Sun

Homelessness has been a priority item on the public agenda for at least five years. In that time, there have been dozens of studies and reports, and countless programs and initiatives on which hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent. But the problem appears to have only grown worse.

The number of people living on the streets has nearly doubled since 2002 to 1,291, according to estimates by the Pivot Legal Society last year, and will triple to 3,200 by 2010 unless something is done.

Vancouver city council will meet Tuesday to review the latest report on homelessness, which proposes a radical new structure and funding model to get the job done. It was prepared by Ken Dobell, special adviser to Premier Gordon Campbell, for which he was paid $300,000 by the city. If what he proposes is implemented and proves effective, it will have been worth every penny.

However, the plan is complicated. It would create two new bodies: The Vancouver Homelessness Limited Partnership, which would raise $60 million in equity and subordinated debt to help develop supportive housing; and the Vancouver Homelessness Foundation, a charitable organization that would acquire properties donated by the city to lease back to the partnership. This structure requires significant federal tax changes that would result in a loss of tax revenue, a donation from the city of $50 million in land and a waiver of property tax, and a major financial commitment (approximately $48 million a year) from the province for rent subsidies and support services.

The report concedes that the proposed bodies introduce new costs into the system. But the opportunity they offer for greater community involvement, broader fundraising and possible donation of partnership units for reinvestment in supporting housing or services justifies the expense, it argues.

Under the plan, 1,500 housing units would be built on the donated land and 500 residential hotels rooms would be upgraded at a cost of $10,000 per room. The aggregate annual operating costs set out in the report amount to more than $400 million between 2008 and 2017. All this will supplement — not replace — homelessness initiatives already under way.

Recognizing that the plan demands a buy-in from many levels of government and other agencies, the report’s main recommendations are that council approve in principle the upgrade and construction of housing units, as well as instruct city staff and Dobell’s consulting team to conduct more consultation and legal analysis, then to report back in April.

If it all goes according to plan, Vancouver will have a stock of 3,000 units of supportive housing in a decade, which might not make homelessness disappear entirely, but would be a vast improvement over the existing situation.

While it may seem unwieldy and expensive, the plan deserves careful consideration. Will the cost of implementing it be lower than the cost of doing nothing? One estimate put the cost of the homeless to taxpayers through services such as hospitals, ambulances, emergency shelters and police at $51 million a year, or roughly $40,000 per person. The Pivot society estimated the cost of social housing at $22,000 to $28,000 per person, making the economic case clear. The higher cost of the Dobell plan might weaken the economic gain, but it still has merit on compassionate grounds. It targets the most vulnerable — and most disruptive — of the homeless population, the mentally ill and addicted. It not only provides supportive housing, essential to stabilizing their lives, but connects the most marginalized to social services that can provide treatment, counselling and supervision.

Whether this plan presents the best option to alleviate the scourge of homelessness is for council to decide. As it debates and deliberates, one thing it might keep in mind is that nothing else has really worked.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Other

Download Document

6,000 tonnes of pellets a year would be trucked in; burned using incinerators

Frances Bula
Sun

Sometimes, the greenest technology doesn’t seem very green at first sight.

That’s what Vancouver’s Olympic village planners are saying as they consider the idea of trucking in 6,000 tonnes of wood pellets a year and burning them in high-efficiency incinerators as the heat source for the neighbourhood’s 15,000 future residents.

“When I first came on board and I heard about that option, it surprised me a little, to be honest,” says Chris Baber, the young city engineer in charge of what’s being called the neighbourhood energy utility or NEU.

After looking at all the information, he realized that the biomass, a.k.a. wood pellets, idea actually was the greenest feasible option for space heating and hot water, compared to other options.

The others included using electricity (an expensive and short-supply source that condo builders have favoured in recent years), burning natural gas (used by many residents and North Vancouver’s district heating system), or capturing heat from the neighbourhood’s sewer lines (a good idea, but technically challenging).

But local residents and the developer building the village are less than enchanted with the idea of trucks of wood waste being hauled in and burned in central Vancouver (along with trucks of ash going out), especially in the middle of a neighbourhood that will be marketed as cutting-edge green.

“They go on about greenhouse gas emissions and then they do this,” said Arthur Brock, a commercial real-estate manager who is on the False Creek South Residents Association’s planning committee.

“Why would you build a wood-waste incinerator in the heart of Vancouver? Come on. The more people who hear about this, the more they’ll be scratching their heads.”

He said condo owners in Concord and particularly Citygate, the block of towers at the east end of False Creek, will likely be equally upset about it.

“We’ve talked to Citygate and they’re incensed. The prevailing wind is southwest and it would blow the effluent right to them.”

The False Creek association decided this week to hire its own consultant to look at the idea, after residents got notices from the city inviting them to open houses March 13 and 15, where options for the district heating system will be presented before council votes on it in late April or early May. The city has also applied to the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s director of air quality for a permit. That process also takes public input into account.

In the meantime, Roger Bayley of Merrick Architecture, who is coordinating the complex project for the developer Millennium, has sent a public letter to mayors, business groups and those on his firm’s mailing list urging them to oppose the city’s application at the regional district. Bayley’s letter said the wood-waste incinerator was “not in keeping with the sustainable objectives of the community, represented a significant and unwarranted increase in emissions, was not in the public interest and would adversely impact the image and character of the community.”

And, he added, “the use of a purchased and trucked product was not in keeping with the standards of sustainability for the community that sought to use ‘local’ and cheap sources of energy available at the site.”

Bayley and his team are pushing for what the city was planning originally, to capture the heat off wastewater flushed through the sewer lines in the project. That’s done by having water from showers, sinks, dishwashers and washing machines go through a heat exchanger that extracts the heat and recycles it.

But Baber said there are significant technical problems with that new technology. Only three similar plants exist in the world, and there is only one manufacturer of the needed heat pumps, in Switzerland.

As well, he said, sewage flow varies through the day, which makes it difficult to generate a steady heat supply.

“And then there’s the solids that need to be filtered out,” said Baber.

The city’s information material claims the wood-pellet-burning system has many advantages. It’s considered carbon neutral, since burning wood waste doesn’t produce any more greenhouse gas than if the wood were left to deteriorate naturally. The environmental concern it does raise is particulate production. But much of that gets removed with a precipitator, says Baber.

A large amount of B.C.’s wood waste is shipped to Norway and Sweden, where it is burned in urban wood-waste incinerators.

TURNING WOOD INTO ENERGY

False Creek Community Energy Centre

Project to supply heat and hot water to 15,000 residents of False Creek using biomass energy with natural gas backup.

Source: City of Vancouver Vancouver Sun

WHAT IS BIOMASS ENERGY?

Biomass energy is produced by burning natural material such as wood pellets (pictured). Although the process creates carbon dioxide, the amount is no greater than what would be produced from natural decomposition. The energy needed to produce the wood chips is minimal compared to the amount of energy produced.

Wood pellets are produced from forest industry wood waste — essentially compressed sawdust. B.C. pellets, most of which are exported, are considered the best in the world for their high density and clean burning.

ADVANTAGES

– Relatively low greenhouse gas emissions.

– Availability and ease of use.

– B.C.-produced, supports the local economy.

DISADVANTAGES

– Produces particulates, but at a rate 250 times less than air quality guidelines require.

– Delivery by train and truck from the Interior would create 40 to 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

– Burning wood pellets would produce about 200 tonnes of waste ash per year. Might be usable as fertilizer or compost.

Source: City of Vancouver Vancouver Sun

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Analysts say drop a levelling-off after frantic pace

Derrick Penner
Sun

February housing starts in Greater Vancouver dropped sharply from the same month a year ago, Canada Mortgage and Housing reported Thursday.

Although starts in the first two months of this year remain below 2006 levels, Canada Mortgage and Housing analysts say the trend is merely a levelling-off of construction’s fast pace.

Builders started construction on 1,248 new units in Greater Vancouver in February, Canada Mortgage and Housing said. That represents a 37-per-cent decline from February 2006, with activity down in both single-family and multiple-unit dwellings.

Canada Mortgage and Housing analyst Robyn Adamache added that February 2006, which saw 1,988 dwellings started, was the busiest February in 18 years.

And this February’s starts are the second highest since about 2001.

“We’re still expecting [2007] starts to be at about the same level [as 2006],” Adamache said. “I still expect we may see a bit of an uptick [in annual starts], but it would definitely be less than five per cent.”

The reasons Adamache doesn’t believe starts will decline are new-housing inventory levels and the pre-sales of units for condominium developments.

Adamache said that in February, 1,120 new homes sat unpurchased. Only 131 of those were apartments. The 15-year average for new inventory is 3,000 units, she added.

And with projects such as the first phase of Surrey’s Quattro project still selling out in short periods, “demand for new units appears to be quite strong.”

Adamache added that a record-high 21,000 new units are under construction across Greater Vancouver.

Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, added that there are a number of housing projects in the development phase, or in the process of digging foundations, which is activity that is not reflected in Canada Mortgage and Housing’s numbers.

“Nobody [in housing construction] is idle,” Simpson said. “The labour force is still stretched to the limit through all sectors now.”

Simpson added that some developers have reported a slowing of sales on their new projects, but lower-priced developments — such as Quattro, where prices started at $119,000 — are doing well.

“With affordability being a huge issue,” Simpson said. “if a project is well priced and well placed, it will be successful.”

And Simpson added that starts are up in Lower Mainland communities outside of Greater Vancouver, where land prices are lower.

“We’re not going to see any significant spike [in home construction], nor a substantial drop,” he said.

Adamache said she is not forecasting higher levels of housing starts in part because the Vancouver real estate market has been seeing fewer sales in the resale sector.

“On average, inventory levels on the resale side are up about two per cent year-over-year,” Adamache said. “So it’s not quite as hard to find resale [homes] and we’re not seeing as much spillover of demand into the new-housing sector.”

Provincewide, builders started construction on 2,074 units in February, a 25-per-cent drop from the same month in 2006.

Greater Vancouver, Kelowna and Prince George saw the biggest declines in construction during the first two months of the year. February starts plummeted almost 73 per cent to 74 units, compared with 270 units in the same month a year ago in Kelowna.

For January and February, Kelowna’s 280 starts remains 43-per-cent below its pace for those two months in 2006.

Prince George, with 23 starts during January and February, is 11.5-per-cent below its pace in 2006.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007