Minister eyes up to 15 sites for redevelopment
Miro Cernetig
Sun
Construction cranes may soon be a common sight at British Columbia’s social-housing projects as the provincial government moves to get the private sector involved in redeveloping housing for the poor.
On Tuesday, the government announced it would begin giving rent supplements to 15,000 households that make less than $20,000 a year. It also promised to build up to 450 emergency shelters to deal with the growing problem of homelessness.
But Forests Minister Rich Coleman, a former real estate developer who was given responsibility for social housing by Premier Gordon Campbell, has much bigger plans that he will be announcing in the months to come.
He said in an interview he has instructed his staff to identify 12 to 15 social-housing sites that could be redeveloped by the private sector in partnership with the government and social housing authorities.
While he did not specifically name the sites involved, Coleman said most are social-housing projects in the Lower Mainland.
He estimated the projects could yield up to 4,000 additional social-housing units and that construction could begin within a year, with the projects finished within three to four years. Profits from selling development rights to the private sector, he said, could be funnelled back into other social housing endeavours.
“This is the beginning of what I believe is a paradigm shift,” said Coleman.
No specific deals were mentioned, but Coleman said many social-housing sites, many of which will be turned over to the province by the CMHC in January, now have too low a density.
He wants developers and societies running social-housing projects to propose ways of increasing density. In some cases, he said, that would mean more social-housing units being added while in others, developers would buy the land from the government for market housing.
Coleman said the government is committed to no net loss of social housing in any project, and that people in current projects will not be displaced.
But the New Democratic Party and anti-poverty groups were skeptical of the government’s promises.
The NDP distributed a draft of a government discussion paper written in June 2005 that estimates 3,150 social-housing units would have to be built every year for the next decade to fill the current needs.
There are currently about 15,000 households on the government’s waiting list.
To deal with that pressure, the government announced Tuesday it will offer $40 million a year in rent supplements to the “working poor,” who will qualify for from $1 to $300 a month to help them pay their rent. About 15,000 households making less than $20,000 a year and with under $10,000 in assets would qualify.
But anti-poverty critics said the government’s plan lacked a concrete strategy for building more affordable housing.
“The only way to get people off the streets is to build housing for them,” said Jean Swanson, who coordinates the Carnegie Community Action centre in the Downtown Eastside. “And we need thousands of them. How many are they going to build?”
Coleman, who promised to increase the government’s spending on social housing to $250 million by 2008 from about $200 million, did not spell out a target number of new social-housing units.
Al Mitchell, who runs the Lookout Shelter and other refuges for the homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said homelessness is a chronic problem now. He estimates that last year he turned away 5,000 people. He said the government’s rent supplement plan would not make much difference in solving that problem.
“They don’t need another one hundred bucks they then pump back to the landlord, because the landlord knows he can raise the rent,” said Mitchell. “What’s needed is more places for people to live. … I’m very disappointed.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
