After being stung by four years of criticism about its giveaways to developers to create rental, Vision Vancouver politicians (oops, of course, I should say, “staff”) have decided to test a new model for building rental apartments. The city will give four pieces of land to a consortium of non-profit housing groups and the B.C. [...]

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As many know, Mayor Gregor Robertson announced last week that the city would hold off on proceeding for the moment with one of the tower applications for the West End. The community group that has been doggedly campaigning for a change to the city program that led to this tower application gave it cautious approval [...]

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Developer Ian Gillespie and architect Gregory Henriquez are partnering with Vancity and Habitat for Humanity to build a project that is affordable to people with incomes in the $26,000-$36,000 range, as I detail in my Globe story today. This is sure to set off another interesting debate about affordability (what is it, what does it [...]

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In the last election, Non-Partisan Association organizers were dismayed at their reception in the West End during the campaign. “We gave up phoning because there was no point,” said one. The renters there hated the NPA for not doing more to protect the neighbourhood’s rental buildings, which felt like they were under attack from owners [...]

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There isn’t a growing community in North America that isn’t at least a little bit concerned about how to create lower-cost housing and how to create denser communities with less environmental impact. Even so, it will probably surprise some to hear that West Van is one of those communities. The city has negotiated with British [...]

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For those who haven’t spotted it, The Tyee and Monte Paulsen have an interesting series starting on affordable housing. The series looks at how shipping containers, which are ubiquitous around the world, can be used for housing. I admire them for taking on this topic. And I’ve seen shipping containers used ingeniously in a few [...]

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Many cities have complained about the lack of rental apartments being built. Few have done anything. That’s largely because it’s been seen as beyond the financial ability of cities to start subsidizing something as expensive as housing. But Vancouver is going to give it a try, as I outline in my Globe story here.

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It’s a difficult story to follow but the Saga of Northeast False Creek is a fascinating one and will continue to develop because there are so many interests at play in that area, the big stretch of land that faces the Olympic village across False Creek. There’s a tussle over whether the Vancouver Art Gallery [...]

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If you’d like to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at the cemetery listening to people talk about how to create affordable housing in Vancouver, you can. The Vision Vancouver council’s latest task force/brainstorming/collective put in place to hone in on an issue — in this case, how to create affordable and rental housing — is [...]

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It’s official. The Ritz-Carlton project being developed by the Holborn Company is now being cancelled, with letters going on to buyers this week, as reported by Bruce Constantineau at the Sun. This is sure to rev up the engines of those critical of what’s happened at Little Mountain, the social-housing project that the province awarded [...]

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