People cross a street in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, in a Jan. 31, 2023, file photo.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
The City of Vancouver is asking residents to consider a dramatic change in the kind of development that will be allowed in one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods, proposing towers of up to 32 storeys and loosening restrictions on the amount of market housing allowed.
City planners are positioning their proposed changes as a way to provide more social housing and more “housing options” by encouraging new development in the Downtown Eastside.
But the proposed changes to the historic area, home to thousands of low-income, mentally ill or drug-addicted residents, have prompted warnings that the new policy will lead to gentrification and make the neighbourhood unaffordable. Supporters say it could revitalize an area that has verged on squalor.
“By changing regulations to allow for more market rental housing and higher building forms, more buildings with deeply discounted below-market rental or social housing units can be built,” say the documents the city has released as public consultations begin. “The addition of market rental units to the neighbourhood will lead to a more mixed-income community, but tenant protections will ensure existing residents are able to remain in the neighbourhood in better housing.”
The initiative, which is open for public consultation until May 16 to be followed by a report in the fall, follows an internal strategy for the Downtown Eastside mapped out by the ruling ABC council last fall.
Among the changes proposed is moving to an 80-per-cent market rental/20-per-cent social housing formula – the standard for the rest of the city. Currently, the Downtown Eastside plan calls for new development in the neighbourhood to be 60 per cent social housing and 40 per cent secured market rental.
That ABC strategy, which also suggested there be no new additions to the city’s supportive-housing stock, called for a change in the existing Downtown Eastside plan.
Under that 2014 plan, only 600 market rental units have been built, less than half of what was anticipated. The area saw 1,800 social- and supportive-housing apartments built, with 700 more under construction, and 1,200 condos. Only two buildings meeting the 60/40 rule were ever built.
There have been calls by many outside the Downtown Eastside to change the overall plan, saying the neighbourhood suffers from a lack of both new investment and a healthy blend of middle-class residents in the existing population.
“For 10 years, I’ve been trying to get them to change this,” said developer Michael Geller. “They need to allow condos to normalize the neighbourhood.”
Mr. Geller said he doesn’t think the plan goes far enough because it’s only changing the ratio of market rental and social-housing rental.
“They have to have a mix of market rental and ownership to make the neighbourhood a bit more like other neighbourhoods.”
But others fear changing the zoning to encourage market development will unleash a wave of land speculation, price increases and eventual pressure on existing residents to move out.
The old plan “has done a remarkable job of cooling land values, so it made it a perfect place to build social housing,” said Sean Orr, the new Coalition of Progressive Electors councillor whose campaign focused on saving affordable housing.
Rezoning the area will mean big lifts in land values and pressure on the owners of the old residential hotels in the neighbourhood, which provide some of the city’s cheapest rents, he said.
“It’s probably just a way to get people to move out,” Mr. Orr said, though he added it was good that planners were calling for strong tenant protections and mitigations to be established for the area.
Rebecca Bligh, a former ABC councillor who was expelled from the party earlier this year in part because of her criticism of its Downtown Eastside strategy, said she is concerned the planners’ initiative only seems to address one part of what the neighbourhood needs with its focus on development.
Ms. Bligh had received unanimous council support for her proposal calling for a more comprehensive plan that examined how to improve the area in several ways, including more support for community economic development.
She said Wednesday she will be cautiously watching the consultations and final development plan, saying she’s concerned about the narrow focus and short timeline. “ABC has shown they just want the quick fix.”
But Dan Garrison, Vancouver’s director of housing policy, said the proposal would require much more in the way of low-cost units than elsewhere in the city.
“The proposed changes are intended to address the housing crisis, accelerate SRO [single room occupancy] replacement and enable the creation of affordable housing in the DTES.”
ABC councillor Mike Klassen said that, while there is some risk of gentrification, he is counting on staff to put in strong tenant protections.
As well, he said, the risk also comes with some rewards, since development will provide the city with funding to replace the old hotel rooms “that we’ve been stuck with for decades” and potentially revitalize a historic neighbourhood that has declined.