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Little Mountain’s last tenants spared from eviction by deal with BC Housing, city, developer

October 25th, 2012 · 14 Comments

This out about an hour ago and my story here.

BCHOUSING LITTLE MOUNTAIN

Categories: Uncategorized

  • rf

    They need to release something to try and distract from the audit findings that declared upper management of either being lazy or thieves.

    I’ve posted before that BC Housing was one of the biggest bureaucratic troughs in the province.

    It’s not the union rank and file. Management is the problem in that place. Check out the salary increases of middle management over the last 4 years on the public database. Oink oink oink. 100+ people working in Information Technology! That’s more than most Canadian Banks.

    Anytime there’s actual work to be done they hire an outside consultant at $375/hour. Look up “Edge Consulting”. That firm does $100’s of thousands of consulting work for them. Half of it is simply re-canning the last ‘project’/power point they worked on.

    With my firm, if we got caught splitting credit card charges to stay under approved limits for an event we would face serious discipline (repayment of what was reimbursed, demotion, or canned)

    This is the place where the Queen of Human Resources was pulling in $180k+ (for an organization with only 500 employees!). That $1,000 for each smoke break she takes with her posse of 20! HR people every week.

    Those managers and directors with those cards use them to bribe employees to not throw them under the bus.

    I remember going to a Christmas party of their’s once. Shayne Ramsey (CEO) appeared via big screen from somewhere in Africa where he was ‘consulting’ on a junket of other Housing bureaucrats. We’ve got our own third world on Hastings but this guy is hanging out in Africa on the public dime telling them how to do it.

    Someone should call over there for a comment tomorrow. That’s actually a joke. Good luck getting hold of someone at BC Housing on a Friday. 3/4 of the office takes the day off as a “Flex Day”. They have an unspoken policy of no meetings on Friday (because no one is there).

    no axe to grind here 😉

  • Ned

    rf#1
    Hear, hear. Put some of them in jail, there are enough lawyers sharking around to make up a new clause for that!
    Regardless, it’s a happy “temporary” end story for the last Little Mountain Housing tenants.

  • brilliant

    I wonder what unwanted monstrosity Vision will foist on the residents of Riley Park?

  • babalu

    I’m not a Visionista as I live in Burnaby. But let’s not forget it was the Provincial government who sold off Little Mountain after it was turned over to the province from the Federal Government.
    This was done in 2007 at the height of the housing ‘bubble’ throughout the world. $300 million dollars could have leveraged a lot of other social housing throughout the Lower Mainland where it is also disparately needed. It seemed (and was) a good idea at the time.
    Little Mountain belongs to Metro Vancouver and not the City of Vancouver.
    Let’s get a better perspective on things. All the city has is rezoning powers. Yes, they can wield these in a positive way. But with so many conflicting interests, most against any development for selfish reasons, it’s difficult.
    If the NIMBY sentiment that is pervasive throughout the Lower Mainland persists and councils feel afraid or beholden to narrow interests groups, you won’t be able to build even a birdhouse without a clamor.

  • babalu

    Excuse me. I meant to say Heather Place belongs to Metro Vancouver, not Little Mountain.

  • MB

    @ brilliant

    It’s the province that will be doing the foisting.
    You may be sniping at your own ideological family, like a pug snarling and tugging Uncle Ernie’s pantleg.

    So, down boy. Go hump a broomstick or something.

  • Ms. Jones

    MB #6
    Calling someone a “dog” and telling them to go hump a broomstick puts you in the Waltyss category. Sorry. Your credibility just shot down to ZERO.

  • Everyman

    Has Holborn actually built anything in this city? I only recall stalled projects: Little Mountain and the Ritz-Carlton on Georgia.

  • Bill McCreery

    Ingrid Steenhuisen has been a tireless advocate for the Little Mountain residents. It is a small victory and no doubt gratifying that someone “up there” has finally listened. My congratulations Ingrid and co.

    On the other hand, this just highlights the incredible stupidity of the bureaucrats / politicians who deemed it necessary to turf everyone out, what was it, 3 years ago now? We supposedly have a social housing crisis. Where was Vision Vancouver? Where was the Province? They had a cash deposit from Holborn and that’s all.

    It’s also interesting that the Vision Vancouver has, in this case, allowed staff to do at least some of the right thing in sticking to their guns regarding the density and heights of this Liberal Government proposal. One must wonder what the motivation for this unique change of character.

  • Bill McCreery

    The last sentence of 9 above should read:

    “One must wonder what the motivation was for this unique change of character.”

  • brilliant

    @MB 6-You do realize Vision neighbourhood busting “pilot projects” have your beloved half lot right in their crosshairs don’t you? Up and down Main, its open season on SFH’s. Hope you enjoy your stacked townhouse.

  • MB

    @ brilliant

    Half lot? Developers are interested in large land assemblies.

    You”re barking up the wrong tree.

  • brilliant

    @MB 5 or 6 half lots would make a swell stacked townhouse site. Cheap to aquire to, since you can’t build monster houses on them. And any developer knows Vision will approve anything with a little greenwash slapped on it.

  • MB

    @ brilliant, the math doesn’t add up to an average developer.

    There are tastier piles to lick, more rear ends to sniff and additional structures to whizz on elsewhere.