An outspoken critic of the Vancouver Winter Olympics has sounded the alarm about the loss of low-cost housing in the city.

Kim Kerr's warning came Monday, the same day the Olympic organizing committee officially began its three-year countdown to the 2010 Games.

Kerr, of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, said the Olympics is squeezing low-cost housing in his neighbourhood, Canada's poorest postal code.

Seventeen run-down, single-room-occupancy hotel buildings (SROs) in the district have been sold in the past year, he pointed out, and several others are about to be auctioned off in preparation for the Games.

People are being thrown out of their accommodations because developers can make more money turning the SROs into expensive condos on what is prime city real estate, Kerr said.  As the pace of redevelopment picks up, he added, homelessness is becoming increasingly severe.

"This is oceanfront property, and obviously this is seen as ripe for development," Kerr said. "What we maintain is that the Olympics puts a timetable on this."

However, Linda Coady, the vice president of sustainability with the Olympic organizing committee, said the province and the city are creating new social housing units as promised in the original bid to the International Olympic Committee.

Private-sector money needed

She said it's necessary to attract private-sector money to build needed social housing, and the Olympics will help that happen.

"We've got a lot of corporate sponsors that are going to be spending a lot of money in Vancouver, and it's the profile and the spotlight," she said.

A report released last September by the Pivot Legal Society warned that the number of homeless people in Vancouver could triple by 2010 unless the government took action.

The legal advocacy group called on the city to stop further SRO conversions, and urged all levels of government work together to build 800 social housing units annually for the next four years.