Hotels May be Condos Soon

Dec 7, 2006 Published in Carnegie Newsletter

Here’s some bad news. Soon, the City of Vancouver Mayor and Council will talk about letting property developers convert hotels into Condos as early as 2008! That means possibly 1000's more people will be made homeless in Vancouver.

It’s a complicated story and you have to be a lawyer to figure it out what they are planning, but read on and see if this explanation makes sense.

The City wants to prepare 12 properties that are owned by the City for supportive housing that the Province and its partners (we’re not sure who they are) will pay for.

At first this seemed really great. But after looking closely at their plan, we became alarmed.

First off, the funding has not been committed yet and the project may set a dangerous precedent by waiting for federal or charitable funding to build. Solving homelessness with charity is like solving hunger with food banks.

Second, the City says there are 1300 more residential hotel room replacement homes coming soon in addition to the 1200 for a total of 2500. But more than half of these 1300 are seniors assisted living, market rate rentals, shelters, treatment beds and mini demonstration suites. These are not social housing for people who can afford to pay $375 a month and want to be part of a permanent community. So it looks like we get only 669, if we are generous and include the mini demonstration suites. Add the 600 of the 1200 that “may” be built on city sites by 2010 and we get possibly 1269 new additional homes over the next four years. That would be about 320 new homes a year, which is 480 a year less than the City’s own policy of 800 a year to get a handle on homelessness.

On page 11 of the City’s report, it says there is enough new housing coming to look at lifting the SRA Bylaw to allow some hotel conversions to condos in 2008. Excuse me; it does not make sense to talk about giving away the residential hotels when this plan appears to be precarious, deceptive and inadequate. And when there are thousands of homeless people who need to be housed first.....and when we have lost 561 rooms and homes this year alone that we know of.

Pick up a building by building analysis and the City’s report in the CCAP office at the Carnegie Centre or read the report online.