Vancouver council wants child-care spaces paired with housing for essential workers

Vancouver city councillors are trying to expedite the creation of new child care spaces in the city, combined with housing for essential workers.

They passed a motion directing municipal staff to work with the Vancouver School District to identify available public land where such spaces could be located, with a focus on areas where the need is most urgent.

Staff have also been asked to work with the B.C. government and its Crown corporation, BC Housing, to seek financial support for a pilot program using prefabricated construction to accomplish that.

“We have to think innovatively in a time when we have so little land available. We have so much pressure on our workforce in terms of the cost of living, and that huge pressure on child care,” Coun. Mike Klassen, motion co-author, told Global News.

“It’s really a make-or-break situation for people to actually live in the city, is whether they have child care or not.”

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According to the motion, passed unanimously at a standing committee meeting Wednesday, the City of Vancouver needs about 15,000 more childcare spaces than are currently available.

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The proposal states that early childhood educators (ECEs) in particular are struggling to find affordable housing in the communities that need them to run daycares. Klassen and Coun. Lisa Dominato wrote that 45 per cent of ECE employers in the city are losing more staff than they can hire, and 27 per cent of child care facilities turn away kids due to a lack of staff.

Klassen and Dominato’s idea is to build child care spaces that contain housing units above through prefabricated construction — speeding up the availability of units by months, or even years. Any essential workers who access them would need to go through a background check, while non-profit child care providers operate the spaces.

“They’re beautifully designed. It’s not like the old boxy modular housing of the past,” Klassen said. “These are buildings that would look great in any neighbourhood and it does help us with the time, it creates a lot of certainty.”

The councillor said he hopes to involve the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Education and Child Care. If everything goes well, he added, the city would supply the land for the initiative, while the B.C. government would help pay for the construction and child care spaces.