Vancouver's new non-profit housing initiative could reshape the city's neighbourhoods

Vancouver is poised to transform its approach to regulating non-profit housing. The city’s Social Housing Initiative (SHI) would prezone select neighbourhoods all across Vancouver, outside of downtown, for non-profit housing. This could provide a boost for the financial viability of non-profit projects, while fundamentally altering where in the city these projects can be built. 

The idea behind prezoning is to shrink development timelines – it takes about a year off the permitting process according to the city – and save money, which can be particularly helpful to non-profits running projects on tight margins. It’s an approach the city has been favouring of late. Council recently approved a city-led rezoning of nearly 4,300 properties in the Broadway and Cambie Corridor plan areas.

“Definitionally with non-profit housing, there isn't a profit so everything [financially] is constantly on a knife edge,” Brendan Dawe, a real estate consultant and member of Abundant Housing Vancouver, told Vancity Lookout. 

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