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The Province
The Province
Vancouver city council’s differing views on rental housing were on display at a recent meeting: Five members felt council should be acting as quickly as possible to get more rental homes built, some thought we may need more but it wasn’t worth rushing and one questioned the need to boost rental construction at all.
Council was considering zoning amendments that would, basically, make it easier for developers to build six-storey, mixed use developments along many commercial streets — two floors more than the four already allowed there — if the residential portion of the building is rental instead of market condos.
For many years, the vast majority of these developments along those arterials have been market condos, which are more profitable for developers. The changes coming to council for a decision last month were an attempt by the city to tilt the balance toward rentals, trying to improve Vancouver’s chronically low vacancy rate, which has for a decade hovered around, and sometimes below, one per cent, according to city statistics, well below the three-to-five per cent considered healthy.
But council didn’t approve, reject or modify the proposed changes. Instead, they voted, 6-5, to defer the decision to some point in the future pending further consultation.
There was a stark difference in the way some councillors described the situation at the July 24 meeting, which ran until 10 p.m. on a Friday as council worked through several days of packed agendas before their August break.
For NPA Coun. Colleen Hardwick, things were moving too fast, she saying these changes shouldn’t be “rushed through.”
“There is no need to push this through now,” Hardwick said. “We are in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of summer, and many residents are not aware of the major changes being proposed here tonight.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Mayor Kennedy Stewart said this council is gaining a reputation for moving too slowly to address what most of them have described as a housing crisis.
“We’re criticized as a council for delaying, for being slower than most other municipalities,” Stewart told council. “I want to vote on this this evening, and I want to get on with building more rental housing in this city.”
As Stewart pointed out, in the commercial zones council was looking at, developers can currently build four-storey condo projects without seeking a rezoning. Stewart wants to push developers toward building more rentals, saying: “I cannot vote for more condos.”
Other councillors too insisted it was worth acting quickly. OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle, and NPA councillors Melissa De Genova, Lisa Dominato, and Sarah Kirby-Yung, also opposed the delay.
Boyle said: “We know that we need more rental more than we need more condos … These are changes we should make now, not postpone and delay.”
Dominato said the citywide planning process Vancouver is conducting now will take years to complete, and “we’re going to have to build the plane as we fly it, we can’t simply stop.”
But beyond the question of whether things were moving too fast or slow, Hardwick said she just doesn’t believe it’s necessary to boost rental-housing production at all.
Hardwick predicted the COVID-19 pandemic will reduce demand for rental homes, adding: “The buildings that will be built through these changes will not be completed for at least three or four years, which is well beyond the current moment and the formerly low vacancy rates to which proponents point to to justify the changes.”
Others, while not opposing building rentals, wanted to pump the brakes.
Green Coun. Adriane Carr introduced a motion to refer back to staff for “further public consultation,” through the fall, “including at the neighbourhood level.” The motion was seconded by Hardwick and supported by fellow Green councillors Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, as well as COPE Coun. Jean Swanson and Independent Coun. Rebecca Bligh.
“We really need to consult the public well,” Carr told council. “I know there was a consultation process around a lot of stakeholders and the public did get involved, but I’d like it to be deeper than that and more vibrant.”
These proposed changes arose from the 10-year Housing Vancouver strategy, approved in November 2017 by the previous council after more than a year of public consultation. The first of the “key strategies and actions” in that plan was a “shift toward the right supply,” citing a need to “drive a significant shift toward rental, social and supportive housing” and away from building expensive single-family houses and condos, which had made up the vast majority of the housing production for many years but were increasingly unaffordable for many locals.
In November 2019, city staff reported to the current council on possible measures to shift toward that “right supply” of rentals over condos, and — as Dominato noted at last month’s meeting — there seemed to be broad agreement among most councillors at that time about this policy direction and the urgent need to add more rental housing.
So, it came as something of a surprise to some observers — and some councillors, and likely some city staffers — that council balked on this particular decision.
According to the city’s summary of the community consultation conducted on these proposals since last November, the idea of six-storey rental developments along high streets seemed relatively uncontroversial. Some residents expressed concerns around displacement of existing businesses, but many supported six-storey rental projects on main streets, while others suggested streets with frequent transit could accommodate even taller buildings.
It was another proposed rental incentive that drew more concern during this year’s consultation: changes to allow four-storey rental buildings on residential side streets just off arterials. That idea, according to the city, “received more comments and questions” than the six-storey buildings on main streets, and that piece was hived off from the proposal for arterial streets to come to council for a separate decision.
Consultation on the four-storey proposal is continuing until October through an online portal at shapeyourcity.ca, and council is expected to decide on that later this year.
The timeline for that decision, of course, could change.
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