the neighbourhood swimming pool, and he just won't get it. Two days after Canadians voted for a Conservative national child care program that isn't a program, or national, Vancouverites are finding out that the Campbell Liberals are taking the same approach with social housing.

In the worst case of "Can't someone else do it?" since Homer Simpson ran for Springfield Sanitation Commissioner, the BC Government is moving away from building social housing and towards subsidies for slum landlords. Just like it makes no sense to give parents money for child care spaces that don't exist, it doesn't make sense to subsidize rental housing in a rental market of 1.4% vacancy and falling.

This news also comes just a few days after Vancouver's right-wing NPA City Council voted to reduce the social housing portion of the South False Creek Development from a third to 20% of the units to be built. This page assumes that even after last year's dramatic NDP comeback in the provincial election, there should still be enough Liberal MLAs around who can rub a clue or two together as to how much it costs to live in this city.

Where could low-income families take a subsidy for a roof over their heads? Certainly not in the condo-crazy Downtown or West side neighbourhoods where Liberal MLAs and their supporters reside. Victoria's support for social housing was the dealmaker for Vancouver City Council to back the 2010 Olympic bid. This time around, the Liberals and the NPA are looking to break that commitment and tell Vancouver's homeless to "Go Fish".