Vancouver looks to help religious groups build affordable housing

Vancouver City Hall is looking at a plan to make it easier for faith groups to build affordable housing.

Council was set to consider a motion Wednesday from Coun. Rebecca Bligh, directing city staff to reach out to churches and other religious groups that own a substantial amount of tax-free property in the city.

Bligh said the goal is to help streamline the process for those groups to redevelop some of their land for affordable housing.

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“A group we hear a lot from lately is faith-based groups who see themselves as a community, they would like to be doing some social good, they have held land perhaps for a long time, maybe they need their own plan forward in terms of being able to manage budgets and what have you, congregations are changing,” she said.

“At the end of the day, there is a desire, a mandate to provide some social good back to the community.”

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Lindsay Hills, rector priest in charge of St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Kerrisdale, applauded the initiative, which she said could help faith groups get through the complex bureaucracy involved in building housing.

Her parish built social and seniors housing four decades ago, but the aging properties now need repairs and upgrades.

“One of the biggest challenges we have faced in having conversations around redevelopment is a volunteer base that might not have the expertise needed in order to push things forward,” she said.

“One of the saddest things I have seen is that congregations that are desperate to stay alive will sell to commercial developers, and then they lose a piece of themselves.”

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First United Church in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside provides one example of what faith-based developments could look like.

The church is currently building an 11-storey project at 320 East Hastings, which will include seven floors of Indigenous social housing and four floors of amenities and social services for the Downtown Eastside.

“There has never been a question or a conversation that the type of housing we were going to build was going to have to do with anything commercial — this is about this community in particular in the DTES,” First United executive director Amanda Burrows said.

“It does take a lot of will. It does take a lot of funding as well, and we had a lot of success, we had a lot of philanthropists come forward and see the social good.”

Bligh’s motion directs city staff to report back on resources and staff support that can be made available to religious groups considering redevelopment, along with possible regulatory changes that could help simplify the process for them to build affordable housing.