Photo by David Vaisbord, Little Mountain Project

Two months ago several False Creek South residents attended a demonstration protesting both the destruction of the publicly-owned Little Mountain social housing and the absence of new housing in its place. Their ears perked up when one of the speakers, area neighbour Norm Dooley, cited False Creek South as an important model for affordable housing on public land.

“Government-owned land can be used to support various market and non-market housing on a long-term lease basis”, he said.

“Vancouver residents know full well the stories of how False Creek was re-developed in the ‘70s using public land. The same could be done at Little Mountain if government still owned the land base.”

Very likely Dooley was unaware of the now 8-year attempt by the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association, through its planning committee, RePlan, to work with the City toward a future based on the community’s success story, through retaining and building new affordable housing.

False Creek South may well be a model for the Little Mountain neighbourhood, but Little Mountain may be a cautionary tale for False Creek South.

To recap the Little Mountain story: In 1954 a cooperative agreement with all three levels of government created the Little Mountain social housing project. Thirty-seven buildings housed 700 people in 224 family units.

Some 50 years later the federal government transferred its ownership share to the B.C. Liberal provincial government which, in turn, immediately sold the land to a private developer, Holborn Holdings. While full details of the sale remain shrouded in unusual secrecy, what is known is that the deal placed no timelines on Holborn to begin construction.

As one Little Mountain protester wryly noted, Holborn gave new meaning to the word “Holding’ by not building on the property it bought in 2008, even though in 2009 it evicted the tenants and demolished the buildings. The site remained a 15-acre vacant lot for six years until 53 social housing units were built in 2015. The next year the City approved re-zoning of the site to provide for 1573 housing units, of which 18%, or 282 (including the 53 already built), are earmarked for social housing. Except for a temporary modular housing structure, no building has taken place.

The still-unrealized plan would provide a 3.8% increase in social housing over that demolished in 2009, something that housing activists like Linda Shuto dismiss as sleight-of-hand.

“The point isn’t whether the developer agreed to a paltry increase in affordable units”, she said.

“Had the land remained in public hands the driving force would be public policy, not private profit. Redevelopment could provide affordable housing in well over a thousand family units.

“As it is, in the Holborn scheme 82% of the new units are designated as not-affordable.

“That’s the point.”

Since then many False Creek South residents have worried that the same thing could happen here, especially after an opinion piece appeared in The Tyee (03 January 2020). Headlined Vancouver Looks Poised To Sell Off False Creek South by Patrick Condon, UBC adjunct professor and first Chair of the university’s Urban Design Centre, the article begins with the statement, “The warning signs are there. Greed may ruin a model for diverse affordability”.

Could this be the City’s plan for our community?

RePlan Chair Richard Evans doesn’t think so.

“That would certainly be the worst possible decision. As the Little Mountain experience shows, the very real opportunities to provide homes within the reach of most people’s incomes are lost, perhaps irretrievably, when public land becomes the private property of developers whose business is, first and foremost, to turn a healthy profit.”

But another plan could be in the works.

“Given the negative attitude of some City staff toward our community”, he continued, “we may have the same problem as Little Mountain but in another, subtler form. The City could retain nominal land ownership but concede development rights with little or no affordability mandate to private interests, resulting in housing that more than half the City’s population could not afford.

“Back in the 1970’s we managed to be creative about these things, and today we have both this rich tradition to draw from, and a community with the demonstrated creative horsepower to help forge a new direction. And the willingness to do so that is in keeping with established City policy. What we do not have is leadership to partner with in the creative public policy implementation realm.

“Indeed, where are the politicians?”