Doug Ward
Sun

The proposal by the City of Vancouver to set aside 125 rental units in the Olympic Village for health and safety public workers may be novel but it isn’t new.

Government agencies across North America and elsewhere are pursuing various ways to produce affordable housing in high-priced urban areas for middle-income employees.

These efforts broadly fall under the phrase “workforce housing” and they are typically targeted at so-called essential workers such as police officers, firemen, teachers, nurses and other public-health employees.

“The idea of encouraging essential workers and other city employees to live in the city is a good one,” said Michael Geller, a developer and housing and planning consultant.

“Unfortunately, many people who work in Vancouver have been priced out of the market.”

A survey by The Vancouver Sun in 2007 found that the majority of policemen and firefighters working in Vancouver live outside of the city. Vancouver had 800 firefighters on staff at the time, 135 of whom lived in the city.

The development of workforce housing has been taken up in recent years by B.C.’s major universities, including Simon Fraser University, where Geller led the creation of the University community, which includes faculty and staff housing.

“I got the idea from San Francisco, where, because of high housing costs, they were having a hard time attracting teachers and emergency workers.”

University staff housing provides both condos and rentals, with all units priced below market value.

The University of B.C. has a similar program for faculty and staff housing in its new UTown community. Twenty per cent of all new apartments and townhouses at UBC are rental and half of these are offered at below-market rates.

Whistler, the other 2010 Winter Games host community, has used its Olympic Village — now known as Cheakamus Crossing — as a legacy of affordable housing for people who work in the municipality and also for workers deemed essential employees.

Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed said that 220 of 350 units at Cheakamus Crossing are set aside for employee housing. Whistler’s goal is to have 75 per cent of Whistler’s workforce reside in the resort municipality by 2020.

The Whist ler Housing Authority has kept rates below market through the use of its land bank and the inclusion of a limited number of market townhouses and/or single-family lots.

Ten per cent of these employee units — about 20 units by the end of the summer — are set aside for essential employees, including firemen, policemen and teachers.

Melamed said these essential employees are able to jump the queue for employee housing.

Martha Lewis of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre in Vancouver said restricting rental housing to specific job categories is a valid policy approach and doesn’t contravene provincial human-rights legislation.

“The city has the right to decide who lives in that housing,” said Lewis. “All non-profits have criteria they use to decide who gets units of housing.”

She said that workforce housing is a growing trend in cities faced with high housing costs.

London, England has a program for key public employees — including police officers, teachers and firefighters — that provides them rent subsidies or no-interest loans of up to $100,000 to help them buy property.

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