Well, I must say that having expressed doubt in the past that the Powers That Be would ever actually increase the stock of social housing (rather than always kicking it further and further down the road, “not at the Waterfront, not at Little Mountain….”), I appear to have been wrong. Mea culpa, and good on them who are funding this.

Really great news, and commendable that these two levels of government and Streettohome are finding creative solutions and able to work together on this issue.

Has there been any indication of where these 8 sites are located? My only concern is that most of the new housing going up now is still being located in or close to the DTES, despite most agreeing that it would be far better to spread around the city.

Also, 8 buildings totalling 1000 units suggests that these will be quite large buildings (ave. 150 suites each), especially if they include support services, and even if the suites are tiny (less than 300 sq ft). I’d be interested to learn more of the details if they are known.

So, in your story, it’s not $20 million upfront.

In your earlier blog entry back in March http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/vancouver-business-elite-discovers-how-messy-solving-homelessness-is/ there was doubt that the foundation could do anything.

Seeing that Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) our ‘friendly’ Rev Can tax agency looks askanse on charities not giving a minimal percent of their money away, would the arrangement act as a charitywash of the donation and keep the Streetohome (only 2 t’s, not streettohome) foundation going?

Seeing Chris’ map, I still see all the usual places for such housing. Overlay it with surrounding income of residents and they are still recreating an area of down and outs.

I would have hoped for an expansion of the area, but “we must protect the single family home” and all its waste.
Why not Burnaby and New West on the peninsula?

So are these projects being tendered or are the construction firms already picked out? It sounds like they’re being fast-tracked though I’m sure proper process was followed.

I share @Michael Geller’s concerns over the placement of the sites and what seems like a lack of previous consultation with residents.

Yes, Michael has taken the blue pill, by the scoop full . . .

Oh and BTW I’ll believe all this when I see the first Streetohome TOWER occupardo . . .

@ Urbie

I think Michael is doing more math than pills. He’s taking 20 million, a two with eight zeros after it. Then, he’s taking away three zeros for the thousand units, and ending up with a two followed by five zeros and asking: $200,000 per unit for social housing? Then, he’s wondering whether or not that price includes land costs.

Maybe then he’s thinking about taking a pill.

With Michael’s help we did the numbers once before right here on the Bulablog. Anticipating a day like this, we generated the following numbers for a 4,000 s.f. building:

$640,000 hard cost (construction)
$128,000 soft costs (prof. fees, permits, insurance, ppty. tax, DCC’s, financing, etc)
$200,000 Land
$960,000 Total
$1,152,000 Total after 20% profit

If the units are 400 s.f., we might have 6 suites plus an 800-square foot floor left free and wide open for shared facilities, treatment rooms, etc. Mental health and addiction recovery, we speculated, may find this configuration a good fit. 

Information coming out of Chicago is that houses of 6 to 8 individuals get the best results.

$1,152,000/6 units = $192,000 per unit (and we are buying land at market value).

However, that still leaves out one whole floor out of the pricing equation which could be used to better the quality of life of the residents. If the building was in a mixed-use area, the ground floor could be a store front that is rented out at market triple net, and acts as a profit centre for the house. Or it could be an incubator business that helps the folks in recovery get back to the mainstream.

However, if we take out the price of land—and I think that we could also take out the 20% profit off the sale, but let’s go one step at a time—the house that I remember gave Ghost of Gassy Jack “sticker shock” would come in at $952,000 for a 4,000 square foot building.

That’s $160,000 per unit for a six unit building with one spare ground floor to be used in any of a number of ways just described.

That represents a $40,000 to $65,000 dollar per unit savings (the higher number uses Michael’s $225,000 per unit quoted above).

Multiply the savings by 1,000 units… and we have a saving of 40-to-65 million dollars.

That’s enough money for an additional 252-to-406 units, and 42-68 more treatment spaces, shared spaces, or leasable storefronts (the range reflects the difference between assuming we have to buy the land, or the land is granted by the City or by a non-profit—yielding the lower number).

The expensive part of building construction is the “suspended concrete floor slabs.”

For the less technically minded, think about it this way: tower condos have concrete floors that have to be “held up in the air by form work” for the 30-day curing period of the concrete. You yank out the forms too quickly, and it’s bad news. The forms, and the labour required to put them up and knock them down equals: Big expense.

So, if you are going to build “affordable housing” with suspended concrete floor slabs, there is a “scale of economy” that must be reached. And, as you have probably guessed by now, that “scale” is reached many, many levels above the street level. That’s where “high-density, low-rise” building types have a competitive advantage.

With the 4,000 s.f. building that Michael was helping me to suss out, the floors might be combustible (i.e. hand assembled, wood frame, not formed concrete). And— here’s the best part—the “scale” we try to reach is “human scale”.

Trying to get to “good” urbanism, we actually worry about housing people in what we term “ground oriented” housing.

There are several advantages in human scale high-density building that seems to be eluding the planners. These are benefits besides the smaller scale of construction, and the savings incurred.

Among the most prominent to consider is that these units have been shown to build “neighbourhoods”. The resulting quality of the neighbourhood space seems to be supportive of community life in a way we are not really seeing in the North Shore False Creek area. The feeling on the street can be made much more positive than what we get when we walk along the condo tower-and-podium buildings that everyone keeps raving about for reasons nobody has been able to explain.

Furthermore, as the founder of Intel once put it, “The best place to hide a pebble is on a beach.”

Now, we don’t want to “hide” social housing, but I believe that people in social housing would prefer to “blend in”.

How are we going to do that? With towers, or with human-scaled houses that look like everything else on the street?

@Lewis

You have indeed filled the Bulablog pages from time to time with your belief that low density development can solve many development problems, including, in this case, the need for more non-market housing. The problem with your solution is that the numbers don’t add up. I Googled ‘construction cost index’ and found the excellent website of bdconsultants.com. They suggest frame construction costs in Vancouver are around $140 per square foot – so your proposed 4,000 square foot structure would cost about $560,000 to build. All the examples I can find suggest soft costs are around 25%, and financing costs another 6%, so that would add $173,600 to total $733,600 for construction – a little less than your number so far.

All you need now is somewhere to build. There is a good example for sale in the West End on Pacific Street – it’s only a 33 foot lot, so it’s probably a bit difficult to squeeze 4,000 sq ft onto there, and the asking price is $1,990,000. That would cost you $331,000 per unit – for the land alone. There’s a 51 foot wide lot for sale in Mount Pleasant – that’s only $1,180,000, so just under $200,000 a unit (although you’ll end up with housing on Clark Drive, which isn’t an ideal situation).

Unfortunately, your example needed the entire land parcel to cost $200,000 – reality is closer to $200,000 a unit. So with the $122,000 construction costs added on, you’re at $322,000 a unit – which seems to make the Provincial projects, built of concrete to LEED gold standards, with associated amenity space, and support services a relative bargain.

At the risk of being criticized again for too many postings, I would suggest that BC Housing, in conjunction with Smart Growth BC (in it’s new iteration) and Metro’s Housing Committee organize a full day workshop at which we can all get a better understanding of the land, construction and soft costs associated with different forms of affordable housing.

Maybe Mayor Wright of New Westminster will take the lead on organizing this, since he has assembled many of the key players on his affordable housing advisory panel. I think it might be very instructive for us all…

Based on the comments above, we can look at both capital and operating costs. I suspect there will be a few surprises.