The site of what used to be the oldest public housing in Vancouver is set for a rebirth.

Almost seven years after Little Mountain’s social housing was razed, city council will consider a plan to redevelop the location.

By the time development is complete, the six-hectare property east of Queen Elizabeth Park will be a complete community. It will have a mix of homes and shops as well as a neighbourhood house, a child-care centre, a public plaza, and a park.

Holborn Properties Ltd. has proposed to build 1,573 new homes, of which 1,291 will be private apartments and townhouses. The remaining 282 units will be for public housing.

Little Mountain was once home to about 700 residents. Built by the federal government in 1954, it was a mix of three-storey apartments and row houses containing 224 social-housing units.

In 2007, the federal government transferred ownership of the housing project to the B.C. provincial government.

Not long after, B.C. Housing sold the property to Holborn for what it said was about $300 million in cash and nonmarket housing values, with the provision that the developer build 234 nonmarket units, representing 224 replacement units, as well as 10 housing units for Musqueam people in Little Mountain.

In November 2009, the housing development was demolished. One building was left standing after residents there refused to leave. This came down after Holborn built an interim five-storey building with 53 social housing units about five years later.

Residents moved into the new building in 2015. (This was about a year after Sam Chang and Joan Petrichenko, a couple who were among the four households who held out at Little Mountain, both passed away.)

Last fall, Holborn submitted a rezoning application for the entire Little Mountain site. This will be subject to a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday (July 19).

As part of the development plan, the City of Vancouver will get its own share of social-housing units, totalling 48. These will be contained in a new six-storey city-owned building at the site, which will also host a new Little Mountain Neighbourhood House and a child-care facility with 69 spaces. In addition, the city will get a community plaza and a park.

Among the four households that refused the leave Little Mountain were Ingrid Steenhuisen and her mother. In 2015, they moved into the first building constructed by Holborn.

According to Steenhuisen, a different story could have unfolded if the province didn’t sell the property to a private developer.

In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, she said the government could have required a phased redevelopment so no one in the old Little Mountain community would have been displaced.

For Steenhuisen, Little Mountain didn’t have to be destroyed in order to give birth to something new.