City throws in the towel on controversial Arbutus housing project

What happened: The controversial saga of a proposed supportive housing project on Arbutus St. near 7th and 8th Avenue has seemingly come to a quiet resolution. 

Court documents show that on April 30th, lawyers for the City of Vancouver and Kitsilano Coalition for Children & Family Safety Society, agreed to quash the site’s rezoning, housing agreement, and development permit, which had all been approved by the previous city council. 

• The city also agreed to pay Kits Coalition’s legal costs, totalling $3,445. 

A twisting saga: In 2022, the city held six public hearings, heard from roughly 300 public speakers, and received more than 2,000 letters, and ultimately voted 8-3 in favour of the project, according to CBC.  

The Kits Coalition, created in 2021, had been campaigning against the project throughout the public hearing process. After it was approved by council, the coalition turned to the courts, filing for a judicial review of the decision on the basis that council and the public were deprived of key information. 

• The province, at the request of the city, then stepped in and passed legislation in 2023, which specifically said that, despite any court decision, the six public hearing were “conclusively deemed to have been validly held.” 

In December 2024, the BC Court of Appeal found that piece of legislation to be unconstitutional, and the province didn’t appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The province “just accepted they overreached,” a Kits Coalition lawyer said, according to the Vancouver Sun. 

Throwing in the towel: Now, with the consent order signed last month, it appears the city has done the same. 

“It’s clear this location wasn’t the right fit for the scale and type of housing that was proposed,” Mayor Ken Sim said in a statement on Tuesday, according to Urbanized.

Sim added that the mayor’s office has reached out to the province about “smaller and better-resourced supportive housing projects to replace the units originally planned,” but had yet to hear back. 

• Earlier this year, Sim and ABC councillors, with the exception of Lisa Dominato, voted to freeze the development of new supportive housing. However, that did not include projects that were already in stream, like Arbutus.    

The Kits Coalition said they’re encouraged by initial discussions with Sim’s office and city staff to develop a better, community-supported solution, and hopes this is the end of legal proceedings, according to CityNews.

What we heard: Abundant Housing Vancouver, one of the groups that organized in favour of the project, told Vancity Lookout they are “disappointed that the City of Vancouver is caving to well-funded NIMBY opponents.”

“Everyone should be concerned that the City is refusing to defend its own decisions; this is an invitation to give wealthy neighbourhoods a veto on housing approvals through lawfare,” the group said, adding that Vancouverites “need housing of all sorts in every neighbourhood.”