Candidate calls for Richmond rentals
Independent Roston urges city to use provincial law for units at mall redevelopment
An independent candidate for councillor is calling on Richmond to use a new provincial law to require most housing units at the proposed Richmond Centre mall redevelopment be designated as rentals.
John Roston said the city would be squandering a “golden opportunity” to tackle the housing crisis if it doesn’t make changes to the proposed project, slated for a public hearing on Monday.
The plan by owner Cadillac Fairview and developer SHAPE is to build 2,000 units in 12 new buildings, with most to be sold as condos, along with new public streets, outdoor spaces, and commercial and retail spaces built on the site of the mall and Sears parkade at 6551 No. 3 Road.
“We have a critical shortage of rental housing, and rents are astronomically high,” said Roston. “One of the ways to bring rents down is to increase the supply dramatically.”
About 150 rental residences are created in Richmond every year, said Roston, but coming developments at Richmond Centre, Lansdowne Centre mall, and other properties along No. 3 Road are the city’s chance to boost the city’s rental supply dramatically, “with thousands of rental properties, and they can be at market rates.”
The Richmond Centre site is already zoned for mixeduse highrises, limiting the city’s ability to negotiate for developer-funded amenities.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie declined to comment before the public hearing, saying he plans to go into the meeting with an open mind.
The proposal does not require rezoning, only a change to a community plan, which allowed city staff to work with the developer to get 150 “low-end-of-market” rental units to be built as part of the project.
Roston said he wants 60 per cent of the remaining 1,850 units dedicated to rental housing rather than condos, which he said could be sold to investors who will leave them vacant.
“The province gave a new power to municipalities that in any new development, you can require that all the dwelling units created, or a portion of them, be rental housing,” he said. “It was designed for exactly this situation of creating huge amounts of rental housing.”
Earlier this spring, the B.C. government passed legislation allowing municipalities to zone properties for rental-only development. Only Burnaby has used the legislation, recently implementing a rental zoning bylaw.
Andy Yan, program director at Simon Fraser University’s City Program, said the fact that only Burnaby — where city hall has been under fire because of mass demovictions in the Metrotown area — has developed a zoning policies around rentals, could be an indication local councils may not have had time to catch up to its expanded powers.
“This is one example where the desire is ahead of the ability,” said Yan. “It’s so brand new and we are in the middle of an election cycle. There is a provincial mandate but individual municipalities have to go through their own guidelines.”
It is also unclear whether the legislation only applies to properties requiring rezoning, or could be applied to any property or area, even those already zoned for density. Yan described the legislation as “ambiguous,” giving municipalities considerable leeway to determine how to apply it to suit their needs.
Roston said he hopes council will instruct staff to look into how the city can use the new legislation to get rental units built at the Richmond Centre site. At the very least, he said, council should postpone the decision until after the election when it has a new mandate.
“This is big,” said Roston of the scale of the Richmond Centre project and others along No. 3 Road.
“This isn’t going to come along again. If they let Richmond Centre go tomorrow, that will be the end of that.”