Renewing leases on co-ops will aid affordability

Council can make it happen, Shauna Sylvester writes.

Ask Vera Enshaw where she might go if her current home is no longer an option and her immediate answer is a prolonged silence.

“I really don’t know. My husband and I are both approaching retirement age. We live in a two-bedroom home that we could not ever, ever afford outside of this co-op. Or anywhere else in Vancouver.”

But it’s a reality that Enshaw and her husband may have to face quite soon along with thousands of others. Their co-op’s land lease with the City of Vancouver is due to expire, despite nearly a decade of efforts to have the city renew it.

Meanwhile, La Petite Maison Co-op has continued to deteriorate. There have been expensive, short-term fixes along the way to remove mould and keep other issues at bay, but what the co-op really needs is a full envelope remediation, expected to cost about $3 million.

Nobody is willing to lend them the money, however, because of the soon-to-expire lease. And so the co-op is left in a housing limbo. It’s the same story with nearly 50 other co-ops across the City of Vancouver. They are waiting for a signature that would secure badly needed affordable housing tenure, allow members to move forward with repairs and, in some cases, pursue partnerships and redevelopment opportunities that would create even more affordable housing.

Co-op housing is a critical component of the affordable housing spectrum, supporting some of the most diverse communities in Vancouver and throughout B.C.

The co-op model brings together individuals and families from a mix of income levels and all manner of backgrounds, creating strong, vibrant communities supported by safe, secure and permanently affordable housing. These are places where neighbours look out for one another, help fill in the child-care gaps for a single parent, pick up groceries for an elderly resident, welcome people with disabilities, and where everyone pitches in for the good of the whole.

We often talk about the importance of community — creating it, nurturing it, strengthening it — but the lack of progress on securing the leases of co-op housing developments in Vancouver shows that talk is just talk.

There are more than 100 co-ops in Vancouver housing more than 6,000 people. There are about 3,900 co-op units with leases set to expire within the next 10 years (some before 2021), some of those are three-, four- and fivebedroom homes — exactly the kind of affordable family housing that is nearly impossible to find in Vancouver.

The process to renew these leases is straightforward.

It requires simply reviewing the documents already provided to the city on behalf of the co-ops with expiring leases, agreeing to a lease rate in keeping with the non-profit model and signing on the dotted line.

And it is critical that this be done immediately before our current government leaves office in November.

The Enshaws have lived in and loved their co-op home since 1977. They have made a commitment to building community in this city and now they, and thousands of others, want the city to do the same. So, please Mayor Robertson and city council, support an affordable model that works for low- and middle-income earners from all walks of life and renew the leases on co-ops in Vancouver.

Nobody is willing to lend them the money ... because of the soon-to-expire lease.