General Vancouver Development Updates II

[jollyburger]

Vancouver’s land development plan could help pay for city budget, chief of staff says

Vancouver’s ambitious plan to develop thousands of market-rate apartments on city land could eventually bring in enough money to cover almost half of the municipal operating budget, Mayor Ken Sim’s chief of staff says.

That’s the long-term goal, said Trevor Ford, who enthusiastically described the plan as the equivalent of what Vienna, Singapore or the University of British Columbia have done by developing their own land. Vancouver’s current operating budget is $2.34-billion.

The city plans to build 4,300 market-rate apartments as a pilot project on five pieces of city land, becoming a major landlord of for-profit rentals to households earning up to $194,000, and then expand that program significantly with new sites in the coming years.

“In 40 years, it has the potential to cover hundreds of millions of dollars of the city’s operating budget. That is the estimate,” Mr. Ford said.

The city is the largest single landowner in Vancouver, with more than 700 properties in its portfolio. About 230 of them are home to 13,000 social-housing apartments.

Vancouver’s initiative, announced in February, is a highly unusual one for a North American city and in sharp contrast to previous efforts here, which have focused almost exclusively on providing subsidized housing.

The Colliers report noted that, although the city plans to limit rents somewhat in order to make their new apartments available and attractive to middle-income households, it can’t get financing from the federal Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation unless it provides a certain proportion of apartments at below-market rents.

The report makes it clear that the city is counting on getting low-interest loans from CMHC as a way of reducing the overall development cost.

In part of the report focusing on assessing various risks, it noted that the pilot projects are very large-scale developments coming into a challenging market.

The report suggested that the city assume no more than 40 absorptions a month and that it phase its large developments so that there aren’t too many units coming onto the market at once.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...n-city-budget/