The urban design panel review of this building, second time, happens today. Wondering what the result will be. I can’t be there so I hope someone will post.

In the meantime, my story on same.

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I wasn’t at the debate, though did hear some of the highlights, particularly Vision councillors and Mayor Gregor Robertson making the case that 1. This was a key election issue and people who opposed growth, density, more rental housing, all lost. 2. This gives more people an opportunity to live in the West End, instead of it being frozen at the number of people there now.

This city news release came out at 4:01, about 40 minutes after the vote.

Vancouver – After an extensive public hearing process and over two years of review and public input, City Council has approved 133 new units of rental housing in Vancouver’s West End. The project will be only the second new purpose-built West End rental building in a decade, underscoring the pressing need for new rental housing in a neighbourhood with Vancouver’s lowest average rental vacancy rate (0.85%).

Council also moved to implement a special housing agreement that will lock-in the proposed rents of the building to ensure that they do not increase between the time the project is approved and the final construction.

“With 133 new rental units, this project is another important step toward meeting the urgent need for new rental housing in the West End and across Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Over half of Vancouver’s population are renters and yet Vancouver’s rental stock has been in decline for decades. The City of Vancouver is committed to the creation of significant new rental housing in Vancouver to ensure we’re building a city that is more affordable and accessible for residents of all ages, incomes, and backgrounds.”

58% of the project consists of two bedroom units that are geared toward families. Based on community feedback, the project is a mix of low and mid-rise buildings – the tallest of which is just nine storeys in height.
There are four existing buildings surrounding the project, ranging from 19 to 21 storeys in height, originally built in the late 1960s. Having undergone significant public consultation since first being proposed in November 2010, the new project earned support from both the Vancouver Heritage Commission and the Vancouver Urban Design Panel, both of whom reviewed it twice. Revisions based on reviews and public input included lowering the height of the buildings to reduce view impacts and reshaping the buildings to increase public space at ground level.

The project provides market rental housing as an alternative to home ownership, as the monthly costs for West End ownership are 50% percent higher than rents for a one bedroom unit and 75% higher than for a two bedroom unit in this project.

“The construction of rental housing is a crucial component of our work to make Vancouver a more affordable and livable city for everyone,” added the Mayor. “The 2012 Housing and Homelessness Report Card showed that the City has already exceeded its 2014 goal for new rental housing, and this project represents further progress toward ensuring that seniors, young families, and students can all afford to make Vancouver their home.”

The project also does not require any subsidy from the city, and is generating a community amenity contribution of $243,000 to be allocated following the completion of the new West End community plan.

In addition to creating substantial new rental housing, the City of Vancouver has taken a number of steps to make housing more affordable and provide support for renters. These include:

·         Launching a Mayor’s Task Force on Housing Affordability

·         Approving the development of an arms-length Affordable Housing Authority

·         Offering six sites of city-owned land for lease to non-profits for affordable rental housing

·         The opening of Vancouver’s first Rent Bank, to support renters in crisis with short-term loans

·         The creation of the Rental 100 Program, which provides incentives for the development of new, 100% rental buildings

·         The launch of the online Rental Standards Database, which will enable renters to search out buildings that have current safety issues

·         Hosting the international ideas competition re:THINK Housing, to solicit ideas from around the world on how to create new affordable housing

It’s been a point of pride for Vancouver boosters to talk about the way the office builders want to be downtown. And, it’s true, they do.

But Vancouver is a limited market and so, the million or so square feet currently under construction is likely going to soak up whatever moving around people want to do, plus a few new entrants in the market.

Not the end of the world, but proof once more that we ain’t Calgary or Toronto by a long shot. My story.

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Answer over to the left, folks.

And, for those of you who love City Plumber, sorry for the long hiatus. As some of you may have heard, I’ve had one new little job to my portfolio (chair, Langara Journalism department) and I was a bit swamped at the beginning of the year learning the difference between a purchase order and a cheque requisition, plus filling out many forms.

I’ll try to be more on the ball here.

Always so interesting to see what people say to publications far away, compared to what they say to locals.

WHO BUYS IN VANCOUVER

As many as a quarter of the buyers in the Vancouver area are foreigners, Mr. Fitzpatrick said. The majority come from Asia, especially mainland China, but the United States is also well represented, and there are even a few buyers from Europe.

That said, however, international buyers have been fewer in number over the past year, Mr. Fitzpatrick added, because of concerns about the financial crisis.

Full article below the fold

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Just to update everyone on the news that dominated the lists a couple of weeks ago and has since disappeared. Below, an update from the park board general manager to the commissioners. I should add that I’ve heard as well that the park board’s ridiculous three-week deadline for negotiations has been dropped.

Those following the news will know that Kensington centre, whose president recently resigned and was replaced by one of a different stripe, pulled out of the negotiations this past week. So 12 centres are negotiating jointly. Two, Strathcona and Roundhouse, are working on separate agreements due to the very different nature of the centres they operate. And six are out. (Killarney, Kerrisdale, Hastings, Riley Park, Marpole and now Kensington, I believe.) (Sorry, informed later that it is Sunset that is out, not Marpole)

In the meantime, the note from Mr. Bromley

From: Bromley, Malcolm Sent: February 23, 2013 4:35 PM
To:
Subject: Community Centre Associations negotiations

Dear Commissioners,

Please see the mutually agreed statement which was released following today’s meeting. Please feel free to distribute as you see fit.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Malcolm.

“Park Board and Community Centre Association representatives held productive discussions about renewing their partnership through an updated Joint Operating Agreement (JOA). The group recognized strong coherence in their visions for the JOA.

Agreed by all is the belief that a respectful partnership is the best vehicle for meeting Park Board’s, City’s, and Community Centre Associations’ goals.

While it is recognized that final agreements will not be made until negotiations are complete, we have arrived at a consensus for our continuing process and agenda.

Next we will work toward an understanding on universal membership and acceptance of Leisure Access Card”.

 

Somehow, I don’t know, it seems like just the right moment for this. First talk is March 7

Poster – Gentrification and the City, Spring 2013

FYI, the latest Carnegie Centre Action Project report, since it’s unlikely to be published verbatim elsewhere. I am assuming this report only looks at private hotels, not at the hotels that have been acquired by the province in recent years and are now rented at welfare rates.

While the city brags about its housing accomplishments, the housing crisis in the DTES got worse in 2012.  Not only were there about 850 homeless people, up from 700 last year, thousands of people are still living in crummy SRO hotel rooms with no bathroom or kitchen, and often cockroaches, bedbugs and poor conditions… which they increasingly cannot afford.

At least 426 hotel rooms that were accessible to low-income tenants in 2011 were lost to rent increases in 2012.  That’s one finding of the Carnegie Community Action Project’s (CCAP) latest annual hotel report, called “We’re trying to get rid of the welfare people.”

“For decades, residential hotel rooms in the Downtown Eastside have been low-income people’s last resort before homelessness,” said Fraser Stuart. “People on welfare and disability and seniors with a basic pension have only about $375 a month for rent. This year we lost at least 426 rooms to rent increases above $425.”

Many hotels are now consciously trying to get rid of people on welfare and disability in favour of young workers and students, says the report, which quotes statements like the one in the report’s title that a desk clerk made to CCAP surveyors posing as prospective tenants.

The CCAP report also provides evidence that the  “social mix experiment” at Woodward’s is a failure for low-income people.  In 2009 developer Ian Gillespie called Woodward’s a “social experiment” and said, “Come back in a year and see how this social experiment turns out.” (NYT, November 24 2009). “We lost 404 units of SRO housing near Woodward’s to closure or rents at $500 or over,” said report co-author Ivan Drury, pointing to the Metropole hotel across the street from Woodward’s.  Rents at the Metropole are in the $700 range.  “We only gained 125 units of social housing for low-income singles through Woodward’s project so there is a net loss of 279 units. The lesson of Woodward’s is that social mix creates gentrification pressures that destroy more low-income housing that it builds. Social mix is a bankrupt planning strategy for the Downtown Eastside.”

The hotel report also says:

·       Only 5% of the rooms (159)* are in hotels where all the rents are $375 or lower, down from 7% last year;

·       Vacancies are minimal with only one vacant room found that rents for the welfare shelter rate of $375;

·       Some hotels are still charging between $200 and $375 extra when two people share a tiny room

·       2012 was a terrible year for new self-contained social housing in the DTES with only 24 units opening.

The city’s DTES Housing Plan calls for the rate-of-change (new condo compared to new social housing construction) to be about even and the CCAP report points out that, instead, condos are overwhelming social housing in the DTES. CCAP’s report outlines the real rate of change in 2012, including hotel rooms lost to low-income people because of rent increases, of 27 to one.  The rate of change not including hotel rooms lost to rent increases is about three condos to one social housing unit between 2005 and 2014 but no new government funded welfare rate social housing is planned after that.

Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council board member Herb Varley explained the importance of housing in his life; “I lived in the York hotel when it was bought by an investor. Rooms that were $425 a month are not renting for around $500, which no one on welfare can afford. I didn’t like my room there because it was tiny, infested with bed bugs and expensive but if I didn’t have it I would have been on the street,” said Varley. “It sucks that we have to fight for SROs because they’re not good housing, but they’re better than the street. The government should protect the SROs today and build social housing tomorrow.”

“The city must acknowledge that we have a housing crisis in the DTES,” said report co-author Jean Swanson.  “It needs to slow gentrification to stop the rent increases until senior governments fund new social housing. By congratulating themselves on housing progress, the city undermines its ability to seek senior government funds for desperately needed social housing.”

The report calls on the city to:

·       Buy 10 lots a year for social housing;

·       Stop condo development until current residents have decent social housing;

·       Declare the Oppenheimer and Hastings Corridor areas of the DTES a Social Justice Zone where the unique low-income community can survive and thrive.

The province should

·       Fund social housing for 850 homeless residents and SRO replacement units;

·       Amend the Residential Tenancy Act to prohibit discrimination based on social condition

·       Amend the RTA to enact effective rent control based on the unit, not the tenant

 

The federal government should enact a national housing program to replace at least 1,000 SRO units per year for the next 5 years.

 

Find CCAP’s 2012 SRO hotel report, “We’re trying to get rid of the welfare people,” online at http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/sro_report_2012/

A change of topic that we all need: story here.

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Chapter 43.

BTW, I hear that the park board and associations have selected a mediator and were starting talks yesterday.

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