Vancouver mayor calls for 100 involuntary care beds as premier weighs court ruling | Daily Hive

Vancouver mayor calls for 100 involuntary care beds as B.C. premier weighs response to court ruling

Ken Sim (left) and David Eby (right). (Government of B.C.)

With just over two months to go before the October 2026 civic election, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is escalating his pressure on the BC NDP-led provincial government to establish involuntary mental health care capacity within Vancouver, calling for at least 100 new beds as the provincial government simultaneously faces a major court ruling over how involuntary psychiatric patients can be admitted and treated.

In a letter on Wednesday, Aug. 6, to Premier David Eby and key provincial cabinet ministers, Mayor Sim urged the provincial government to immediately commit resources for meaningful new involuntary care bed capacity in the city.

“I am calling on you and your government to take meaningful steps by placing 100 new involuntary care beds in Vancouver now. We don’t need another study. We don’t need another plan. We need meaningful action now. We need everyone, including you, to stand up for Vancouver and take action now,” said the mayor of Vancouver.

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Sim argued that Vancouver continues to experience a disproportionate share of B.C.’s street disorder, severe mental health challenges, and addiction crisis, while the provincial government’s recent expansion of specialized involuntary care has been physically located elsewhere.

The mayor pointed back to the provincial government’s high-profile announcement of an expansion of secure involuntary care nearly two years ago, which Eby made alongside Sim at Vancouver City Hall.

Since then, 18 long-term involuntary care beds have opened at Alouette Homes in Maple Ridge, while 10 mental health beds were created at the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre for people in provincial custody. Last month, the provincial government also announced another 132 beds through planned facilities in Prince George and Surrey — 72 beds in Prince George and 60 beds in Surrey. Those two facilities — created through a forthcoming retrofit of existing secure rehabilitation and corrections facilities — are expected to gradually open in phases between late 2027 and 2028. The provincial government notes that more than 2,000 existing mental health beds across B.C. can already be used for people admitted involuntarily under the B.C. Mental Health Act.

None of those newly announced facilities is physically located in Vancouver, which has been a recurring point of criticism from Sim. This was the second letter Sim sent to provincial leaders in recent weeks, with the first letter being a reaction to that previous announcement for facilities in Prince George and Surrey, instead of within Vancouver.

However, at least some of the capacity outside the city is partly connected to Vancouver’s healthcare system, with some of those facilities taking patients from the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) system.

In his letter, Sim also accused the provincial government of leaving Vancouver with an outsized share of supportive housing and the costs associated with responding to street disorder. He pointed to City spending on police, fire services, street cleaning, mental health workers, the Granville Pedestrian Zone, and the Downtown Eastside Taskforce Barrage, while claiming Vancouver’s municipal government incurs roughly $100 million annually in costs related to street disorder and harm reduction that fall outside municipal jurisdiction.

“What we are seeing on the streets of Vancouver is not compassionate. Leaving people in severe mental distress, deep addiction, and repeated crises to cycle between the street, emergency rooms, and brief interventions is not care. It is a system failure,” wrote Sim in this week’s letter.

Not enough trained staff to open mental health facilities more quickly, says Eby

During an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, when asked by media why the provincial government was not doing more for people with serious mental health challenges, Premier Eby reiterated the creation of the new facilities in Prince George and Surrey, mental health beds within provincial corrections facilities, community treatment teams, and ongoing work specific to the Downtown Eastside.

He acknowledged that the rollout has been slower than he would like.

“I understand that people want this to happen faster. I want it to happen faster too,” said Eby.

One of the largest barriers to opening more mental health treatment facilities, he added, is finding enough trained healthcare professionals to staff them.

“One of the big challenges we face in opening these facilities is that the trained staff, just like any medical response that we face right now, the shortage of medical staff,” said the premier, before suggesting that the newly opened medical school at the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University will also create a class of 50 people focused on community care.

Moreover, provincial health authorities are also working on recruiting trained American healthcare workers.

Recent court ruling on how people can be involuntarily admitted

The debate is also unfolding after the consequential Supreme Court of British Columbia ruling in late July on involuntary psychiatric treatment.

Importantly, contrary to some other reports and social media discourse, it should be strongly emphasized that the court did not rule that involuntary psychiatric admission or detention itself is unconstitutional. People who meet the criteria under the Mental Health Act can still be involuntarily admitted.

Instead, the ruling dealt with what can happen after a person is involuntarily admitted. The court found B.C.’s broad system for imposing psychiatric treatment unconstitutional because treatment could be authorized without first determining whether an individual patient was capable of making their own treatment decisions.

The challenge had specifically targeted B.C.’s approach of tying involuntary status to the loss of normal consent rights for psychiatric treatment.

The declaration of unconstitutionality was suspended for six months, giving the provincial government time to respond.

Asked about the decision Wednesday, Eby said the Mental Health Act predates his administration and acknowledged that it requires modernization. But he maintained that the provincial government still needs legal tools allowing healthcare providers to intervene when people experiencing severe mental illness are unable to obtain necessary treatment themselves.

“We’ll work with experts in this area, and we’ll ensure within the six months that we have, that we’ve either appealed or we’ve brought forward amendments to the Mental Health Act to respond to the court decision,” said the premier.

Vancouver Liberals party leader and mayoral candidate Kareem Allam, one of Sim’s opponents in the upcoming civic election, took a sharply different position in response to the mayor’s letter.

“The B.C. Supreme Court just ruled B.C.’s blanket forced treatment regime unconstitutional. It also doesn’t work,” Allam said in a statement Wednesday.

Rather than prioritizing another 100 involuntary beds, Allam called for more voluntary treatment capacity, stabilization and treatment beds, and integrated response teams.

“Before Ken demands unconstitutional involuntary capacity, we need to fund the voluntary capacity. There are people in this city trying to get into treatment today who can’t. That is a policy choice,” said Allam.

Remaining SROs on Granville Strip

In his letter this week, Mayor Sim also criticized the provincial government over the pace of relocating all residents from old single-room occupancy (SRO) and supportive housing buildings in the Granville Entertainment District in Downtown Vancouver.

Eby said the provincial government, BC Housing, and City of Vancouver have been working to fully close the Lugaat supportive housing building — the former Howard Johnson hotel at 1176 Granville St. — and relocate its remaining residents. The closure was previously targeted for no later than the end of June 2026.

“The last update I had, I think there was one tenant left in that building,” said Eby.

“This was an SRO. This was a residential hotel where people were taken from an encampment and put directly into the hotel as a response. It did not work.”

Eby said the goal is to move residents into locations where they can receive greater support, adding that such relocations cannot occur immediately. He said that, to the best of his knowledge, the work was progressing well.

Sim has also butted heads with the provincial government over VCH’s planned overdose prevention site (OPS) facility at 900 Helmcken St., which is located immediately across the street from the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel — B.C.’s largest hotel — and near the Granville Entertainment District. This would be the fourth location of an OPS that was at one point located near Yaletown, informally referred to as the Yaletown OPS.

This facility next to the Sheraton hotel was previously expected to open as early as just before or during the FIFA World Cup. However, following fierce backlash from local businesses and residents, VCH and the provincial government paused plans to open the OPS at this location. Some businesses and residents remain concerned that the facility could still open after the October civic election, depending on who wins.

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