Boarding Houses a Suburban Business
Any guy who can cook carnivore in his house may soon find amiable compadres
By 1970, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) still retained the essential character of a blue-collar enclave. The neighborhood was home to a largely male population of aging or retired workers from British Columbia’s resource-driven industries—logging, commercial fishing, mining, and millwork. These men, many of whom had spent decades working in remote camps or coastal ports, often returned to the city during the off-season or after retirement. There, they found a kind of stability and dignity in the neighborhood’s dense stock of low-cost, single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels—about 10,000 rooms at the time—most of which were privately owned, locally managed, and embedded in a walkable community with coffee shops, barbers, and inexpensive diners.
These modest accommodations formed a vital part of Vancouver’s informal housing safety net. They were not luxurious, but they were affordable, unbureaucratic, and sufficient to allow thousands of working-class men to age in place, often with informal community supports. The DTES was poor, but not destitute. It offered continuity, structure, and social cohesion to men otherwise at risk of loneliness, alcoholism, or institutionalization.
But the character of the neighborhood began to shift rapidly in the following decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, waves of deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients—discharged from provincial mental hospitals without adequate transitional housing or support—found their way to the Downtown Eastside, where SROs were often the only available shelter. Simultaneously, the area absorbed younger and more transient populations, including people facing systemic poverty, unemployment, and trauma.
As hard drugs—notably cocaine, crack, and later crystal meth—flooded the streets, the social cohesion of the neighborhood began to unravel. Property owners disinvested. Health crises, including HIV and hepatitis C outbreaks, emerged in tandem with an intensifying mental health and addiction crisis.
By 2005, the number of operational SRO units had dropped by half, to around 5,000. Many buildings were either shuttered, condemned, or converted to more profitable uses. The term "Downtown Eastside" had become a national shorthand for the brutal underside of urban life: a zone of visible suffering, where overlapping crises of drug addiction, homelessness, and untreated mental illness played out on public sidewalks.
Commentary on the Role of Regulations:
Ironically, well-intentioned regulations contributed to the unraveling of this informal but functional housing ecosystem. In response to deteriorating building conditions, fire hazards, and exploitative landlords, municipal and provincial governments imposed stricter building codes, licensing requirements, and safety standards for SRO operators. While these regulations aimed to improve tenant well-being, they also raised the cost and complexity of operating such buildings, making it economically unviable for many small landlords to continue.
In many cases, compliance required costly upgrades that could not be recouped through rent without pushing units out of reach for low-income tenants. Others simply chose to close their buildings, or sell to developers who redeveloped the sites for higher-end uses—often outside the reach of the populations most in need.
Meanwhile, zoning restrictions and land-use policies further constrained efforts to build replacement stock. Attempts to subsidize non-profit or government-run SROs often failed to match the agility or scale of the earlier private network, and became mired in planning delays, community opposition, and rising construction costs.
In this way, the decline of SROs illustrates how regulatory efforts, in the absence of systemic housing investment and wraparound social services, can paradoxically dismantle existing systems of support—without providing anything more effective to replace them.
Let me know if you'd like this adapted into a policy brief or editorial format.
You said:
Adapt this as a policy brief with the following provisions: hosts would be male and registered taxpayers, boarders anybody. This ensures security, and allows the host to evolve a business readily sold to a subsequent operator, thus offering a modest investment return to successful hosts.
ChatGPT said:
Here is your adapted policy brief formatted with a formal structure and your provisions integrated:
Policy Brief: Reviving Boarding Houses as a Housing and Mental Health Strategy in Urban Canada
Title: Private Male-Hosted Boarding Homes: A Scalable Response to Loneliness, Housing Insecurity, and Health System Strain
Background:
By 1970, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside was home to an estimated 10,000 single-room occupancy (SRO) units, primarily in privately run hotels. These modest accommodations formed the backbone of a functional housing ecosystem for retired workers from logging, fishing, and mining sectors—men who otherwise might have faced isolation or institutionalization. These communities, informal yet cohesive, provided low-cost shelter, basic meals, and companionship.
Over subsequent decades, this ecosystem was eroded by a confluence of factors: deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients without corresponding housing support, a sharp rise in hard drug use, and intrusive—but often well-meaning—regulations. By 2005, the number of viable SROs had dropped to 5,000. The Downtown Eastside became symbolic of Canadian urban poverty, addiction, and mental illness. The market-based model had been regulated out of existence without an effective replacement.
Problem:
Canada’s health system now bears a growing burden from male loneliness, mental illness, and caregiver burnout. Urban isolation and aging populations, particularly among low-income men, are contributing to increased emergency room visits, institutional admissions, and public healthcare costs. Yet cities lack a scalable, dignified, and sustainable alternative to solo tenancy or institutional care.
Proposal: A Return to Registered Male-Hosted Boarding Houses
This policy proposes the legal re-establishment of privately operated boarding houses, under the following conditions:
The host must be a registered male taxpayer (providing a base layer of stability, background accountability, and earned income).
Boarders may be of any background, gender, or need classification (seniors, students, psychiatric patients, veterans, or working-class individuals).
Meals, private rooms, and communal spaces are offered in exchange for moderate board fees.
Property ownership or lease rights are retained by the host, with the ability to sell the operation as a business, including licenses, renovations, and branding.
This model reintroduces the concept of small-scale social infrastructure—a "kitchen-table welfare"—which offers dignity, informal companionship, affordable housing, and minimal bureaucracy. Such homes provide critical semi-structured living environments for residents who are vulnerable but not fully institutional.
Benefits:
Reduced healthcare load by mitigating loneliness, addiction relapse, and housing precarity.
Micro-enterprise model allows for modest return on investment for responsible hosts.
Security and social order are reinforced by the host’s registered taxpayer status and daily presence.
Low capital threshold makes entry possible for middle-income homeowners and retirees.
Scalability and portability across provinces and regions.
Implementation Considerations:
Zoning adjustments to permit “boarding house” designation in select low-density residential zones.
Tax incentives or grants for initial compliance with safety codes, food handling, and accessibility.
Regulatory exemptions from high-density multi-unit codes for dwellings hosting fewer than 8 boarders.
Optional partnership with veterans’ organizations, social service agencies, or municipalities for referrals.
Conclusion:
Reinvigorating the private boarding house model—anchored by male hosts as community stewards—can deliver affordable housing, mental health support, and localized economic activity. By creating an investible and dignified alternative to institutional care or street homelessness, this policy realigns incentives for private citizens to contribute to public good, reviving a Canadian tradition of informal care in urban neighborhoods.
Let me know if you'd like a version suitable for a municipal housing department, Substack post, or news release.
You said:
Please provide a substack version of this as a post
ChatGPT said:
Here is a Substack-ready version of the policy brief, rewritten in an accessible, narrative tone while preserving the substance and call to action:
🛏️ A Modest Revival: How Boarding Houses Could Save Our Cities—and Our Sanity
By Dwight Gilbert Jones – humanism.substack.com
In 1970, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside was still home to a unique and quietly effective social structure: 10,000 privately run single-room occupancy units—known as SROs—many of them in old hotels or boarding houses. These weren’t glamorous, but they were dependable. They served retired loggers, fishermen, miners—mostly older men who had worked hard lives and now wanted nothing more than a warm room, a cooked meal, and some decent company around the card table.
These homes were not charities. They were dignified, low-overhead, market-driven shelters run by individuals who lived onsite and offered basic hospitality in exchange for rent. They stitched together a patchwork community that didn’t rely on government subsidies, health authorities, or surveillance. It was housing, yes—but it was also companionship, rhythm, and mutual respect.
Then came the perfect storm.
By the 1980s and 90s, psychiatric institutions were emptied without housing to catch their discharged patients. Cocaine, crack, and later crystal meth overtook the neighborhood. Health regulations meant to improve safety made SROs too expensive to maintain. By 2005, only 5,000 units remained, and the term “Downtown Eastside” had become synonymous with visible suffering: open drug use, untreated mental illness, and some of the highest HIV infection rates in North America.
What we lost wasn’t just buildings—it was a viable ecosystem of care that had evolved organically. And we’ve never replaced it.
🔧 The Proposal: Revive Private Boarding Houses, Hosted by Taxpaying Men
What if we took the best parts of that earlier system—dignity, affordability, stability—and made it viable again?
Here's the core idea:
Let private citizens operate small-scale boarding houses again. Let them do it legally, securely, and profitably. But build in the right incentives from the start:
The host must be a male registered taxpayer. This creates built-in accountability, stability, and trust. (Nothing against women—but this is a targeted response to an overwhelmingly male crisis: loneliness, isolation, and housing precarity among older men.)
Boarders can be anyone—students, veterans, seniors, people in recovery, or folks just down on their luck. No discrimination, no red tape.
Hosts provide private rooms, shared meals, and a communal table—just like the old days.
The operation becomes a salable business—a micro-enterprise that a host can pass on, giving real investment potential to those who run them well.
This is not a halfway house. It’s not a shelter. It’s a home, modestly monetized.
🩺 Why This Matters Now
Loneliness is killing us. Male suicide, caregiver burnout, and ER visits driven by housing instability are rising. Public health systems are overwhelmed—not by catastrophic disease, but by the slow-burning fallout of social disconnection. We need scalable solutions, and we need them now.
Private boarding houses, done right, could:
Relieve the housing crisis without billions in new construction
Lighten the burden on healthcare by catching people before they spiral
Offer modest income to hosts, giving aging homeowners a role in community care
Revive neighborhoods, with real people doing real caregiving around a dinner table
This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about rebuilding a functional social technology we once understood intuitively: the value of a shared meal, a closed door to sleep behind, and someone to say good morning.
🛠️ Next Steps
We need cities to:
Permit 6–8 boarders in residential homes under a new boarding house classification
Relax commercial-grade building codes for small, in-home operators
Incentivize startup hosts with grants or tax breaks for basic renovations
Let these homes be sold as going concerns—just like any other small business
🕯️ Closing Thought
We once had 10,000 rooms of refuge in one small part of one city. It worked. People remember it fondly—not because it was perfect, but because it was enough.
Let’s bring back something that works. Not for nostalgia’s sake, but because civilization begins at the dinner table.
—
Dwight Gilbert Jones
humanism.substack.com | Waypoint Project | DNA Stewardship for the Perennial Species