Reconciling Provincial Housing Funding

Thank you. All right. Let's end on a good one here. The province has given us mandatory housing targets and has now handcuffed us in our attempt to achieve those goals. Ironic, considering they can penalize us for missing those goals too. The pause in the community housing fund has stranded many non-market developments and left them in limbo. Many of these developers, profit and non-profit alike, are now left sitting on their hands looking for direction concerning how to proceed. This is especially true for non-profit developers who are now in over their heads and are moving towards insolvency. This motion aims in helping both the city not be penalized by the province and in showing that we care about the people in our city. I believe the motion is fairly simple. I urge council to support sending this under emergency measures to LMLGA and UBCM to help us fulfill these goals that the province has given us. Thanks.

Yeah, hi there. Tonya here. yeah so i am uh in favor of this motion uh because we can't keep hitting targets if we're not getting the funding to support hitting those targets uh the provincial housing supply act came into play in 2023 um but that also came with the community housing fund So as Vancouver was chosen as one of the municipalities with these mandated targets,

We were seeing rapid improvement with approvals. You know, I know that this June is the time that the province is going to check in to see how we're doing. But they removed $1.4 billion from this fund while maintaining the same mandated target. That makes no sense. We know that the types of housing that we need in the city are for the working class to ensure that no one spends 50% or more on housing. We need more co-ops, more shelter rate housing, more social housing with rent geared to income. Rent geared to income housing needs partnerships with the province and non-profits.

Developers are not going to build social housing. Developers will never build socialized housing. The province has basically stepped away from its responsibility and to allow speculators and developers to step in. This should not be the city that we want to build. Housing is a human right. Acting the funding for the Community Housing Fund has affected approximately 100 projects in Vancouver, 100 projects that are now in jeopardy or being paused, which affects thousands of units. the aboriginal housing management association is reporting the loss of 24 projects which affects 2 000 units now lost in a city of reconciliation it's city council's responsibility to use dripa to push back on the province on these cuts This is a catastrophic loss of funding. We have to reconcile the mandated housing targets. We need you to sit down with our housing minister, Christine Boyle, to reduce those housing targets or to show up with some money. Vancouver doesn't need fast-tracked housing that nobody can afford. This is our moment to reconcile this issue. Please, I urge everyone to support this motion. Thanks, Councillor Orr, for bringing it forward. Thank you, Tonya.

Hello, can you hear me?

Oh, hi. My name is Mona Stilwell. I've been a resident of Vancouver for 33 years. I'm grateful to live and work on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and TTsleil-Waututh Nations. I'm in support of this motion because let's be clear what it actually is. It's to write the equivalent of an inter-office memo to UBCM, LMLGA, the Minister of Finance, Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs. An inter-office memo. Real estate developers are well supported in Vancouver. They get tax breaks, breaks from empty homes fees. The land is being opened up in record numbers. For instance, down here on the side. In fact, so many units are out there that there are over 2,000 empty luxury condos. So I'm sure Vancouver's mayor and council members would want to support developers who have been cut off at the knees by the province's indefinite pausing of new intakes to the Community Housing Fund. which now leaves hundreds of affordable housing projects stranded. Imagine all the investment money that are now at risk. Imagine all the unrecoverable sunk costs due to canceled or delayed projects. So help out the development industry, just like we have all along, by writing a few letters. Support this motion. Thank you, and free Palestine.

Hey there, can you hear me okay?

Great, thanks. Good evening, Chair and Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Matthew. I'm a Vancouver resident, and I'm speaking in support of Councillor Orr's motion. I want to first propose to you an analogy, the relevance of which I promise will become clear. I'd like you to imagine that you're an employee in one of the city's many important service sectors. Perhaps you work in the libraries, or perhaps you work as a seasonal lifeguard at one of our many beaches. You have your clear responsibilities expected of you by your employer with the guiding values of providing safety and community enrichment for residents. now let's say you've just found out that your department's funding has been cut or frozen in the place of inflationary pressures what a shame oh well i suppose times are tough you might say you expect that might mean layoffs are coming and that expectations around service delivery will have to be adjusted after all it seems intuitive that it's harder for 20 people to do the work that 30 people once did You show up to the next all-hands meeting at work and you're informed that, well, yes, funding's been impacted. You are still expected, no, mandated to continue on with a skeleton crew. You've been told that you have to offer more with less. You know that this is either A, impossible, or B, means you'll soon be putting in many unpaid hours just to keep things functional. The province has done just this. They have mandated aggressive housing targets under the Housing Supply Act while simultaneously indefinitely pausing new intakes to the Community Housing Fund. They are asking you, Mayor and Council, to do more with less.

They are setting you up to fail. This is austerity in action. We desperately need more affordable housing in this city. We desperately need more non-market and below-market rental housing in this city. province's decision to suspend the program that these projects rely on, some already in planning or pre-development, leaves them stranded and frozen. It leaves us at great financial risk. Failure to meet the province's aggressive targets could even result in the province stepping in to rewrite zoning decisions, effectively hindering the autonomy of Vancouver to govern itself. I believe you should support this motion to urge the province to not only recognize this explicit contradiction in their policy, but also urge them to reinstate the community housing fund that municipalities like ours rely on to address the lack of affordable housing and deliver affordability for residents. As the mayor has said before when it came to free FIFA viewings, you'll never know if you don't ask. And that's why I urge you to ask. I hope the council views affordable housing with the same priority as public FIFA viewings. Thank you.

Councillor Claassen?

Hi there. Thanks, Chair. So thanks very much. Definitely feeling very supportive of the direction of this motion. I do have an amendment that I have sent in to the clerk.

Will do. Thanks very much. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. So clearly with the... cuts to the Community Housing Fund, we are in a real bind. There are projects that are being brought to a halt, and it's I think it's short sighted to think that we cannot get the funding that we need in play to try and make sure that we can keep housing projects, not nonprofit housing going in the city of Vancouver. And We've recently seen an agreement between the prime minister and the premier of Ontario that is directly addressing some of the cost pressures that housing is facing in the greater Toronto area. And I know that we as a council have already expressed our desire to try and see if we can match those dollars. We have done a lot as a city, including cutting our own community amenity contributions by 20% on our own. We've made several changes to try and address this so we can actually keep housing projects moving. And we know there are important not-for-profit housing operators. We've heard continuously from the advocacy of the BC Not-for-Profit Housing Association, very concerned about the failure to continue forward with this kind of funding at a critical time when we know we need this funding. And so I really... would like council to include this amendment to the motion, which I think is in the spirit of the motion, which is to continue to try and drive the development of new housing and new affordable housing in our city. And I think we need to send a message to Minister Boyle and the Minister of Housing and local government to really take this very seriously and work closely with Minister Robinson and the federal government to try and get a deal just like the government of Ontario has had that is now allowing them to get projects moving forward. And so I've brought forward this motion and I hope councillors will support it as it adds to the motion put forward by Councillor Orr. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks for the amendment. Seems friendly enough. Not sure how I didn't hear about this partnership, the Canada-Ontario partnership to build. I was just kind of going through it. 50% cut in development charges. It looks like something on HST. $8.8 billion joint funding commitment over 10 years. I mean, that's something that we should also do. I'm sorry. I'm tired. Yeah. Thanks to the mover of the amendment for bringing this forward. And hopefully we can get this on the floor of LGA. Was it next week? Next weekend? So I look forward to that. Thanks. Councillor Bligh. Yeah, thanks very much. And it's late. It's been a very long day. I just would, I think it's worth, because we hear about this desire to have the same deal as Ontario. And as many like to say, the devil's in the details. That infrastructure funding over 10 years, $8 billion, also extends to post-secondary institutions and healthcare. So I understand that we're sort of going, well, that looks pretty good. We need that here to reduce development charges. But I do recommend the best advocacy we can do for infrastructure funding is direct stream. This is not direct stream. This is a provincial. This is an opportunity for the federal government to work with the province, and then the province decides where that money is going to go. And it could mean pennies to Vancouver as a result. And so, you know, everybody here knows I work closely with the federal advocacy around infrastructure funding. And so I'm happy to get into more details when it's not 930 at night after a 12 hour day. But let's just not kind of be too basic. with what the headlines say and really look into the implications. We support any funding from the federal government, I understand, but it's new that it has to now filter through the province, which is less dollars going directly to municipalities, which makes it harder for Vancouver to forecast and plan and delivering on that funding for infrastructure or on that infrastructure based on how the funding comes into our city. I'm happy to talk more offline. I'll support this, but I think we've just got to be a little bit more nuanced and a bit more informed about what this actually looks like.

Thanks, Chair. I won't add much more other than, yes, there are various components to this agreement. Obviously, we're not talking about $8 billion because our... relative size as a province. But seeing that matching dollars, that commitment would be actually, I think, really vital and send a very strong signal to a housing sector that is really struggling right now. And it means that that affordable housing that I think this whole council wants to see built is going to kind of grind to a halt. I'll leave it there, but I appreciate the support for this amendment from our council. Thank you.

Councillor Clausen?

I'm concluded. Thanks very much, Chair.