Posts from — July 2011

Temporary foreign workers, who made up a small share of BC’s labour force  just 10 years ago, are emerging as a large and permanent part of the province’s economy.

Even more significant is their growing importance in BC’s rural economy, where agricultural workers were once the only temporary players in local job markets.

Not any more, as I explain in this column for the July 26 issue of Business in Vancouver: [Read more →]

The end of the existing federal mortage subsidy program in 2020 could trigger the loss of thousands of affordable housing units in the City of Vancouver, according to the Co-op Housing Federation.

Replacing that mortgage subsidy is one of the many goals of the city’s new Housing and Homeless Action Plan, which council approved today after hearing from a long list of housing advocates.

(A comprehensive library of documents on this groundbreaking plan can be found here.)

CHF president Thom Armstrong told council that the end of the federal subsidy  underlines the importance of protecting existing affordable housing units, not just seeking to build more.

Vancouver benefits from 5,600 co-op housing units, Armstrong said, of which 40 to 50 percent are on a subsidy that gears rent to income. That benefit flows from subsidized CMHC mortages that run out in 2020.

The same blow will fall on thousands more of units in other housing complexes owned by non-profit housing societies.

Vancouver city council today approved a 10-month high level study of the city’s strategic eastern core from BC Place Stadium to Clark Drive that will include consideration of removing all or part of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts.

The decision opens the door to a new sustainable neighbourhood in north False Creek that links together Yaletown, Chinatown, Strathcona, the Downtown Eastside and neighbourhoods further east.

It’s an important victory for community organizations like the Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee and the Strathcona Residents Association who spoke out strongly in support of the staff recommendation.

For the first time in 40 years, citizens will be invited to put forward their ideas for this area, which was slated for freeway development until popular protest stopped construction in 19071. Only the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts were ever built.

For the next year  residents will be invited to put their ideas forward in an “ideas fair” and international and local experts will make their own recommendations.

The project also opens the door to planning of the False Creek Flats, the last major area slated for development in the city core.

In a council agenda packed with significant items, the proposed 10-year Housing and Homelessness Strategy may be the most significant: a goal of 38,000 new homes, with the emphasis on help for the vast majority who don’t need social housing but can’t afford to buy in Vancouver’s super-heated housing market.

In this useful summary in today’s Sun, Councillor Raymond Louie lays out some of the far-reaching recommendations, which build on the success of the city’s Short Term Incentives for Rental Program.

The STIR, with 1,000 units already approved or in process, has doubled rental construction in the city since the last election. It is strongly opposed by the NPA, suggesting the upcoming election will be a good test of where people stand on the biggest problem facing the city — the lack of affordable housing.