Low-income Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents can afford to live in only 12% of the 3,500 privately owned hotel rooms in their community. That’s the conclusion of this Carnegie Community Action Project third annual report on the housing situation for low-income people in the DTES. Escalating rents in DTES hotels are undermining efforts to reduce homelessness and prevent displacement of low-income people. Because the DTES has about 10,000 residents who can afford no more than $375 a month for rent, as well as about 700 homeless people, it is crucial that Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms, the last stop before homelessness, stay open and affordable until replacement housing is built. In 2010, however, CCAP found that 67 affordable rooms closed and the number of rooms in hotels that rent all their rooms for $375 or less fell by 415. Only 12% of the privately owned rooms surveyed by CCAP are now affordable to DTES residents on income assistance, disability and basic pension. Even though 2010 was a really good year for newly built units and provincially owned hotel rooms opening up, the number of newly affordable units was 112 less than the number of closed hotels plus hotel rooms lost to rent increases above $375. It’s not surprising that the City found a 12% increase in homelessness from 2008 when it counted homeless people in March 2010. And it’s not surprising that many DTES residents have to do survival work like binning, selling things on the street, panhandling and sex work to get by each month because rent takes a huge part of their total income.