Can affordable rental stock be preserved in the adjacent Fairview and South Granville neighbourhoods in the face of soaring property values?

The question may be answered as early as March 1, when staff from the City of Vancouver’s housing centre will address council at a planning and environment committee meeting. There they will present a report with recommendations and ask councillors to consider amending the current rate-of-change bylaw for the area.

According to Rob Whitlock, the centre’s senior housing planner, the maximum annual allowable rate of development is currently five- percent conversion of total housing stock in the area loosely bordered by West Broadway, West 15th Avenue, Oak Street, and Burrard Street.

“The consideration is whether or not to bring it [the rate] down,” Whitlock told the Georgia Straight . “If that were to happen, certainly the rate of development could be slowed down. Assuming a zero-percent increase is a moratorium, we can assume the rate will fall somewhere between zero and five percent. The question is, ‘If not zero, then what?’

Renters in Fairview earning a fixed income are not in an enviable position, Whitlock said. He noted that, according to the upcoming staff report, 200 units are going to be lost to the affordable-rental market forever as development continues.

The Straight , after filing a freedom-of-information request, found that 19 development applications are pending for RM-3 zoning citywide. (RM-3 limits developers to 12 storeys.)

As three- and four-storey walkup apartment buildings began disappearing in his Vancouver-Fairview riding—to be replaced by 12-storey condo “podiums”—NDP MLA Gregor Robertson became concerned.

“It was an issue even before the [November 2005] municipal election, but really it got going in the spring of 2006, when the Avedon and Sakura were built at West 14th and West 11th [avenues],” Robertson told the Straight on a walk through the area. “When those [the original] apartment buildings were demolished, that’s when we started to get more calls and more people stopping by.”

The changes in the area also piqued the interest of Fairview resident Gordon Scott. He’s now director of the newly formed Fairview Residents’ Association. “RM-3 allows any developer an outright approval on any proposed podium up to 36.6 metres, or 12 storeys,” Scott told the Straight . “I think this [level of change] is affecting the sense of community.” Scott said he fears more cars will be attracted to the area and podium living will create the phenomenon of what he calls “four concrete rectangles on every block”.

Polygon Homes is the developer responsible for Avedon and Sakura. The two towers will bring 46 and 64 homes to market, respectively. Coal Harbour Properties Partnership Ltd., which is part of the Delta Group, is developing the 42-suite, 12-storey Coco on Spruce Street—currently under construction—that replaced 48 affordable rental apartments last October at Spruce and West 14th Avenue. The Delta Group is also responsible for the Carino, Callisto, and Cielo upscale condo towers in Coal Harbour.

Enter fellow FRA director Anil Dhawan, who bought a condo across from Sakura—on West 11th Avenue—just over four years ago and has young children growing up in the neighbourhood.

“In my research and my concerns over this area, I wanted to try to stop what Polygon was doing,” Dhawan told the Straight . “I believe that the area is at risk, because you can have haphazard development, but is there any strategy and vision behind that development?”

He said Fairview is crying out for a “vision” process like the ones conducted by the city in Vancouver- Hastings in 2003 and in the Dunbar and Kensington–Cedar Cottage areas in 1997. “A vision process, which is one thing I recommended in a letter to the mayor and city hall, would ensure that we’re not only looking at residential development but also amenities for the area,” he said. “We don’t just have single people living there or the elderly, but also young families.”

Polygon Homes president and CEO Neil Chrystal works out of the company’s West Broadway office, less than a block from Robertson’s constituency office. Chrystal, a UBC graduate in urban-land economics, told the Straight he has been in the local development business for 20 years, adding that Polygon is “part of the community”.

“RM-3 zoning is restrictive, I think,” he said. “You’re only allowed to go to 12 storeys. And the 74 parking stalls that we’re building at Avedon, and 93 at Sakura, are the minimum number of stalls we have to provide under the zoning. So we are providing the minimum. At Avedon there are 46 homes, so that is 28 additional stalls, and at Sakura there are 64 homes and an additional 29 stalls.”

Dave Goodman works in commercial sales at Macdonald Commercial Real Estate Services. “We recognize there is a definite need for rental housing, but it doesn’t pay to build it,” he said. “That’s the problem. The land is too expensive. So what is a developer to do? They can’t pay the price on the land and then go ahead and build rental housing, because they will lose money.”

Is there a way to please all parties?

“It’s a combination of the government helping and the local municipalities relaxing some of the requirements they have: dropping development cost charges, eliminating the need for parking, increasing the densities for the developers, and giving the developers an opportunity to build rental housing,” Goodman said. “The dilemma is, once rental housing comes down, it’s very difficult to replace it. The land is just too darn expensive. But it’s not the developer who is the problem. It’s tax policies and municipal policies that are prohibiting the rental housing. Fundamentally, it is an economic issue. You can’t build rental housing. It simply doesn’t work unless you charge rents of around $2,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.”

Vanessa Geary, former coordinator at the Tenants’ Rights Action Coalition, says that TRAC has long been concerned about traditional two- or three-storey apartment buildings disappearing, forcing Vancouverites on lower and fixed incomes to seek affordable rents elsewhere.

In February 2004, TRAC cosponsored a report with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation called Strategies to Preserve Rental Housing in Greater Vancouver .

“For the developer, it always comes down to highest and best use,” Geary told the Straight . “And highest and best use means the renter loses every time.” -