Housing advocates and tenants in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are pushing back against a rezoning proposal they say will accelerate gentrification and leave low-income residents behind.
The Carnegie Housing Project and several community organizations are holding a press conference outside City Hall on Tuesday ahead of a public hearing on the plan, which staff say is designed to speed up replacement of deteriorating single-room occupancy (SRO) units in the neighbourhood.
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Under the proposal, the city would change how it defines social housing, allowing taller rental towers in the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District (DEOD) and parts of East False Creek.
The changes would permit buildings up to 32 storeys, so long as 20 per cent of units are designated as social housing. However, only a fraction of those would need to be affordable to people on social assistance.
Advocates say that means very few units would actually serve the lowest-income residents.
“The proposed developments would have about four per cent of units affordable at shelter rate…so in a 200-unit building, that’s eight SRO units,” said Devin O’Leary, researcher and organizer with the Carnegie Housing Project.
“It’s not an efficient model for replacing the old housing we have, or building at a rate for people who are sometimes waiting over a decade on the BC Housing list.”
To illustrate the gap, O’Leary says, under this model, it would take nine 32-storey towers to replace a building like the Empress Hotel SRO on East Hastings, which has 79 units.
“It’s really the city’s misdiagnosis of the housing issue in the Downtown Eastside, which means it’s the wrong direction for a solution.”
The proposal would also reduce development fees for private builders who include social or affordable housing, which O’Leary argues shifts responsibility away from senior governments that should be funding deeply affordable units.
Advocates want the city to push the province and Ottawa harder for funding, and transfer more shelter-rate housing ownership to community-run organizations rather than private companies.
More than 100 speakers have registered for Tuesday night’s public hearing.
Council is expected to vote on the zoning changes following the hearing.
