How many dilapidated vacant buildings does Vancouver have? The city doesn’t know

A B.C. urban development analyst says the forced demolition of a dilapidated hotel in downtown Vancouver is a sign of a larger problem.

Vancouver city council ordered the demolition of the former Dunsmuir Hotel earlier in December, after an inspection had found it had deteriorated to the point of becoming a safety hazard.

2:49 Dunsmuir Hotel owners push back against criticism

The city blamed the owner, Holborn Properties, for neglecting the structure for more than a decade. Holborn has denied the accusation and suggested red tape at city hall is to blame.

But Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program said the Dunsmuir Hotel controversy hints at a much larger problem.

“The whole saga of 500 Dunsmuir actually shows a larger systemic problem in the City of Vancouver of not knowing the number of abandoned or vacant buildings in the city which themselves are deteriorating,” he said.

“We just don’t know. For a city that is so much in a housing emergency, I think this is really alarming.”

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Yan added that the Dunsmuir property could be viewed as a case of “demolition by neglect,” and said it remains unclear if the owner will be penalized financially for or forced to replace the 150 single-room accommodation units it was home to.

2:07 Vancouver orders demolition of former Dunsmuir Hotel

In a statement, the city said the only vacant building it knows of that could potentially be a safety risk to the public is 500 Dunsmuir.

But at the council meeting that decided the fate of the property earlier this month, Coun. Peter Meiszner asked the city’s chief building official if the city was regularly inspecting large vacant buildings, and was told no.

Meiszner said it was “shocking” that the city doesn’t have a good answer to how many unoccupied buildings are in the city and what condition they are in.

He said city staff have been directed to form a task force in the new year to address that gap.

“We don’t want to be put in a situation again where we are having to tear down a building due to a public safety risk because it has deteriorated so much and we weren’t aware of it for so many years,” he said.

But Meiszner said the city currently has few tools to address buildings of this nature. Vancouver’s Standards of Maintenance bylaw, for example, applies only to occupied buildings.

In 2023, the Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution calling on the province to empower local governments to tax vacant properties to discourage derelict buildings, but no provincial legislation was ever changed.

2:05 Former Dunsmuir Hotel deemed unsafe

“We need to look at all sorts of tools and avenues in the new year to prevent this from happening again,” Meiszner said.

In the meantime, the demolition of 500 Dunsmuir will proceed, without the preservation of any of its heritage elements.

Council’s original order to tear the building down had directed the owner to preserve what it could, however, a subsequent report from the city’s chief building official found doing so would require a 14-month delay — something the city couldn’t allow due to risk the structure could collapse.