VANCOUVER --A $30-million philanthropic gift from an anonymous wealthy couple is allowing the City of Vancouver to reopen Taylor Manor as a home for 56 street people with complex mental health issues.

Over the next two years the city will also pour up to $10 million of public money into a $14 million renovation and expansion plan for the 1915 Tudor Revival-style heritage mansion located on Boundary Road near Adanac Park. The rest of the capital funds will come from the Streetohome Foundation, Vancity Credit Union and other donors. The renovation includes the addition of a three-storey annex, community garden, kitchen and dining facilities and program areas.

The contribution of the elderly Vancouver couple will allow the home to operate completely independent of ongoing government support. The donors’ gift will run through a separate foundation and underwrite the $900,000 annual cost of operating Taylor Manor.

“This is an unprecedented donation of what I believe is the largest donation in the city’s history to our effort to end homelessness,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said.

The city announced the plans Friday against the backdrop of the decrepit, but still striking mansion, first built by the city as “The Old Peoples’ Home” and renamed in 1946 after eight-term mayor, Louis D. Taylor, who died in poverty at the age of 88.

Until 2000 the mansion was a long-term care facility, but was shut down when residents moved to the adjacent Adanac Park Lodge, which is operated by Vancouver Coastal Health.

Still owned by the city, it has played a role in B-grade movies and served as an occasional training facility for police. Periodic attempts to renovate it for seniors housing have failed, the most recent in 2003. Now it will become a semi-permanent home for people with mental health and addiction issues who have been living on the street.

The benefactors’ unusual offer to completely underwrite the operating costs of a new supportive housing facility appears to have made the project possible. Their gift leveraged money out of the city to renovate the building, as well as $1.4 million from Streetohome through a gift from Vancity, and another $200,000 from another group, the Carraresi Foundation.

When Taylor Manor is finished in about two years, it will be operated by the Kettle Friendship Society.

The project comes as the city’s efforts to stem the tide of homelessness have faltered. Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party made a pledge in 2008 to eliminate homelessness by 2015. He later modified the goal to end “street homeless.” Last year, 154 people were catalogued living on the street. But a new count in March showed the number had almost doubled again to 306, and city staff say the situation will worsen by 2014.

“We have had tough news over the past couple of months seeing our street homeless numbers bump back up,” Robertson said. “We really have to redouble our efforts ... and Taylor Manor is a key piece of that strategy.”

Coun. Kerry Jang, a University of B.C. professor of psychiatry who specializes in mental health issues and is the city’s representative on housing and homeless issues, was nearly moved to tears by the donors’ largesse. He said he and city staff, including Judy Graves, the coordinator specializing in dealing with the homeless, have sometimes despaired at trying to solve the complex, interwoven issues of homelessness, addiction and mental health.