Vancouver rent bank program: decision on future tonight

Vancouver city council will decide tonight whether to invest another $100,000 on a pilot project that helps people facing imminent eviction from their homes.

It's called theVancouver Rent Bank, and it allows residents toapply for aone-time, interest-free loan to pay a landlord, creditor, or utility company.

• 'Rent bank' planned for Vancouver
• Are Canadians dangerously in debt thanks to expensive housing and cheap credit?

"It's fairly obvious common sense that preventing people from becoming homeless is a huge savings in terms of all of the supports that are required," said Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson.

"It is very expensive to shelter people and dealing with the free fall that often happens to people once they are on the street. Prevention is obviously the more affordable way to go and more humane to enable to people to stay in their homes."

Early in the project, The City of Vancouver gave $150,000 to the Network of Inner City Community Services Society, which operates the bank.

According to a new report commissioned by the City of Vancouver, the rent bank has issued 264loans over the past three years. As of August 2014, the bank has issued $200,000 in loans and$82,000 has been paid back.

"It obviously doesn't perform as well as your average loan repayments related to housing given the financial constraints that most people in these dire straights are facing," said Robertson. "But they are still recovering significant dollars ... it's not exactly like a bank and you can't expect people to repay at that rate."

"Having some grace period I think is important, particularly when most of these people have faced very unexpected crises in their life."

The rent bank is a success, but only a band-aid solution, Robertson said, and he called for the provincial and federal governments to do more.

"They've walked away from their responsibilities to fund housing and that's created a crisis in cities across Canada and certainly here in B.C.," said Robertson. "That's a much bigger problem beyond the city's capacity to solve."

To hear the full interview, listen to the interview labelled Mayor Robertson on rent bank