Another day, another home on Kim Richard’s street in Kerrisdale bites the dust.
“It’s essentially a townhouse, so it could have easily been turned in to a town house with a basement suite put in,” she laments.
“Instead, it’s gonna be ploughed down and the new house is gonna go right from the front to the back.”
The home is scheduled to be a single family residence. But Richards and others in the neighbourhood aren’t convinced a family will move in .
“This was once a really vibrant neighbourhood, and now my son in-law calls it the dead zone,” she says.
If last week was all about the $2.4 million dollar teardown home for sale in Point Grey, this week’s Vancouver real estate hobbyhorse is back to the question of vacant homes and bulldozed buildings.
QUIZ: What does a $2.4M Vancouver teardown get you in the rest of B.C.?
On West 8th avenue, a $6.2 million home sitting empty has raised the public’s ire this week, while on Adera Street near Granville and 41st, a relatively modern $6 million mansion is slated to be torn down.
“There’s something like five empty houses on my street. It’s mind-boggling. It makes no sense,” says Caroline Adderson, whose popular Facebook group Vancouver Vanishes has been documenting demolitions for years.
While Adderson’s group plans a protest at the Adera Street mansion this weekend, the provincial government has indicated new policies to deal with affordability may be in this month’s budget.
It’s a move the municipal government says should have come sooner.
“It’s compounded by the failure of the federal and provincial governments to play a role,” says Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs.
“I think that we’re gonna see a change in that now the recent discussions in Ottawa are encouraging. It’s beyond the capacity of municipal governments on its own–especially the affordability equation.”
– With files from Nadia Stewart