Social Housing in Vancouver - The 14 Sites

[whatnext]

Wow, sounds like some pretty major problems wth the building at Dunbar and 16th. How does this still happen? It's not rocket science!

Only nine years after a local company was paid $8.5 million to construct a 51-unit social housing building in Vancouver, provincial taxpayers are on the hook for extensive repairs there expected to cost $4.5 million.

It’s not clear who is responsible for the deficiencies at the Dunbar Apartments on Vancouver’s west side. For now, the province is footing the bill for the repairs, which a building maintenance professional described as a “hugely unusual” amount of work for a building that new.

B.C. Housing, which owns the building, said by email that repairs and upgrades were expected to take 12 months using money drawn from the province’s capital renewal fund. It said it had identified “deficiencies with some of the materials and construction methods utilized on the exterior of the building.”..

...“The scope of work includes a complete replacement of the brick veneer and replacement of the metal cladding panels in some locations due to inadequate strength of material and installation methods,” said the statement from B.C. Housing spokeswoman, Laura Mathews. “Crews will also be removing and reinstalling all windows to ensure proper waterproofing.”

Mechanical upgrades are also underway in the basement parking level, Mathews said, and the balcony drains are being replaced, because “water is accumulating up to the emergency balcony overflow drains.”

Building maintenance professionals at four different Metro Vancouver companies spoke on the condition they would not be identified in print because they did not want to hurt their prospects for future work.

They all agreed: Even without having access to a detailed building condition assessment, the basic details of the problems at the Dunbar Apartments raise unusual red flags.

“For a building nine years old, that’s an awful lot of money. Something went wrong,” one said. “Something of that age shouldn’t be going through these problems, that’s not common.”...

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news...y-unusual-problems-at-vancouver-building