Little Mountain sale records ordered released in FOI battle
The long-secret and much-discussed details of one of B.C.'s most controversial public land sales is one step closer to the light of day, thanks to a two-year battle to unearth the provincial government's original deal to sell Vancouver's Little Mountain social-housing property.
“This is a good day for those who care about transparency,” said David Chudnovsky, the retired politician who has fought for years for greater scrutiny of the government's 2008 sale of Little Mountain to Holborn Holdings, a Vancouver development firm owned by one of Malaysia's wealthiest families.
Chudnovsky pushed B. C.'s then-Liberal government for details on Little Mountain's redevelopment when it was announced in 2007, while he was the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Kensington. After retiring from politics, he kept on the issue, filing a Freedom of Information (FOI) request in 2018 seeking the sale contract.
Last week, an adjudicator with B.C.'s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) ordered the contract should be released, a decision Chudnovsky called “tremendously significant.”
Most of the six-hectare Little Mountain site in East Van, once home to almost 800 people in 224 non-market homes, was demolished in 2009. Although Holborn pledged to rebuild all the social housing, the property has sat mostly vacant for more than a decade, to the frustration of many. During that time, Holborn developed the recently shuttered Trump Hotel in Downtown Vancouver.
Holborn didn't reply to a request for comment this week. In the past, the company has said it's working hard to develop Little Mountain, including the replacement of social housing and new-market homes, but progress has been delayed.
Community housing activists have for years called for transparency on the deal, and Vancouver city council voted unanimously this year to support full-disclosure. A 2018 Postmedia News investigation revealed new details about the $334 million sales agreement between the province and Holborn, including a structure that allowed Holborn to delay paying most of the funds to the province.
In 2019, B.C. Housing replied to Chudnovsky's FOI request, sending him 99 pages of contract documents. But at the request of a third party — who he assumed to be Holborn — the records were so heavily redacted that they were, in Chudnovsky's view, almost useless.
Chudnovsky sought a review from the OIPC, and received a decision last week in his favour. Although the deal is more than a decade old, it still matters, Chudnovsky said.
Many people are “skeptical about whether this deal was ever in the interests of the people of the city of Vancouver,” Chudnovsky said. “But now we're going to be able to find out.”