First tenants move into social housing at athletes' village

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Nearly eight months after Olympic Games organizers handed back the athletes' village to Vancouver, the first tenants have started to move in to the city's social-housing units.

A dozen people began taking possession Wednesday after what had been months of controversy about whether even to keep the city's 252 rental units as social housing.

Among them was Kyle Bordage, one of four people who were moving straight from the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre, the province's facility for people recovering from severe trauma and spine injuries.

Stories like Mr. Bordage's are the best part of opening up the units, said Thom Armstrong from the B.C. Co-operative Housing Federation, which will be managing the city's three buildings. "What I was struck by today was what a difference this is going to make in some people's lives. One guy said to me, 'This is the best Christmas present I ever had.' "

People like Mr. Bordage often struggle to find any housing at all, let alone housing adapted for people with disabilities.

The arrival of tenants at the village was a relief for Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who had promised that people would be in by the end of the year.

"It's great news to get people in before Christmas," said the mayor, as people buzzed around the new building that was about to become their home. "Whenever we have hundreds of units like this, it's a huge boost. This will be a great story in the long run."

The city struggled over what to do with the social-housing component of the 1,100-unit village. It was originally to be a legacy of the Olympic Games. With $30-million from the federal government and free city land, city planners had envisioned that all of the units could be rented out at subsidized rates to low-income residents.

But after the construction cost rose from an estimate of $65-million to about $110-million, the new Vision Vancouver council faced pressure from Non-Partisan Association Councillor Suzanne Anton among others to sell it all off.

Instead, the Vision group compromised, with a plan to rent out half of the units at market rates, while subsidizing the rest to make them affordable to lower-earning households.

That meant providing a subsidy of $55-million more than originally planned, on top of the financial burden the city was carrying as a result of taking over the financing for the distressed market-condo component of the village.

The city aimed to see the most heavily subsidized one-bedroom unit in the complex rent for $613, a two-bedroom for $744, according to the documents filed with BC Bid when the city was soliciting bids for a non-profit operator.

The unsubsidized units were pegged to rent for $1,601 and $1,902 respectively.

The city experienced more struggles with the social housing when it took months to agree with the province on a process to find a non-profit operator. Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced in September that none of the three bids received were acceptable.

The city at that point decided to unilaterally choose an operator. The B.C. Co-op Housing Federation will manage all three buildings, two of them through a subsidiary that has experience with managing social housing.

Mr. Armstrong said he expects to see all the subsidized units filled by the end of March.

"Our phone lines and e-mail boxes are just swamped" with people wanting to move in, he said. But it's complicated to rent out social housing, because the federation has to make sure it has the right mix of incomes for the project to meet the city's financial targets.

Mr. Armstrong said that, although the provincial waiting list for social housing is long, many of the people on it are too poor to pay even the subsidized rents at the village.

Special to The Globe and Mail