Vancouver won't hit affordable housing targets without more money, report says
The provincial and federal governments need to make “significant” additional investments if Vancouver is to meet targets for below-market housing, according to a report from city staff.
With six months to go, only 11 of the more than 1,500 below-market units demanded by the province have been built and the report makes clear that without more money, getting them built “is not possible.”
Jill Atkey, CEO of the B.C. Non-profit Housing Association, said there simply isn't enough provincial or federal funding available to meet the below-market targets the province set for municipalities.
“What's presented in this report is stark and shocking on one hand, but not at all surprising,” Atkey said, noting housing providers told the province right from the beginning that more money would be needed.
“Municipalities and non-profits can't magically create affordability,” she said.
Atkey said she was happy that the province included affordability targets, something that hasn't been done in many other jurisdictions. But senior levels of government need to invest heavily to make it work. “The only way to create that level of affordability on Day 1 of the project is by investing in it, and that's the follow through that we need to see now,” she said.
Vancouver has a grant program, funded in part by the city's empty homes tax, to support building non-profit or co-op housing. B.C. Housing funds the development of affordable rental housing and the province announced its B.C. Builds program in February.
Combined, the programs don't provide enough funding to meet the targets for below-market housing set by the province, Atkey said, noting a recent round of provincial funding for affordable rental housing had more applications than it could fund.
“We've starved the system for so long,” Atkey said. “Now, we're trying to both make up for that backlog and address new demand created every year by population growth. It's really hard to do both of those at the same time.”
SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
More than 100 of the 1,500 new below-market units the province wants built in Vancouver need to be supportive housing, which include on-site support for people transitioning out of homelessness.
No new supportive housing units have been added in the sixmonth time frame, according to the report. And several temporary supportive housing sites, including 98 units on the site of the new Vancouver Art Gallery on Georgia Street and 39 units at the Aneki Housing for Women in the Downtown Eastside, have or will be shuttered.
The provincial housing targets' order, issued in September 2023, requires Vancouver to have 28,900 net new units to be built within a five-year period ending Sept. 30, 2028. Nearly 8,500 of those need to be below-market or supportive housing.
While meeting the overall firstyear targets seems unlikely, the mayor's office was confident that the city wouldn't only meet, but also exceed the five-year provincial target.
“While completions may be lower than anticipated, it's crucial to recognize the unprecedented volume of projects currently instream. Our current development pipeline has approximately 32,600 units of housing at various stages of application,” the mayor's office said in a statement.
The statement didn't directly address the shortfall in affordable rental housing, though the report highlighted several continuing projects that would eventually increase supply in the coming years, including the Broadway Plan, where 1,300 new, below-market units have been proposed so far.