May I suggest the buildings be super energy-efficient too? Operating costs are, after all, on the other side of the same ledger, and are all too often sacrificed to keep the initial capital bottom line as low as possible. Energy prices are also unpredictable over the life of a building, let alone the next three years.

“. Kind of like going to a plan drawing service”

Which is what much of the veteran’s housing was after the war. Pick one of 6 plans and the government funds it. There used to be another house plan shop next to the Broadway and Yukon licence office.

Much of South East Vancouver is old same-design Veterans Housing plans. Get on your bikes and have a look. Make notes and then go on the Shitty’s VanMap and see they are assessed at a million or more.

They didn’t make the Post Canada stamp 1998 series ( http://www.knpha.ca/housart.html ) but were servicable.

Others in the infamous area northeast of Renfrew Elementary.

Here’s 2 side by side in SE
http://www.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2188+E+55th+Ave,+Vancouver,+BC,+Canada&sll=49.219405,-123.062797&sspn=0.007092,0.013583&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=2188+E+55th+Ave,+Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&ll=49.223568,-123.062797&spn=0,359.986417&z=16&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=49.219402,-123.062793&panoid=-TCTNKyfhaeo7X7LDBsciw&cbp=12,205.02,,0,13.79
[hate these google refs]

…”The ‘Build Your Own Home’ Programme of the Veterans’ Land Act operated from the late
1940s until 1975 in urban, suburban, fringe and rural areas…. Published and archival documentation of the programme, however, focuses on those beneficiaries whose main source of income was wage employment, almost all of whom worked in urban areas.Urban workers could take advantage of the scheme in two ways. A veteran who applied under the small holdings programme could obtain the greatest benefits. … ‘

from
Schulist, Tricia and Harris, Richard(2002) ”Build Your Own Home’: state-assisted self-help housing in Canada, 1942-75′, Planning Perspectives, vol 17: issue 4, October 2002 , pages 345 – 372
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02665430210154759

http://members.shaw.ca/urbanismo/just.for.fun.pdf

Just for fun . . .

Maybe a tax lawyer could weigh into this idea, if it’s legally possibly. Have a non-profit issue a bond, but instead of paying interest on that bond issue tax receipts. For instance you buy a $1000 bond and it’s earns 6%. Each year you would get a charitable tax receipt for $60, and at the end of your term you receive the money back although a portion of people would happily reinvest so the money doesn’t all come out at once. Is this possible and has it been tried.

1. Two concerns

(i) “We know that the combination of housing, health care and social services can end a person’s homelessness and prevent future homelessness.” p14

That still leaves the neighbourhoods teetering on the edge. Home is not just the roof over our heads, it is also the “place” where the home is located.

The Board will remember this principle as “Location, location, location”. I think of it as “good” urbanism.

Assuming most of the homes are going into the Historic Neighbourhoods as they are today, it’s hard to reconcile than anyone in their right mind would invest this amount of capital into an area suffering from a bankrupt vision of planning.

(ii) Given that what is represented in the foundation are the best business brains in our community, I would have rather seen them tackle the issue of reinvesting in the neighbourhoods at a massive scale, and put the lobbying muscle to shifting the planning paradigm.

Making the historic neighbourhoods the next “Vancouver Miracle” has to be seen as part of solving homelessness.

2. Looking at the Streetohome Plan

Page 15 of “The Plan” breaks down the 10-year costs:

“$50 million—an average of $28,000 per unit for dedicated buildings, and $26,000 per unit for scattered sites.”

The yearly operating cost estimates (purpose built product):

1. Financing the development, construction (mortgage) $10,400
2. Operating & maintenance (strata fees) $5,100
3. Supports (assisted care) $12,500

Total $28,000 ($26,000 if in “scattered sites” or

1,600 housing units/purpose built $44,800,000
400 units scattered sites $10,400,000

Total $55,200,000 or $55.2 million to pay for, operate and support 2,000 units of assisted housing per year.

About $23 million per year or 42% are what I would term the costs of “software”, or providing the supports necessary to make it “assisted housing”, not just housing. Next, we can take a second cut at the building development or “hardware” costs of the issue.

3. Our Own Numbers for Construction

With Michael Geller’s help, we had generated here on this blog a figure of $1.15 million for a fee-simple, 4,000 s.f. house.

Retaining 800 s.f. for program space (shared facilities, recovery work, suite for live-in support worker, etc.), the house yields 3,200 s.f. for living space.

The building was based on one of two FormShift entries I designed with Ron Simpson. Thus, it fits the typical Vancouver neighbourhood plat, it works as architectural space, has parking, etc. Each house occupies its own plot of land. There are no SROs; the smallest unit is 400 s.f. If the scale of housing needs to be greater than, say 8 singles at a time, then two or more of these buildings can be developed together.

Portions of these buildings can be used as “market housing” providing a rental income to the house.

The 3,200 s.f. for living space per building could house:

2 full families
4 single parent families
8 single residents
16 SRO-replacement units

A yearly mortgage cost for the first 25 years might be in the $70,000 range, or $8,750 per single unit, per year. The question of Property Tax has to be addressed. Applying this building type to the “gap analysis” in housing established by HometoStreet, we get the following:

Page 11 of “The Plan” breaks down the “housing gap” of 2,006 units as:

602 youth (75 houses, 8 units each)
192 families (if single parent, 48 houses)
1212 Adults (152 houses, 8 units each)

275 houses total at $1.15 million or $316.3 million turn-key (best ball park estimate, market rate development).

We can lower the bond issue from my previous post by 40%. We still face the question around form of ownership. Note that under either the “sale” or “long term lease” options, we would include selling to housing co-ops.

4. Urbanism

An important footnote is that the 4,000 s.f. free-hold building gets the urbanism right. It can be built incrementally, without land assembly, on any Vancouver neighbourhood, not just the DTES.

However, in the Historic Neighbourhoods, it would be compatible with the historic fabric, helping to fill the missing teeth. The product is high-density, human-scale, and street oriented. It use contributes to making walkable neighbourhoods and safe streets and lane ways.

a) give millions to solve homelessness, or

b) stop paying taxes and leave the cost of social programs to the people who use them.

I’m guessing the second group is larger.

Coleman is probably the most effective BC Housing minister we’ve seen in 35 years, but … dammit …

The astronomical cost of market housing is the bigger problem.

Link to the plan.

Charles Dickens used to enjoy the hangings at Pentonville. He would rent a room overlooking the gallows and enjoy a good meal of roast lamb whilst watching the spectacle; evidently one or two of the youngsters, who had done none so much a steal a loaf of bread, would put on quite a show before the trap was sprung!

Then, and later, along came Canon Barnett: or more effectively his wife Dame Henrietta. They were partly responsible for eliminating the “rookeries” which were then London’s version of DTES, except far, far worse.

Dickens gave us a bowdlerized glimpse of the “rookeries” in “Oliver Twist”.

The canon and his good wife were able to have the rookeries demolished: they were located were the now, fashionable, shopping street New Oxford Street is now located. I bought a nice gold watch there on one of my visits: like who gives a shit were the poor now live? Dame H established Hull House, a sort of refuge somewhat like a Sally Anne bandstand out of the rain: totally inadequate but a comforting gesture to keep the Bermondsey street gangs out of the headlines,

What happened to the Bermondsey street gangs? Well, they were conveniently wiped out on the
Somme, yunno the one Pierre Burton claims to be Canada’s identity rite of passage, and other such firework displays. The leftovers were pretty well accounted for, later, on Sword and Juno beaches: sure as hell kept the riff raff off the street.

In the early 1950′s I briefly worked on, what we called, the South Lawn Building at Riverview. It was part of a, supposedly, enlightened approach to caring: a loony bin without the bars. Shortly after completion, Riverview wound down in what we all thought was the best way to handle “those” people.

Back in the skid road days I cannot remember seeing all those dumpster divers shooting up. Indeed, in the 60′s, a real cool place to eat was the “The Green Door” Chinese restaurant, in what is now a notorious back alley. I ate there all the time. I do not remember any shooters then!

So now we are lamenting: the international MSM ignored our dirty little secret.

Every city has them, we console ourselves . . . huh huh . . . pretty damn callous!

Closing Riverview was a big mistake . . .

Intractable, we say!