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Vancouver works out its first deal for below-market rentals in a private development

March 17th, 2016 · 4 Comments

City council has taken a lot of flak for negotiating deals with developers to do all-rental buildings but letting them charge market, i.e. going-rate rents.

Now, with this new Concert Properties building going up next to the Olympic Village, the city has negotiated a deal that means it gets 135 units in the 600-unit development and it will ensure that at least 40 per cent of the units are below market. Story here.

I asked the city’s housing officer, Mukhtar Latif, why the city can’t do that in the Rental 100 buildings. He said that there isn’t the same kind of land lift in those developments. The city can get an agreement that they’ll be rental by reducing fees and parking requirements and adding some density. But not an agreement to hold the rents to below market.

I’m told the rents for the 40 per cent segment will be $915 for a studio and $1,480 for a three-bedroom for people with qualifying incomes, i.e. below $56,000. (I know those numbers are different from others reported out of a news conference but that’s what was in the chart sent to me later.)

Then the other units will be held to rates for the average in the area, so $900 to $2,000 in the same spread. One of my Twitter commenters expressed disbelief that anyone could find any three-bedroom in the city for $2,000, but that’s what they told me, folks. We’ll see when the building is finished in mid-2018 — just in the for the election campaign!!

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  • Kirk

    Can’t wait to see these popping up on AirBnB. 😉

    Anyway, I have a friend living just above Urban Fare for $2100 for a 1+den.

  • For realz

    I am curious to know what Mukhtar Latif means. I am not sure how land lift differs between rental buildings built without incentives, and Rental 100 buildings, or how it hinders putting an agreement in place to hold rents below market.

    I believe there is land lift upon rezoning any parcel of land to a higher floor space ratio regardless of whether rental building incentives are a part of the rezoning proposal.

  • Richard Campbell

    It is the land lift from up zoning for the condos on the property.

  • peakie

    The development will have 600 units over all in five buildings. The city will get one of the buildings, with the 135 units, for $38.75-million. That will come from money collected from Concert and other developers in the area through fees and community-amenity-contribution requirements. Half of the units in the city building will be two- and three-bedroom units meant for families.

    A non-profit will run the building, choosing tenants who make less than $56,000 a year for 40 per cent of the units. Most tenants chosen will make at least $36,000.

    So 50 units for the poor, in this (last to be built?) “poor house” among the 5 buildings. Why can’t they be interspersed in the marble-countertops/sauna-showers of the rest of the comples?

    I hope the non-profit (Not! Atira!) can be honest and not choose their friends for the building.
    And we can suspect that some units will be “rented” out a la the outlaw internet-finding-rental App AirBnb, while they live elsewhere on the profits.

    I am more concerned that the whole complex is in a “Food desert” as the nearest food place is the very-expensive, City-subsidized Urban Faire, but the cheaper fresh groceries are Kea foods up at Main and 10th, or Kingsgate’s ShopEasy. Few will buy fresh food from the ‘exotic’ Chinatown Georgia and Gore stores to the north.
    That’s a long way to walk–no, not everyone will or can afford a car–for groceries.