Downtown Vancouver Updates

[dleung]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Lol this is insane. Especially that 5-foot strip of saleable area between the core and east facade. At this point, they should've just gone with a side-loaded core, and focus the square footage on one side. Lots of corridor wasted just to get to the north unit (could've had the utility closets face the elevators within the core). They could've easily got the same unit distribution on the south side without skewing all the unit entrances east to the stairs. The east corner studio is less efficient and should be bigger than the middle studio. Trying to understand the logic here...

The unit make-up suggests something heavily subsidized. I share Klazu's concerns that this is wasteful if taxpayer funded.

[rofina]

Originally Posted by dleung

Lol this is insane. Especially that 5-foot strip of saleable area between the core and east facade. At this point, they should've just gone with a side-loaded core, and focus the square footage on one side. Lots of corridor wasted just to get to the north unit (could've had the utility closets face the elevators within the core). They could've easily got the same unit distribution on the south side without skewing all the unit entrances east to the stairs. The east corner studio is less efficient and should be bigger than the middle studio. Trying to understand the logic here...

The unit make-up suggests something heavily subsidized. I share Klazu's concerns that this is wasteful if taxpayer funded.

Its asinine.

The people here who are defending the market conditions and policies that got us here are borderline insane.

I get that proformas have to work, I get that viewcones are baked into the pie, I get costs per sq/ft, I get maximizing sellable space. I get it all.

But ultimately this is housing for humans.

I don't want this City to be Hong Kong - living in cages is not ok, living in 1 bedroom condos with 5 people in micro rooms is not ok.

Its so insanely frustrating to hear all the reasoning - I understand it all.

But there is no preordained, written in stone, defended by the Kraken, reason why we have to build such shitty product.

This is human notions, ideas, policies and obstacles that are getting us here, and all these ideas need to be disposed of if this is the future they bring.

This whole thing is asinine and frustrating.

[officedweller]

From Vancouver Market.ca twitter:


Rendering of new $80 Million Coal Harbour School/Affordable Housing Project.
Project will include a new elementary school, a new 65-space childcare and 60 social housing units.
Construction expected to begin Fall 2021 and completed in 2024.
https://twitter.com/vancouvermrkt


https://twitter.com/vancouvermrkt

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by officedweller

From Vancouver Market.ca twitter:


Rendering of new $80 Million Coal Harbour School/Affordable Housing Project.
Project will include a new elementary school, a new 65-space childcare and 60 social housing units.
Construction expected to begin Fall 2021 and completed in 2024.
https://twitter.com/vancouvermrkt


https://twitter.com/vancouvermrkt

Good to see this move forward. I hope the benefits aren't lost in the conversation/inevitable backlash about the cost of building social housing downtown.

From the report:

The estimated construction cost of the 60 social housing units is $36.5 million, or $0.6 million per unit on average. Including the imputed land value estimated at $25.4 million, the total housing development cost is $61.9 million, or $1 million per unit on average. The following table summarizes the development cost (imputed land value and construction cost) for each type of unit, ranging from $0.5 million for a studio to $1.4 million for a 3-bedroom unit.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

I hope the benefits aren't lost in the conversation/inevitable backlash about the cost of building social housing downtown.

Well, if upon a cost/benefit analysis, the costs are shown to substantially outweigh the benefits, then the project is pure folly and waste.

This is not just downtown; it's the most desirable, expensive, premium, waterfront real estate in the entire city, maybe the entire country. If the city removed barriers to a major redevelopment, this site could be sold for what? $200 million? $300 million? More? Even if the school was a mandatory component or CAC.

$1,000,000 per unit of social housing on ultra premium waterfront real estate, plus the lost opportunity to sell the land for many times more than the cost of this absurdly expensive social housing, is totally irrational. A conversation in which the benefits are shown to be overwhelmingly outweighed by the costs is precisely what should have happened a long time ago before this idiotic and wasteful idea moved forward.

[Klazu]

Have to agree with Prometheus that this makes no financial sense. I am also not sure mixing social housing and elementary school is the wisest of ideas, but this is Vancouver in 2020.

I bet the neighboring property owners are loving this development.

[jollyburger]

How much social housing could you make by selling this land and building it elsewhere. I think that's a fair question.

[MistyMountain]

I don't think the city would want to have to deal with splitting ownership with a bunch of homeowners, and the school needs to be built here, so it's really social housing or nothing.

The only real difference is construction costs between here and elsewhere, which are pretty negligible. Also, again social housing doesn't mean it's going to be rock bottom prices. They could end up renting the units out for near market prices and using the profit to subsidize housing elsewhere.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Have to agree with Prometheus that this makes no financial sense. I am also not sure mixing social housing and elementary school is the wisest of ideas, but this is Vancouver in 2020.

I bet the neighboring property owners are loving this development.

What's the problem with putting social housing on top of an elementary school? There's not a lot of publicly owned land, so using the space above a new facility seems entirely appropriate. There are recent city projects that put family social housing on top of a new library, and a new fire station. Thirty-five of these units will be family units - two or three bed, right next to a community centre that has a park and play area on the roof.

The neighbours shouldn't have a problem - on the other side of the community centre the City built C-side - a rental tower with family social housing in the bottom in 2002, and in the opposite direction a block away is the Coal Harbour Housing Co-op, which is also mostly family sized social housing units (developed in 1998).

The City's history of mixing market and non-market housing in the same areas is a long and successful one - even if there are some commentators who seem to think that only the rich are entitled to live in certain neighbourhoods and social housing should all be be built 'somewhere else'.

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Good to see this move forward. I hope the benefits aren't lost in the conversation/inevitable backlash about the cost of building social housing downtown.
........

Good luck with that.....

{*.....checks ensuing comments....*}


....oops,....too late.

[WarrenC12]

It's a good proposal and the school should have been built 10 years ago, but is the funding in place or is this just a plan?

[connect2source]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Have to agree with Prometheus that this makes no financial sense. I am also not sure mixing social housing and elementary school is the wisest of ideas, but this is Vancouver in 2020.

I bet the neighboring property owners are loving this development.

They certainly are not, I have clients wanting to list immediately in Denia, directly across Broughton who's water views will be partially blocked.

[SeymourDrake]

I can't help but get the vibe from some of the population that think that Social Housing automatically links the tenants to former homelessness, criminal activity, mental illness, drug use and so on.

It reminds me of a lot of how americans think. They think Individually vs as a community.

Who knows at the Rate we're going it might be one of you needing a hand up.

[bluefox]

Originally Posted by SeymourDrake

I can't help but get the vibe from some of the population that think that Social Housing automatically links the tenants to former homelessness, criminal activity, mental illness, drug use and so on.

It reminds me of a lot of how americans think. They think Individually vs as a community.

Who knows at the Rate we're going it might be one of you needing a hand up.

Exactly this. Some of the temporary modular housing put up was earmarked for low-income couples, single mothers with children, people on the brink of not being able to afford market-rate units and in danger of being homeless, etc., not the boogeyman criminals who deal drugs, or people with substance use issues. But that of course ends up being lost in nuance, because it doesn't allow us to complain, and it doesn't drive clicks or sell papers.

What it really speaks to is that our government has fundamentally failed for years to properly fund and build public housing, and that we've put ourselves in a situation as a society where a genuine need for housing stock for people on lower incomes is being conflated with other needs because we sit on our hands, period. We're not building supportive housing for people we could keep from becoming homeless *and* we're not building housing and offering adequate services to help people who are on our streets suffering from substance and mental health issues. How many times have you heard someone complain about Riverview closing and then five minutes later they're off on a rant about how much money gets wasted on social services in the DTES? What's the alternative, then?

Much of that is due to the fact that as Canadians we obsess over every last penny of government spending to the point that we lack the courage to act, because at the end of the day Joe Q. Taxpayer would rather not have to think about the fact there's a homeless guy down the street, and politicians would rather stay in office than deal with public anger about "handouts" and "freeloaders". We've twisted the idea of fairness into a pretzel where we think that because we might finally act to ensure everyone in society has a roof over their heads, that's somehow unfair to the people who were able to buy a house or pay rent without assistance. The generalizations about who needs social housing, what kind of housing, and who benefits from it are really striking in a supposedly progressive city like Vancouver.

[Vancouver_Highrise]

100% agree with the above comments. A lot of the posts from certain members have come across as very ignorant.

[Migrant_Coconut]

A reminder that homeless housing =/= social housing = in this case, households under $300k.

[dreambrother808]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

A reminder that homeless housing =/= social housing = in this case, households under $300k.

Yes, the ignorance on this topic is stunning.

I know people living in social housing. They are just low income and this was the best option for them. Some are seniors, living with a disability, etc. Only one of them had an issue with drugs and that was 20 years ago...

[Spr0ckets]

Yep.
Lots of conflating between 'Social housing' and 'Homelessness/Homeless Housing' in this thread.

The irony of course is that a lot of the animus being expressed towards Social Housing projects like this one (or one in another thread) on account of them being located in places where most feel they shouldn't have the privilege of living, is also voiced by the same sort of folks who obviously hate the homelessness problem in general and the city's seeming inability to deal with it.

All while not realizing that things like social housing (which are meant to help with folks like low income families (i.e. they ARE working) and Seniors and people with disabilities and the like - in other words, people who more or less have their lives together for the most part) are usually here to partially act as a stop-gap to prevent those kinds of folks from falling further into the sort of homelessness/drug usage/crime type cycle that most abhor.

So you would think they would actually be supportive of projects like this (if you hate homelessness and the city's problem with it, so much).

I can't think of more better uses of taxpayer money if in fact they are being partially (or fully) subsidized.

The other alternatives might include using that same taxpayer money to house homeless folks in hotels, and I think we all know which option people hate even more.

[casper]

Originally Posted by connect2source

They certainly are not, I have clients wanting to list immediately in Denia, directly across Broughton who's water views will be partially blocked.

Sounds like your clients have issue with the loss of a waterfront view not with the building being social housing. That makes sense.

Being social housing on top of school is probably the best possible outcome for development of the that site from a view perspective. Anyone else would be pushing to build higher.

[Feathered Friend]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

It's a good proposal and the school should have been built 10 years ago, but is the funding in place or is this just a plan?

I believe the funding is now in place thanks to the VSB's deal with BC Hydro that allowed for the new subterranean substation on the Lord Roberts Annex property by Nelson Park.