Vancouver council rejects plan for new city-owned for-profit housing

Vancouver City Council has rejected a plan to create a new, city-owned corporation to build for-profit housing.

The plan required passage by a two-thirds majority, and needed eight votes, but only received seven.

Six city-owned sites were selected to produce about 4,000 homes, according to plans shared by the City of Vancouver on Tuesday.

Those sites included Pacific and Hornby, Main and Terminal, the north end of the Granville Bridge, along with 2400 Kingsway, which is currently the site of the 2400 Motel, a property at Granville Street and 67th Avenue, and several parcels along Main Street between 23rd and 24th Avenue.

“We are proposing, through the government business enterprise, the structural change required to deliver both housing and generate long-term wealth for the City of Vancouver,” Armin Amrolia, deputy city manager for the City of Vancouver, said.

“Wealth that can be reinvested into aging infrastructure, new and replacement civic facilities, or new non-market or co op housing.”

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A staff report stated that self-development poses a higher level of risk, but also an opportunity for higher financial returns. Right now, the city leases city-owned land to developers, who then build the rental housing, but none of that money comes back to the city.

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However, a housing expert remains skeptical about the idea.

“You can criticize this because the city should just sell the land to developers, but the idea that brand new housing is where we ought to put affordable homes really doesn’t make any sense,” Thomas Davidoff with the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia said.

“If you don’t take top dollar for your apartments, you’re spending city money.”

There were suggestions that this project would require a government business enterprise to operate independently from the city, which would have to be financially self-sustaining.

The city-owned land is worth more than $400 million.