With Metro Vancouver’s housing crunch in full swing, developers have been a popular target for anger over the cost of housing.
One North Vancouver developer hopes to buck the trend, arguing that the industry needs to do more to help with the housing crisis.
And he’s putting his money where his mouth is — even offering one Vancouver woman facing renoviction free rent for six months.
LISTEN: North Shore developer says industry needs to do more to help with the rental crisis
Oliver Webbe is president of Darwin Properties.
Last week, he heard a Steele and Drex interview with a woman name Kathe who was being renovicted from her West End Vancouver home.
This week, he reached out to the show to offer her a six-month stay at one of his rental properties at no cost to her.
“I am the largest private landowner on the North Shore with approximately 2 million square feet of residential projects planned to start next year,” Webbe wrote in an email.
“I believe with every ounce of my heart that developers need to start doing more for their communities and perhaps this can start a discussion.”
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His move came as part of a mission to change the conversation around friendlier development and affordable rentals.
“We’ve heard stories about people forced to move out of their older rental buildings because of new development for years. It’s nothing that is new,” Webbe told Steele and Drex.
“If we were in their position, what would we want to happen to us?”
Webbe said his company has made affordable rentals a priority, pledging a one-to-one replacement of affordable rental units at buildings they redevelop, and guaranteeing tenants the first right of return to subsidized units along with three months of free rent to help cover the transition.
He said the company makes it work financially by adding either height or density to the new towers, with additional units going at market rates.
“We’re trying to look at it a different way and say let’s put housing restrictions,” he said.
“So we’re proposing CMHC level 2 housing affordability rates to make sure that anyone who’s living in any of our existing rental properties can move back into the new project and be guaranteed a unit.”
LISTEN: West End resident fears renoviction
From Webbe’s perspective, it’s a matter of maintaining a community so that renters aren’t priced out of the market, taking their shopping dollars and labour skills with them.
He said many other developers on the North Shore have similar guidelines, but admits there is more that policy makers could do — particularly when it comes to legislation around the protection of affordable rental units.
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“I think what’s important is that we just need to further define exactly what each developer has to do on the North Shore in particular to make sure that the affordable tenants are protected,” Webbe said.
He agrees with the assessment that Metro Vancouver is facing a supply shortage.
But in his eyes, that problem is particularly acute when it comes to rental properties.
Webbe said that when his company recently built a 100-unit purpose-built rental building near the Second Narrows Bridge, it was the first that the District of North Vancouver had seen since 1979.
Developers and government need to focus attention on the diversity of housing being built, so that in addition to condos, there is significant new construction in both market and affordable rentals, Webbe said.
“That’s when you’re going to start to make a dent on the affordability issue,” he said.
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