The city wants to radically change housing policy in the Downtown Eastside. Advocates and residents are concerned

Last week, the city announced a suite of proposed changes to housing policy requirements in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

On Thursday evening, about 100 residents, community members, and service providers gathered at the Japanese Hall on Alexander Street for a lively community forum to hear about the proposal, ask questions, and make comments about personal and community needs. 

The forum was organized by the Carnegie Housing Project, with former councillor and anti-poverty advocate Jean Swanson helping to break down the city’s complex proposal. 

Swanson emphasized that once city staff revise and finalize these recommendations and present them to city council, councillors and the mayor will have the opportunity to adopt, amend, or pass on the proposals, meaning there’s still much that is unknown about how these proposed changes could or will be adopted.   

However, the details thus far offer an insightful and complex look into the city’s plans to incentivize private development in the DTES.

Plan details 

The proposed changes include a significant shift in the mix of social and market housing for new buildings in the Downtown Eastside-Oppenheimer District (DEOD), allow rules around the redevelopment of single room occupancy buildings (SROs), and more than double allowable building heights in some DTES areas. 

• The DEOD area is roughly between Alexander and Hastings and Main and Heatley streets, plus one more block and a half west of Main on either side of Hastings.  

The current rezoning policies for the DEOD effectively require any new residential development to have 60 per cent of the building’s units be social (non-market) housing and 40 per cent of units at market rental rates. City staff propose the ratio be flipped, and then some, to 80% secured market rental housing and 20% social housing. 

Another change, or option, is to allow private developers to build new projects with 10 per cent of units being offered at “deeply discounted rents.” That policy would also include protections for tenants, like allowing them to return to their units at existing rents, paying moving costs. Deeply discounted means rents that are half of citywide average rents, which would be about $800 currently, a city spokesperson told Vancity Lookout. 

The tenant protection policy would cover tenants in the DEOD, all SROs, and in a small area around Main Street between Thornton Park and the Viaduct. 

A third consequential policy shift is increasing the allowable height and density of buildings, up to 32 storeys in some areas. Existing policy in the DTES plan generally sets maximum building heights between 75 and 120 feet (or roughly around 8-13 storeys) in most areas. 

Translating storeys to height is tricky and variable, but a rough calculation of 9 feet per storey would make a 32-storey building about 288 feet, more than double the currently allowed building height in the area.   

Proposed changes regarding the replacement of SROs include relaxing the one-to-one replacement requirement to 50% for conversions and 20% for redevelopments, decrease minimum unit size, and allow for SRO buildings to be replaced off-site, according to the city.

Why make these changes?

“While proposed changes would reduce the number of shelter rate housing and social housing units required for individual projects, they would improve the financial viability of these projects, leading to more overall social housing being built,” the city argued in their announcement. 

“Private developers can help deliver affordable housing but right now there is no ability or incentive for them to do so in this neighborhood,” according to the city.

The proposed changes from staff come in response to Councillor Rebecca Bligh’s successful 2023 motion asking staff to look at options to update the DTES area to deliver more social and support housing, and accelerate the replacement of existing SROs, among other initiatives to improve conditions in the DTES. 

Bligh motion noted that since the DTES area plan was established in 2014, only two housing projects – at 41 and 288 East Hastings – have been built under the 60/40 social/market unit requirements in the DEOD. Both buildings are operated by Atira Property Management.

By publication time, Bligh had not responded to Vancity Lookout’s request for an interview. 

The comprehensive 2014 DTES plan set 10-year objectives for social, market rental, and market ownership housing units in the area. While the number of new social housing units has surpassed the plan’s targets, the number of market units have fallen well short, according to Storeys.

The plan is really about the city wanting to justify or rationalize flooding the DTES with richer people, Swanson alleged at the community forum. 

Without reliable housing investment from senior governments, the plan can be seen as a compromise, with the city weakening their social housing requirements in the neigbourhood in an attempt to move development projects forward, given challenging market conditions in the construction industry – particularly in Vancouver.  

The case against the proposal

“I don't think that we should be compromising in this instance,” COPE Councillor Sean Orr told Vancity Lookout. 

“I understand that market conditions are very difficult right now for a lot of people, a lot of developers. I understand the costs are high… but I think this is one area that I'm going to dig my heels in and say that we need to preserve this unique 60/40 split,” Orr said, though he emphasized that he would go into any council meeting with an open mind on the proposal at hand. 

“This is something that I'm deeply concerned about and will fight for,” Orr said.

Devin O’Leary, a community organizer and researcher with the Carnegie Housing Project said his biggest concern is that with this plan, and the pause on new supportive housing, the city is “choosing to exclude the 4,000 people [who] currently don't have housing in Vancouver.” 

The funding [and DTES zoning] priorities are [now] going to be about replacing low-income housing and [single-room occupancy buildings (SROs)], rather than building new housing that people who are currently waiting for housing could move into,” he said. 

O’Leary said the 4,000 figure is CHP’s estimate based on no fixed address data from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and people who are not included in that data because they’re not on social assistance, or are incentivized to misreport their housing status. 

O’Leary, a former Atira employee, has first-hand experience in social housing, as he has lived in both the Atira buildings developed in the past 10 years and said living in the mixed-income set-up has been a good experience. 

• “For the people that need the shelter rate units, they’re new buildings, they're really nice, and [people] really appreciate them,” O’Leary said of the Atira buildings.

“A lot of the other people who live in the building, including me, actually work in the Downtown Eastside… People [with higher incomes who] live in the building also have a relationship with the neighbourhood and the people who live there,” O’Leary said.  

The pros and cons of public procurement 

In terms of alternative policy pirorities for the area, O’Leary would like to see the city and non-profits purchase SROs – particularly ones that are still in decent shape like the Arlington Hotel, O’Leary said. 

At the forum, Chris Livingstone, executive director of the Aboriginal Front Door Society, said he thinks putting SROs into community ownership is the way to go. One way to do that would be through a community land trust, O’Leary said. 

“We need to reject this plan and ask for more for our people… is that [plan] what we want for our Chinese seniors, for all our Indigenous people who are living on the DTES,” Livingstone asked rhetorically, to shouts of ‘no’ from the crowd. According to the Carnegie Housing Project, one third of people who are unhoused in Vancouver are Indigenous. 

Bligh’s motion did ask staff to explore a “Right of First Refusal” by-law, which would give the City priority to purchase buildings or lands for sale. However, staff said it wasn’t likely to increase the quantity or distribution of non-market housing, as the main barrier is having the money to purchase properties for sale. 

After years of “neglect and disrepair” by the previous owners, the Sahota family, the city took ownership of the Regent Hotel and the Balmoral Hotel in 2020. The former SROs stood across the street from each other near Main and Hastings.

The city tried to expropriate, or take away, the properties from the Sahota family in 2019, but faced a legal challenge and ended up buying the buildings for an undisclosed amount, according to the Vancouver Sun. 

The Balmoral was demolished in 2024 and the Regent has been closed since 2018. The plan is for both sites to be redeveloped by BC Housing, a provincial Crown corporation, but there is no timeline for the start of renovation work at the Regent while, pending agreements, social housing construction at the former Balmoral site is expected to start in 2027, according to Global News.   

Government responsibility and expanding shelter rate housing options

“If that social housing isn't being built, it's not because of those [existing policy] requirements. It's because there's no funding from the federal government and provincial government and those that's who we should be lobbying,” Coun. Sean Orr said.

Orr said the city may also be missing out on short-term opportunities to generate revenue, like when they recently approved a $1.1 million payment for the conversion of the Clifton Hotel, a former SRO on Granville Street, despite being entitled to collect up to $22.2 million under the city’s SRA Conversion By-law, according to CityNews. 

“That’s a lot of money that could fund a lot of housing projects,” Orr said, explaining that staff decided the conversion project wouldn’t be viable if they’d asked for more money.

Shifting these policies lets senior governments off the hook argued O’Leary, who said it’s the government’s responsibility to provide housing and the market supply approach isn’t going to work to provide affordable housing for low-income people.

“This is a plan [the city is] having to rely on because senior government is not coming to the table,” O’Leary told Vancity Lookout.

O’Leary also wants to see the city change the definition of social housing to include shelter rate housing, which is currently only included in the DTES area plan. A single person on social assistance who has housing gets $500 per month to pay for shelter.

The city is currently working on a city-wide social housing initiative to allow non-profit social housing in many areas of the city without a rezoning. That proposal is being refined by city staff and be presented for a second round of public engagement this June.

If shelter rates were included in the city-wide social housing initiative, then “people in the downtown East Side [would get] more housing options in these other neighborhoods, where it's maybe easier to build quickly and they won't be removed from their current housing to get it,” O’Leary said. 

Opportunities for public input 

The proposal came with a request for public input, which will inform the recommendations that staff present to council later this year, the city said. 

An online survey about the proposal will be available until May 16, and the city will be hosting a public information session at the Japanese Hall from 4 to 6 p.m. on May 12.

The city will also be hosting several workshops and office hours for service providers, neihgbourhood organizations, and property owners over the next two weeks. You can find more information on those stakeholder sessions at the city’s public input page linked above. 

The city’s consultation process with the community is just these kind of one-off meetings, not a partnership, O’Leary said. 

“If you compare [this consultation] to the planning process that went into the local area plan in 2014, that was a four-year process [where] they had a [neighbourhood] committee that was actually like helping plan what would happen,” O’Leary explained.  

“I think that's a difficult position for the city to be, in many ways.. But I think they do a pretty good job, generally,” Orr said, in terms of trying to manage consultation and feedback with the public. However, Orr added he wasn’t familiar with the city’s specific consultation efforts in this case. 

The roughly 100 people at the forum on a sunny Thursday night seemed to indicate the neighbourhood’s engagement and concern with the proposal. A speaker suggested having more townhalls in the future, and O’Leary said they would try to host another one in June.