Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is often called Canada’s poorest neighbourhood, and it’s also a hub of supportive housing and social services.

To Mayor Ken Sim’s eyes, the concentration of supportive housing and services here represents a “poverty industrial complex” that actually contributes to the neighbourhood’s problems.

At a glance, that might seem credible, given that the poverty here is so enduring, but a moment’s reflection will show that his solution—to pause net new social housing and disperse social services—would be a disaster.

A group of Order of Canada recipients has recently pointed out that spreading services apart is very inefficient for the people who have to access those services.

“Imagine being homeless and having to carry your belongings across the city to get to a doctor appointment, or to get a desperately needed free meal,” they wrote in The........

© Georgia Straight