3,000 low-income units, 250 for Games workers, 50% welfare rate hike among panel suggestions
Frances Bula
Sun
Vancouver will need as much as $1 billion worth of housing and support in time for the 2010 Olympics in order to meet the promises the province and city made to prevent homelessness and protect inner-city residents.
According to the 24 recommendations made by the Vancouver Olympics’ housing round table, obtained by The Vancouver Sun and due to be released next week, the city requires in its three inner city neighbourhoods of the Downtown Eastside, downtown south and Mount Pleasant:
– 3,000 housing units, 80 per cent of them to be new construction, for low-income residents.
– 250 housing units for temporary Games workers, to be converted to social housing afterwards.
– 300 shelter beds for young people likely to flock to the city during Games.
– An increase in the subsidy for the 250 social-housing units at the Olympic Village so more low-income people can live in them.
It also recommends a provincewide, 50-per-cent increase in welfare rates, which the province’s recent budget only went partway towards meeting.
And, the report says, work has to start immediately or finding a solution will become difficult, if not impossible.
“Unless this issue is tackled quickly through a focused program as set out in the report, the problem will become larger, more visible and increasingly difficult to solve. The national media and, to some extent, the international media already know of the social and homelessness issues that prevail in Vancouver’s inner city. When Vancouver welcomes the Games in 2010, what will the world’s media see?”
No dollar figures were supplied with the recommendations, but some members of the round table, which included representatives of social agencies, developers, apartment owners, along with the federal, provincial and city governments, say that $1 billion is a reasonable estimate of the investment required.
Social-housing developers say that it currently costs about $200,000 a unit for social housing, making the cost of the 3,000 units alone about $600 million.
All the recommendations were agreed to unanimously, except for two — the moratorium on conversions and a recommendation to change a current part of the residential tenancy act — which the private-sector members disagreed with.
Vancouver is the first Olympics to have included a promise to promote “inner-city inclusivity” and specifically to protect inner-city housing.
“It’s a big, hairy, audacious goal to put in there,” said Linda Coady, the Olympics’ organizing committee’s vice-president of sustainability.
Other Olympics have set environmental goals and Vancouver will build on what previous Games have achieved and try to go further in that area. But no Games bidder has yet tried to make promises and set goals with something as difficult to grapple with as social inclusion and housing.
“It’s tougher with a public-policy issue like housing but the expectations are there,” said Coady.
Vanoc has no financial ability to pay for that kind of goal and no legal power to force governments to meet it. But it did convene the housing roundtable to come up with clear targets, which does exert some force on a province and city that will have to prove to the world what they were able to do about one of its most serious social problems.
“What everybody wants to show in 2010 is a community that has responded,” said Coady.
“The story we want to tell the world is how Vancouver dealt with its problems in an open, progressive way. That’s the story that’s in the bid that we promised to tell.”
The question now is what the various levels of government will do to act on that.
“I think the report is great in that it acknowledges the magnitude of the problem,” said Martha Lewis of the Tenants Rights Action Coalition. “But I’m pessimistic because I don’t think we will see any level of government doing anything fast enough.”
Although the bid language appears to imply to some that there is a legal commitment to meet promises, “It’s not a legal commitment that’s very defined,” said Lewis.
She said the discussion at the roundtable indicated that the province believes that it can achieve the goals set out in the recommendations with private partnerships.
The answer to that is likely to be revealed in part today, when Ken Dobell, the former deputy premier and former Vancouver city manager, releases his report on how the city can build housing by leveraging in private investment.
According to those who have talked to Dobell, he is looking at options like setting up a city housing foundation, changing city policies to give developers bonus space if they build low-cost housing, and providing a financing mechanism that would encourage the private sector to invest money in low-cost housing projects in return for tax benefits and an investment return with four or five-per-cent interest at a later date.
But Al Kemp, CEO of the Rental Owners and Managers Society of B.C., said he doesn’t see any way the goals can be met.
“They’re valid, they’re desirable, they’re laudable. But where’s the money going to come from? It’s billions, well, a billion at least. If the money was to magically appear today, where’s the land, where’s the drawings for the buildings, where’s the labour.”
How much housing could realistically be built — factoring in both money and logistics — by 2010?
© The Vancouver Sun 2007