Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver this morning.
The controversy surrounding the shuttering of Larwill Place was always going to be as predictable as it was inevitable.
The 98 units within two modular buildings were built with the expectation they would be temporary. They were part of a rush of similar complexes the City of Vancouver approved starting in 2017 after the then-new NDP government approved funding for the idea as an urgent response to the homelessness crisis. The idea was to stack modular units into low-rise, quickly constructed buildings on empty lots where development was unlikely to happen for several years.
Ultimately, $291-million was dedicated to building 2,000 modular supportive-housing apartments.
Larwill Place was constructed on the site of the new Vancouver Art Gallery, a project that has stalled at the design phase for years. But now, construction of the art gallery is about to begin.
Moving vulnerable people off of the site – people who had settled into their units and built lives there – so a fancy new art gallery can be constructed was never going to be a good look.
But there are other reasons why the city is moving away from this model of housing.
Frances Bula reports the temporary modular units succeeded at some early goals: They were quick to construct and were mostly well received – with a few exceptions – in the neighbourhoods where they were located. Surveys showed the units had little negative impact on local communities and positive impact on the residents who lived in them.
There are now 700 apartments, each with a private bathroom and kitchenette, on 12 different sites.
But six years and a new city council has revealed some downsides. The units have proven expensive and cumbersome to move.
“We are focused on permanent housing going forward. The long-term plan now is to, over time, replace them with permanent housing,” said Sandra Singh, the city’s manager of community services.
In the city’s draft budget for 2023, there was $3-million set aside for moving the first of the temporary projects – 40 units at Main and Hastings that went up in 2017 and are expected to have to move by 2025. Another item in the draft budget proposed reserving $4-million for “site preparation costs” for a different temporary modular project.
BC Housing said the only project deconstructed so far is the 46 units at the Little Mountain site, which originally cost $7.4-million to buy and install, and required another $2.9-million to deconstruct and remove.
There is no clear answer on where the 98 units from Larwill Place will go. Another 46 prefab units that had been at the Little Mountain social housing site for three years are now in storage. The same uncertainty exists for a temporary 39-studio-apartment project called Aneki Housing for Women on Powell Street, which is being redeveloped for a permanent social-housing building.
Ms. Singh said it doesn’t make sense to put up three storeys with 40 units on city sites, when they can get permanent projects with double that number of homes.
She said the modular units are likely going to be reused by BC Housing, but in communities that have land available and where it makes sense to have the three-storey structures.
In the meantime, city land is being used to provide 2,500 social-housing apartments, 750 supportive-housing units, and 443 new shelter spaces.
The temporary units “came in at a time when we needed rapid action,” Ms. Singh said. “But we have so much housing in various stages of development now.”
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.
Wendy Cox