Housing ‘task force’ plan not strong enough to dent developer-backed affordability crisis

The City’s developer task force released another interim report today — a follow-up to the previous very preliminary interim report (see The Mainlander‘s analysis here).

Although the latest proposal and its ideas remain in draft form, the document contains a couple of substantial policy proposals, including a municipal Housing Authority and a Land Bank. These are two very good ideas, but the question remains: will the proposals actually be implemented? If so, will it be at a scale capable of meeting the demand for real affordable housing? Will it be done in a way that benefits residents and communities instead of private developers?

The Housing Authority proposal is a good idea, but not a new idea. For example, the City of Vancouver Public Housing Corporation has existed since the 1980s. But it has been so inactive that it owns only a dozen buildings, most of them in the Downtown Eastside. For this reason, The Mainlander has been consistently arguing in favour of a reactivated and robust Housing Authority. During the 2011 civic election campaign, Vision and the NPA did not endorse a Housing Authority. COPE was the only party to do so.

It is surely a step in the right direction to start talking about what a reactivated Housing Authority will look like. The trick is to make it powerful enough to make a real difference. For that to happen, the devil is in the details. And today’s interim report is weak on details. It floats the idea of a hypothetical “City-owned entity, such as a Housing Authority, [which] could enable the City to deliver on its objectives for social and affordable rental housing.”

Conflict of Interest at City Hall: Condo Tower Approved in Chinatown

On May 7th the Development Permit Board (DPB) approved the application of a 10 storey luxury development in Chinatown. The project, financed by Solterra Group of Companies, comprises 82 dwelling units above three levels of underground parking. This is the first condo project stimulated by the Vision-NPA gentrification plan for the neighbourhood. In spring of last year, Vision-NPA approved a blanket upzoning of land, which increased the value of 189 Keefer from $1 million to $2.9 million overnight. Through the so-called “Height Review” for the DTES, the predominantly low-income Chinese community and other low-income social groups are gradually being displaced by the incursion of market condos, high-end shops, and cultural amenities catering to a wealthier, predominantly white clientele. If a recent “snapshot” of emerging Chinatown by Scout Magazine is any indication, Chinatown will become the next Gastown.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

There was an added controversy at the 189 Keefer hearing, in the form of a serious conflict of interest. One of the members of DPB’s “Representatives of the Design Professions,” Foad Rafii (Architect) represented the Developer (Solterra) at the hearing. Rafii spoke on behalf of the applicant, and did not publicly disclose his conflict of interest. When a member of the public voiced his concerns, the Board Chair Vicki Potter and Foad Rafii remained silent, refusing to address the public’s claim.

This is the second time in a month that Foad Rafii has misused his post on the DPB. Two weeks ago, from his DPB seat Rafii spoke out energetically against community members who protested Pantages condos proposal. In retrospect, his decision regarding the Pantages condo project was tainted by his desire to see his own project approved the next week.

Downtown Eastside residents sound the DISPLACEMENT alarm

UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORY, VANCOUVER: On Tuesday April 10th more than 100 Downtown Eastside residents gathered for a rally in the theatre of the Carnegie centre to sound an alarm: Displacement, they said, is happening. And worse, if city council does not take immediate and serious action, it will quickly become a desperate crisis.

The rally was motivated by developer Marc Williams’ proposal to build 79 quarter-million-dollar condos on the 100-block of East Hastings Street, between the Regent and Brandiz hotels and across the street from North America’s only legal supervised injection site. The proposal is years in the making and was rejected by two separate city bodies last year but is back and scheduled to go to vote at the city’s Development Permit Board on Monday April 23. That board, made up of developers, business investors and other political appointees, will vote on the project based on its measure within existing building policies. The DTES Not for Developers Coalition has been organizing against the project for about a year, and Tuesday’s rally continued their call for City Hall to reject the project.

Sixteen community groups gathered with the DTES Not for Developers Coalition to speak in one voice from their diverse specific perspectives and demand that the city say no to “Sequel 138″ condos and to buy the site and dedicate it entirely to welfare and old age pension rate social housing.

The rally was opened with statements from people who live in SRO hotels on the 100-block of East Hastings, where the condo project is proposed. Washington Hotel residents are “illicit drinkers, drug users, and we struggle with our mental and physical health. We are the people who are not wanted by developers and condo owners.” Their statement was read by John Skulsh, who said, “We don’t have housing options, we have housing ultimatums: Live in this 10×10 room without the privacy of your own bathroom, and without the health, food, and hygiene choices of having your own kitchen, or go back to the street.”

Task Force Interim Report: Neoliberal Strategies for Vancouver’s Housing Crisis

Yesterday, the Mayor’s Developer Task Force released its interim report. On the surface, the four page pamphlet does not provide anything new, containing only the standard free market jargon and housing bubble diagrams we have seen for the last three years. As former planner Brent Toderian has recently stated, the plan regurgitates much of what the City has already proposed.

Instead of proven solutions, there will be only market solutions to housing affordability built by for-profit housing developers. The same mechanisms that gave us a housing crisis in the first place will now be used to address it.

The report is clear that those who need housing the most will be left out of the mandate of the task force: the task force will only be looking at how to build housing for people with incomes above $21,500. It is claimed that individuals who make less than this amount will have their housing needs addressed by the City’s Housing and Homelessness Plan. The Housing and Homelessness Plan calls for the construction of 38,000 units of housing — 20,000 of these condos — over the next ten years. This amounts to 3,800 units, in other words, less housing than the 4,000 or more units that have been built annually for the past decade.