Dunbar social-housing repairs almost done
Fifteen months behind schedule, almost $5M in fixes wrapping up with taxpayers on hook
A$5-million repair project on a social-housing building on Vancouver's westside is wrapping up this month, more than a year behind schedule.
Postmedia News first revealed in 2019 that B.C. taxpayers were on the hook for a bill estimated at the time at $4.5 million, to fix construction problems at a social-housing building in Dunbar, only nine years after a local company was paid $8.5 million to build it. Industry professionals said then that it was “hugely unusual” for a building that new to require repairs that extensive.
Now, B.C. Housing says crews are expected to finish repair work this month on the Dunbar Apartments. That 27-month timeline is more than double the estimate provided in mid-2019, when work was expected to be completed by February 2020. The project budget, funded by the province, is now expected to be closer to $5 million, which would represent about a 10 per cent increase from the 2019 estimate.
B.C. Housing is “currently reviewing its options regarding construction costs” at the Dunbar building, a B.C. Housing spokesman said this month in an emailed statement, and the organization “has not yet determined whether legal recourse is necessary or will be pursued against any party involved.”
The Dunbar Apartments, which is operated by Coast Mental Health, has 51 non-market studio apartments with on-site services supporting mental health and recovery. It was one of 14 supportive-housing projects built in Vancouver around that time, in partnership with the city, province and local non-profits. The problems at the Dunbar development seemed to be unique among those 14 buildings.
In 2010, Aquila Construction was awarded a $8.54 million contract to build the Dunbar Apartments, and the architect was Davidson Yuen Simpson Architecture, now known as DYS Architecture. When Postmedia first reported in 2019 about “deficiencies with some of the materials and construction methods” used on the Dunbar building's exterior, representatives from both firms said they hadn't heard from B.C. Housing about any such problems.
Dane Jansen, a partner at DYS, said this week his firm has heard nothing further from B.C. Housing and “had no involvement with the project since its completion.”
The building envelope design on the Dunbar project is “a technology that we've used before, and we've not heard any negative results previously,” Jansen said. “Obviously we take pride in our buildings, and we're curious about what's gone on there.”
When reached by phone this week, Aquila's owner, Derek Bosa, initially said he would call back but didn't do so. Bosa didn't respond to subsequent messages.
In the years leading up to the construction of the Dunbar Apartments, the project was the subject of some controversy in the neighbourhood. In 2008, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert quoted the Dunbar Residents Association co-chair raising concerns about “addicts,” saying the building would “likely attract undesirable elements to the neighbourhood.”
However, Culbert reported in 2008, “academics, city planners and people involved in running these facilities all point to a host of research that shows there is no evidence of crime rates spiking or real estate values plummeting near social-housing sites.”
Indeed, Vancouver police statistics show no significant change in the Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood for most crime categories between before the building's opening and last year, while certain categories — including robberies, car thefts, and thefts from vehicle — decreased noticeably, in line with city-wide trends.
Meanwhile, property values in Dunbar, clearly, haven't suffered over the past decade.
In the two years since Postmedia first reported on the Dunbar building's unusual deficiencies, several Dunbar residents contacted this reporter with questions and concerns. If these readers' emails are any indication of the feeling in the neighbourhood, it appears the community has moved from concerns, 13 years ago, about the prospective tenants of the social-housing building, to concerns, today, for the current tenants of the structure.
Several Dunbar neighbours expressed sympathy for the building's residents, forced to live for more than two years in homes covered by scaffolding and tarps while repair crews work on the building.
Longtime Dunbar resident Gordon Brown has lived near 16th and Dunbar for the past 15 years, and remembers neighbourhood concerns in the years before the social housing was built.
But, he said this week, he hasn't seen “a material noticeable change” for the worse in the neighbourhood since then. And now, he sympathizes with the residents living under tarps through twoplus-years of repairs.
“I'm just a regular taxpayer who does not appreciate wasteful spending,” Brown said. “They could house probably another 20 individuals with the cost of this remediation. So one of the questions has to be: Are they going to recover this from the contractor, the builder, somebody? Is it fair for the taxpayer to be footing the bill for this?”
Are they going to recover this from the contractor, the builder, somebody? Is it fair for the taxpayer to be footing the bill?”
Gordon Brown