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Vancouver is already one of the least affordable places in the country. So why has the city given up on plans to build 216 new units of affordable housing downtown?

Photo: CARMINE MARINELLI

A few parked cars, a flashy condo showroom and some construction trailers. That’s all that sits on this patch of land at the corner of Beatty and Georgia, one of the last undeveloped lots in Downtown Vancouver.

For years, this bit of Concord Pacific-owned real estate was slated to be built out into 216 units of affordable housing.

But times have changed. Despite being in the midst of an affordability crisis, the city is about to abandon those plans, paving the way for the developer to flip the land into market condominiums.

And it all comes down to money – or in this case, not enough of it.

The land has sat vacant for years because senior governments won’t step in with the funds to build it.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the city has decided to take a $5 million payout from the developers, Concord Pacific, and drop its plans for mixed-income housing.

Talk to city housing planners, though, and there is a reluctance to pull the trigger.

“I think forced is a fair word,” says housing centre director Cameron Gray. “But in the absence of funding programs to build it out, that site’s just going to sit vacant.”

814 planned units remain unbuilt

There’s no doubt we need new housing supply. This is a project that would have done that.

The project was a social planner’s dream: Mixing non-market affordable housing – 216 units for low-income families and residents – with some 900 market units, all within spitting distance of GM Place and SkyTrain.

It would mean you didn’t have to be wealthy to have an option to live downtown.

“It allows lower-income folks to enjoy the amenities of a great location,” Gray says. “It just provides that sense of normality sometimes you don’t get if low-income households are all crammed into a single neighbourhood.”

But in 1993, the federal government axed its housing construction program. The province followed suit a few years later, ending any permanent source of funds for similar projects.

The site at Beatty and Georgia sat vacant, while market-priced tower condominiums sprung up around it.

And there are other undeveloped plots just like it nearby. In all, twelve sites on Concord Pacific land in the North False Creek area were zoned for mixed-income development. Only five have been built.

You’d have to go back to 1998 to find the last time the province kicked in funds for an affordable housing project in the North False Creek area.

That leaves seven empty sites still waiting to be built into affordable housing: 814 units in total.

No plans to build: Province

It all has to do with the province’s housing objectives.

The province has spent millions buying up old Downtown Eastside hotels for supportive, ‘core need’ housing – targeted towards people with mental illness and addictions – but affordable housing has taken a backseat.

For the foreseeable future, the plan leans on rent supplements, rather than actually building new housing.

B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman says there are no mid or long-term plans to get back into building affordable housing for non-core needs.

“Not at the moment,” Coleman says. “Our affordability issue we feel we’re really addressing through our [rent supplement] program.”

Some 4,400 new households received some kind of monthly rent supplement from the province this year – an average of about $330 per family.

“The immediate impact is we’re helping people immediately where they live so they don’t have to wait for social housing to be constructed,” Coleman says.

Money is the other issue. It would take years and cost hundreds of millions – Coleman pegs it at about $1.2 billion – to build 4,400 units of new housing. In contrast, rent supplements will cost only $66 million in next year’s B.C. Housing budget.

But others say rent supplements aren’t the answer in Vancouver’s tight housing market, where vacancy rates have reached microscopic levels.

“Rent supplements have limited effectiveness in Vancouver. There just isn’t the supply of housing out there,” says housing center director Cameron Gray.

The land at Beatty and Georgia, Gray says, would have been a good fit for new affordable housing.

“There’s no doubt we need new housing supply,” Gray says. “This is a project that would have done that. It would have been a great addition.”

The city must amend zoning bylaws in order to officially axe affordable housing requirements from the project, a process that will require a public hearing.

Tags: vancouver, housing, homeless