Housing minister slammed in mock ceremony
B.C.’s housing minister was dishonoured with a mock ceremony Saturday that slammed the provincial government for its failure to replace social housing at Little Mountain in East Vancouver.
Saturday marked a decade since B.C. Housing told the about 700 residents of Little Mountain’s 224 social-housing units that it was selling the 15.2-acre property at 155 East 37th Ave. A year later developer Holborn Group bought the site under a public-private partnership agreement.
Residents were told they’d move back during the summer of 2010 and a majority of the housing was demolished in 2009. But it wasn’t until April 2015 that a single social-housing building opened on the site with just 53 units.
A few dozen supporters showed up Saturday in the pouring rain at Ontario Street and 37th Avenue, where Community Advocates for Little Mountain or CALM had promised a “creative and unusual ceremony” to commemorate the anniversary.
There, David Chudnovsky, NDP MLA for Vancouver-Kensington from 2005 to 2009, gave a speech dripping with sarcasm.
“We live in a world-class province and a world-class city,” he said. “Who knew, back in 2007, that the Liberal government would create the world-class vacant lot that we see before us today?”
Chudnovsky said CALM felt the people of B.C. should never forget the vacant lot. The group wanted to honour Christy Clark’s government and Housing Minister Rich Coleman appropriately, he said.
And with that, he pulled back a bright-pink sheet to reveal a plaque reading: “Let us never forget the Rich Coleman Vacant Lot, which took the place of the Little Mountain Housing Project.”
The rain-soaked crowed laughed before turning to sharing painful stories of loss at Little Mountain.
Ingrid Steenhuisen, whose family lived there since 1957, said losing her home there felt like saying goodbye to a community which had become “one large extended family.”
For her mother, it was the only home she’d known since moving to Canada.
“Knowing how we all helped one another was the biggest part of it,” Steenhuisen said. “Tearing people away from everything and everyone that they know and value and trust — that’s displacement, that’s not relocation.”
Linda Shuto, a founding member of CALM, said the land sale devastated everyone who lived there.
Tenants were terrified and remained fearful of speaking to media Saturday because they worry it might hurt their chances of returning to Little Mountain when the project is finally complete, she said.
Shuto said she believes Little Mountain could have become the model of mixed housing.
“Instead we have a vacant lot,” she said. “We have a big hole in the ground for 10 years.”
Vancouver council didn’t approve Holborn Group’s rezoning application until July 2016.
Holborn plans to replace all 224 previous social-housing units as well as add 10 more units for indigenous tenants. Another 48 social-housing units will be owned by the City of Vancouver.
On its website, Holborn pitches Little Mountain as “one of the most sought-after communities to live in,” slated to be rezoned for about 1,400 units of market housing, a neighbourhood house and daycare facility, retail and commercial space, a village square and public spaces.