Mayor Sam Sullivan's effort to put in place a new homelessness funding model is getting some help from the Vancouver Foundation. In an interview with Public Eye, foundation communications vice-president Catherine Clement confirmed the charity has hired government relations giant Hill and Knowlton Inc. to convince the federal government to introduce the tax changes necessary to make that model work.

Ms. Clement explained the model's architects (former top provincial bureaucrat Ken Dobell and former Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc. chief financial officer Don Fairbain) "had gone to Ottawa to make some original pitches around the tax incentives."

But because the foundation, which has partnered with the city to support the model, "doesn't have any representation there, it was decided that we would hire a firm to do some of the education and lobbying work on these changes" that would give tax credits to private individuals, companies and foundations investing in the building of 1,500 new housing units for Vancouver's mentally ill and drug addicted.

"We believe that, in order to be successful" those changes "have to be introduced in the next federal budget which will probably be in February of next year," Clement continued. Which is why the Vancouver Foundation "as one of the partners in the development, decided to hire Hill and Knowlton to have them for the next five months do some of that work."