Second, the result of the decision not to phase the development was the emptying of 224 units of habitable housing in the midst of the worst crisis of homelessness since the Great Depression. Most of the units have been empty now for more than a year. The best case scenario is that the replacement social housing will be completed three years from now. Given the history of the 14 city social housing sites that were announced in November 2007, some of which were promised to be finished by the Olympics, is there anyone confident that the new Little Mountain social housing will be completed on schedule?

Third, if we look at the Millenium fiasco it’s reasonable to be skeptical of the pledge by Holborn to build the social housing first. What happens if the economics of the deal change just like they did for Millenium? Will the government simply re-negotiate the deal so that we subsidize Holborn and the social housing ends up costing much more than it needed to?

That’s one of the reasons why the structure of this deal was a mistake from the beginning. Why in the world does the government need to privatize land that belongs to the people of the province to build social housing? If they wanted to have a new park would they sell off nine-tenths of Queen Elizabeth Park and some day maybe buy land somewhere else for more parks and then tell us how clever they are? That’s what’s happening here. If the government felt it needed to derive a benefit from the land, they could easily have structured a deal that leased out parcels of the Little Mountain site and collected rent for ever. That way the province – that’s you and me – would have increased control over just what type of development would go in. And our children would have the same control the next the site time the site is redeveloped.

Fourth, the Little Mountain site is huge. Why simply replace the 224 units of social housing that have been there since 1954? Do we really need 1200 or 1500 more expensive condos in Vancouver. Thousands of people are homeless and tens of thousands of working class and middle class families struggle to afford a place to live? Little Mountain could be a model, with 2 or 3 times the number of social housing units, co-ops and rental housing that people could afford to live in. But that isn’t Coleman’s or Campbell’s priority.

The spin attached to all of this has been breathtaking. How many times has Coleman said that the units at Little Mountain are unsafe and not habitable? How many times did he reject the call from all over the community to spend a few thousand dollars on each of the units to upgrade them so that people desperately in need of housing would have someplace to live. It was impossible he said. So now what happens? BC housing upgrades a few of the units – for a few dollars each – so that the remaining tenants can stay for a while. That’s precisely what people have been suggesting for years and precisely what Coleman said was impossible for years.

The other part of the spin is even more insidious. Coleman and BC Housing have peddled the notion – over and over – that critics of their ill-considered scheme are against any redevelopment. We’re ‘anti-progress’. We don’t ever want any change. This, of course, is hogwash. Virtually every one of Coleman’s critics have said EVERY TIME they’ve spoken on the issue, that redevelopment is a good idea if it’s done right. But Coleman keeps on spinning his tales and much of the media eats it up.

One more point. The residents – both those who lived at Little Mountain and their neighbours – were promised meaningful consultation about what would happen on the site. There would be consultation with the developer, with the province, with BC Housing, with the city. None of that has happened. And consultation with the former residents is a dead issue now. They are scattered across the city and beyond. Let’s see how much real consultation there is from here on in. I expect neighbours will be asked for their input on the colour of the paint on the trim of the 224 social housing units and not much at all about the hundreds of high priced condos that will make up the overwhelming mass of the development.

not habitable private
consultation

GJG, where in the world did you get this information? It simply is not true. You may be confusing the return a developer looks for, as a percentage of total costs, when he’s creating a new DEVELOPMENT, and the INVESTMENT return on a completed project. (Sometimes referred as the Cap Rate.)

BTW, most developers and their lenders would like to see a ‘proforma’ which sets out the revenues and costs projecting something closer to 20% when a project starts. The Cap rate that an investor will accept varies for product type, potential risks, etc. Some large pension funds may by a property if they think it will show a minimum 5% return, but most private investors are looking for something more, unless the property has redevelopment potential.

The issue with Holborn’s purchase of Little Mountain, in my opinion, is they offered to pay too much for the property, because they were in a competition, an ‘auction’ if you like, which can often force someone to pay more than they should. By dragging the phasing out over a longer period of time, they probably think that they will have a better chance of recouping the high land payment.

1 “The village includes 737 market condos, of which 263 have sold, 120 market rental apartments and 250 proposed affordable housing apartments.”
2 “The condo buildings are striving for LEED Gold. They will reuse rainwater for toilets and irrigation and more than half have green roofs. The Net Zero Building, designed to be 64 units of affordable housing for seniors, is topped with huge solar thermal hot water panels that will generate heat equivalent to 90 per cent of the building’s annual energy consumption.”
3 “Reporters were shown a 1,779-square-foot, ninth-floor, three-bedroom condo with 400 square feet of patio space. For now, the island in the kitchen that’s open to the living room and all the kitchen fixtures are covered with wheat board. After the athletes leave, the tiled carpet will be ripped out and replaced with hardwood flooring and a third layer of stark white paint will be applied to the walls.Bob Rennie, of Rennie Marketing Systems, expects to market the apartment for about $2 million next May once the village is returned to the city in April.” All of the units include portable energy consumption monitors for residents’ information. Rennie said energy savings will be evaluated in two years’ time.”
4 “The fate of the 250 units proposed for social housing is expected to be determined by city council this month.”

Comments to the above paragraphs:
1 WHAT WAS PREVIOUSLY known as “250 AFFORDABLE HOUSING APARTMENTS” HAVE NOW BECOME “250 PROPOSED…” 
2 THIS EXPLAINS WHERE ALL THE MONEY WENT. We will definitely LOOK GOOD IN THE EYES OF THE IOC. HOWEVER, WE’LL END UP DEALING IN IOU BANKNOTES. The legacy of this mega project was supposed to be an integrated community, people from all walks of life, incomes, backgrounds, living together in harmony. If the social element will be scrapped the legacy will be flushed down the low flow sustainable toilets. LEED Platinum of course!
3 THIS IS IT (NOT MICHAEL JACKSON’s DVD). MONEY, MONEY, MONEY per square foot. The only “t-ree-al” estates not peddled by Rennie are the heron’s nests up in the trees across from the Park Board building at the edge of Stanley Park. He would sell those too if he could; to an offshore heron investor, of course. 
4 NOT DECIDED, STILL. What a lot of BS. A bunch of self serving politicians are going to “revisit” the matter. I’m asking …Why? I can’t believe we gave these people jobs… 

In conclusion:
Anybody interested can easily follow the entire chain of events and take the Olympic Village as future template for the political / development mess; the back-room deals, the deception, the corruption, the crass incompetence, and the partisan decision making. Why would anybody believe a single word of what the decision makers are telling us now, regarding the future Little Mountain development when they have no clue as what to do about the OV in a few weeks?
Are you familiar with the story about the boy who cried wolf? If not, become. How long are the people of BC going to allow themselves to be lied to? Whoever expects some truthful answers from the official liars in Victoria or Vancouver is naive.
We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

It is the first of what some anticipate will become a provincewide approach to replacing postwar social housing and generating money for new projects.

Vancouver city planning director Brent Toderian confirmed this week that the province has approached the city about a redevelopment for Little Mountain social housing, which would increase the site’s density by at least six times, if not more.

Little Mountain, built in 1954 and home to about 800 people, sits on six hectares of prime land near Queen Elizabeth Park in central Vancouver.

“The province has made clear its aspirations,” said Toderian. “And it is certainly thinking about opportunities that may exceed the current zoning.”

Toderian, city councillors and housing advocates all say the idea of redevelopment is exciting and needed. But they all want to see the province meet certain conditions in order to do it.

That includes providing at least as many social-housing units as exist now, if not more; building a complete new neighbourhood with amenities; and making sure that existing tenants are housed during any dislocation, with the right to move back.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman has been talking for months to various parties, indicating he would like to sell off portions of the land that B.C.-owned social housing now sits on in order to finance the redevelopment of its aging stock.

Toronto recently decided to redevelop its largest social-housing project, Regent Park, although it is maintaining control of the land. But private developers will rebuild the massive project one phase at a time, with the end result that 2,083 social housing units will be replaced by a mix of about 2,000 social housing units and 2,500 market ones.

Little Mountain, the oldest social housing project in B.C. and also the one with the least existing housing and most available land, is the first and prime candidate in line for that kind of redevelopment.

B.C. got control of Little Mountain last June, when the federal government handed over the 17,300 social housing units in its portfolio to B.C. as part of its 15-year effort to get out of social housing.

Coleman, who has talked about putting as many as 2,000 units on the land, did not return a call from The Vancouver Sun Tuesday.

However, Toderian said the city is preparing a report to respond to the province’s proposal, scheduled to come to council by mid-April.

The city’s housing centre director, Cameron Gray, said the six-hectare site now has only 225 residences. Current zoning would allow up to about 1,000 units in buildings of no more than four storeys.

Going to 2,000 units would require a rezoning.

Toderian said that kind of redevelopment will only happen if the new, dense neighbourhood provides a benefit for the city.

“I would be disappointed if we weren’t taking this opportunity to create a sustainable community,” he said.

Coun. Suzanne Anton, the city’s biggest advocate for its EcoDensity initiative, said she believes the province should be asked to put in more social housing units than now exist.

“I think we should maximize the social-housing component,” she said. “Given the history of the site, we should have more than the status quo.”

Alice Sundberg, executive director of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, said people in her sector are watching this development closely.

They want to see the province not just replace existing units, but make sure those units go to the same mix of people they did before.

“A big problem to us is that [provincial politicians] don’t care about family housing any more.

“Our association has always been in support of redevelopment and intensifying sites to pay for that redevelopment. But what’s going to happen to the families that used to live there?”

Sundberg said the B.C. government has moved increasingly to providing housing only for people who have special needs, not low-income families, except through rent supplements, which she says don’t work well in a tight housing market such as Vancouver’s.

That’s something Magdalena Ayala knows about.

Ayala has lived at Little Mountain for 19 years. She and her husband and four children live in a three-bedroom townhouse, paying about $900 a month rent when none of their children is working.

That $900 is 30 per cent of the income in her household, between her job as an office cleaner and her husband’s construction job at the Concord Pacific towers going up over Costco downtown.

“Everybody says to me, ‘Magdalena, where you live is the best.’

” It’s peaceful, there is shopping, everything nearby.”

She can’t imagine finding anything with the kind of space she has now (the townhouses include a basement) in the neighbourhood or, in fact, anywhere else in the Lower Mainland.

Her neighbour, Ingrid Steenhuisen, agrees.

Steenhuisen, whose family moved into the complex when she was a baby in 1957, said it’s always been the kind of housing that worked well for families, giving them a chance to get on their feet economically and well designed for families.

All the kitchens look out over children’s play areas so parents can watch over their children while making meals.

Steenhuisen hasn’t been able to get any information from B.C. Housing about what will happen to Little Mountain.

“It has all been rumour. I’ve been trying to get answers since last June.

“This has always been a great place to live for families and we would like to keep that.”

fbula@png.canwest.com

How similar to the handover of False Creek territory after Expo 86. So wonderful to have these hallmark events putting our city on the map and helping short-sighted profiteers to sell it out.

Till now I’ve been occupied with visiting ground zero, envisioning that Olympic parking lot, and regretting the functional shelter that could have stood for another ten years.

A dozen comments, and nothing but silence on the destructive Olympic agenda.