Joming Lau, a City of Vancouver Planning Analyst and member of Vancouver city’s Community Serving Spaces Team, and his colleague James O’Neill, a Cultural Planner with the city, working in the Cultural Spaces and Infrastructure Division of the Planning Department — and also a member the city’s Community Serving Spaces Team — have been kind in posting to VanRamblings the core document informing the conduct of the Tuesday, May 7th, 2019 affordable housing forum held at CityLab, at Cambie and West Broadway, the document in question, the Community Serving Spaces Place of Worship [pdf] presentation paper on the development of affordable housing and community service spaces on the sites of places of worship.
In an April 1, 2019 article in the Vancouver Sun / Province / PostMedia, migration, diversity and religion writer Douglas Todd asked the question, “Can Metro Vancouver churches plug the dire housing gap?”, going on to ask a second, related question, “How big a dent will re-developing scores of places of worship into housing make in a metropolis that ranks as one of the most unaffordable in the world?”, quoting Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s city programme as saying …
“Hopefully, the redevelopment (of places of worship) is one of the steps of creating a stairway to housing nirvana in Metro Vancouver. But the scale of trying to house those on local incomes affordably is almost biblical.”
Mr. Todd goes on to report that Christian and Jewish religious groups are together adding hundreds of units each year to the region’s rental and housing market, their annual contribution sometimes exceeding 1,000 new homes, a relatively small portion of the roughly 20,000 to 28,000 homes being constructed each year across Metro Vancouver, but still an invaluable contribution of low cost, affordable housing across our region.
Approved by Vancouver City Council in 2014, completed in 2018, a partnership between Central Presbyterian Church and Bosa Properties.
In collaboration with the city, Bosa Properties and Central Presbyterian Church, at 1155 Thurlow in downtown Vancouver, set about to provide 45 social housing homes that would be owned by the church, allowing Bosa Properties to build 168 secured rental homes that would be owned by Bosa, the project including the construction of a new church (and child care centre) built for the church by Bosa — at no expense to the church — and still owned by the church, the very much needed social housing homes and the child care centre creating an ongoing revenue stream for the Central Presbyterian Church. A win-win for all concerned: city, developer & church.
The role of the city? To collaborate with the places of worship to secure funding — from private sources, from the federal or provincial governments through their affordable housing programmes, or in some cases through access to the city’s Community Amenity Contribution programme, which secures in-kind or cash contributions from property developers in exchange for re-zoning of the property — which pays for the entire cost of construction, the city liaising with the place of worship to establish a relationship with a non-profit or for-profit property developer / builder.
Further, the city expedites the development permit process.
From first contact with a place of worship to final completion & occupancy, an average of three years transpire, with the end result: the creation of affordable rental housing, low cost social housing, and much needed community serving spaces, such as the aforementioned child care centre.
The most common phrase enunciated at the Community Serving Spaces for Places of Worship forum last week was, “Robert Brown can’t do it all.”
Mr. Brown, the founder of the Catalyst Housing Development Society is the President of our province’s largest non-profit real estate developer, he and his team responsible for the development of more affordable rental homes on the Lower Mainland and across our province than any other British Columbia developer, allowing faith groups to unlock the value of their real estate assets, while reinvesting that value back into communities for the benefit of families, and a revenue creation stream for places of worship.
A key piece of altruistic advice Mr. Brown provided to faith groups at last week’s affordable housing forum: retain ownership of your property.
Here’s the bottom line: there are 364 land rich, cash poor places of worship across the Vancouver landscape. The City of Vancouver, as part of the city’s Healthy City Strategy, has set about to work with faith groups to create the conditions necessary that would result in the construction of much needed low cost, affordable housing on the under developed properties owned by faith group congregations, providing a no cost renovation or reconstruction of the aging church, synagogue or other place of worship infrastructure, while also creating a revenue stream for the faith group membership, to ensure that our city’s places of worship will continue to thrive, while serving the social and community interests of neighbourhoods across our city.
Audrey Anne Guay, powerbroker, Simon Fraser University Masters student in Urban Studies, Chairperson of the Metro Vancouver Alliance Affordable Housing Action Team, community activist, organizer, an inspiration to all who know her & hope of our future.
THE ROLE OF THE METRO VANCOUVER ALLIANCE IN WORKING WITH FAITH GROUPS TOWARDS THE PROVISION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACROSS THE METRO VANCOUVER REGION
Audrey Anne Guay, 26, arising from a research grant bestowed by Simon Fraser University for the past eight months to spearhead the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s (MVA) Affordable Housing Action Team has, this past year, emerged as one of the key figures in the continuing discussion on the provision of affordable, low cost housing in the Metro Vancouver region.
The Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA) is a broad-based alliance of 75 civil society institutions who work together for the common good, comprised of members of 60 faith groups across our region, and representatives from 15 labour unions, including the British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU), and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
In fact, democratic, activist grassroots MVA members (and sponsoring) organizations together represent more than 200,000 citizens across the Metro Vancouver region, and over 700,000 citizens across our province.
Here is the erudite, socially conscious and, often, emotionally trenchant Ms. Guay, in her own words, on her work with MVA and faith groups across our region who, together, are creating the conditions that will lead to the construction of affordable housing across our region …
“There’s a great deal of energy in the faith-led sector to develop land owned by places of worship across the Metro Vancouver region, for the provision of low cost, affordable housing. The research conducted by MVA has provided insight into both the motivations of the faith groups, and the challenges they face.
A secondary, but still important, focus of MVA’s Housing Team revolves around the role of Community Land Trusts, arising from the successes of MVA’s sister organization in London where as just one small but significant component of the work they’ve successfully completed, involved the construction of 23 affordable homes in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in London. The Land Trust model, going strong in Vancouver (1500 affordable homes are now under construction in Vancouver!), is of particular interest to MVA, in that it involves community leadership in developing affordable housing solutions.”
Much of Audrey Guay’s work has involved speaking with faith leaders, who may or may not be members of the Metro Vancouver Alliance, who have indicated an interest and begun a discussion on making their sites available for the building of much needed low cost housing.
In addition, over the past year, Ms. Guay has met and had in-depth discussions with city planning staffs in municipalities across the region, City Councillors, affordable housing development staff at the Pacific regional office of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, various non-profit associations across the region, and community-oriented developers like Robert Brown’s Catalyst Community Developments Society, and Stuart Thomas, Simon Davie and Jim O’Dea, among other development staff, at Terra Housing.
Audrey Anne Guay is a name you will hear for years and years to come — a critical and necessary voice of change in a society in flux, and a splendidly energized and energizing difference maker, an undeniable presence in all of our lives, whether you are aware of her or not (and you should be!).
Want to gain an understanding of what’s going on in the faith-based and non-profit affordable housing development front? Well, then, your attendance at tonight’s Metro Vancouver Alliance Housing Forum is absolutely mandatory (and, it will be fun and informative!). Organized by MVA Executive Director Tracey Maynard and MVA Housing Leadership team leader, Audrey Anne Guay, information on the where and when of tonight’s critically important housing event may be found in the poster below.
The Oakridge Lutheran Church affordable housing development | 5688 Ash Street, west of Cambie on 41st | a 6-storey, mixed-use building, retail at street level, a new church and community space on the 2nd floor, and four levels of affordable rental housing above the church | Occupancy, Autumn 2019 | Catalyst Community Developments Society
Working with the B.C. Assessment Authority, the Community Services Division within Vancouver City Hall’s Planning Department have identified 364 places of worship in the City of Vancouver that — with the assistance and co-operation of Vancouver City Council, and the provincial and the federal governments — could become prime development sites for the provision of seniors and affordable rental housing, and a plethora of community service spaces, including child care centres and seniors centres.
On Tuesday of this past week, representatives from almost every department at Vancouver City Hall met at CityLab, on the northwest corner of Cambie and West Broadway, with representatives from across Vancouver’s religious landscape, including Baptists, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Buddists and Mennonites, as well as a representative cross-section of members of the Jewish, Islamic, Sikh, Salvation Army, Lutheran & United Churches across our city to continue a dialogue with Vancouver’s faith groups on the redevelopment potential of their places of worship.
Located on the Burrard Peninsula, with water surrounding two-thirds of our city’s urban landscape, development potential for affordable housing and community spaces is limited by the dearth of developable land on which to provide below market housing, and community services. Since the 1960s, the development ethos in our city has been “build up”, such that skyscrapers not only dot the landscape, in areas such as the West End and northeast False Creek almost smother Vancouver, all in service of densification, long our city’s informing planning & development buzzword.
With the growing shortage of community spaces on which to provide needed community services, such as child care centres — largely due to increasingly out-of-control development pressures, leading to skyrocketing land costs and increasing income inequality — the city is turning to faith groups across Vancouver to partner with the three levels of government to help alleviate economic disparity and our city’s unaffordable housing crisis.
The City, in partnering with the faith community, is looking not only to build low-cost and below market housing on lands owned by the places of worship, but partner with faith groups, as well, in providing community gardens and food programmes, community clinics (tax, ESL), addiction workshops and support services, job training, performance spaces, active living programmes & child care centres, in the hope of fostering community.
In Tuesday’s VanRamblings we’ll discuss the issues of declining membership in our city’s places of worship, the dilemma of aging infrastructure and the dearth of funds available for physical maintenance, and the attendant and inherent consequences places of worship face in attempting to fulfil their mandate of service not just to their membership, but to the community.
In Wednesday’s instalment of this week’s faith group / affordable housing / community services series, VanRamblings will explore the role of the Metro Vancouver Alliance, which has partnered with city staff and faith groups across our region — as well as with members of Metro Vancouver’s development community — towards the provision of affordable housing.
In addition, VanRamblings will seek to provide insight into why Vancouver’s underutilized places of worship may very well emerge as a critical component in our city’s plan to build community, to address income inequality and the attendant issues of access & succour encompassing the vast majority of our city’s socially and economically beleaguered residents.
From a diehard VanRamblings reader (and friend and associate, who holds VanRamblings to account), a former Park Board Commissioner, longtime politico, keen observer of Vancouver’s civic political scene, a well-respected local architect and designer, a city-builder, world traveler, husband and father, and sometimes, just sometimes, a bit of a curmudgeon…
“Not sure why you think these Councillors are doing such a great job!
In addition to being overly swayed by staff, these novice Councillors continue to sit back and leave the Vision Vancouver agenda intact, an agenda which got Vision un-elected, decimated, and an agenda that has resulted in so much damage to our City. As well, in each of your examples in your series this week on our City Councillors, the initiatives you think are so wonderful are contradicted by other decisions they have made.
In particular, Councillor Boyle’s energy shift sounds great if it is meant only to be read. But, think about how each of these ideas can be realized. She wants all neighbourhoods to be walk / bike / transit-friendly, and to use wood frame construction, and yet she voted to support the Skytrain SUBway, and it’s greenhouse gas-spewing green glass concrete towers, unfriendly to neighbourhoods, our seniors’ population and young families.
If Councillor Christine Boyle was really as good a listener as you suggest she is, as a first term Councillor she could have taken advice from knowledgeable people (think: Patrick Condon) that the two approaches are not compatible. Only Councillors Colleen Hardwick and Jean Swanson seem to have their heads screwed on straight on the transit file.
I am surprised (and disappointed), as well, to learn that Councillor Adriane Carr continues to support bonus density policies that have long proven to be and are destructive to neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, her Green seatmate on Council, Pete Fry, is trying to get everybody to drive no faster than 30kph when the most energy efficient speed is 38-40kph. While that gets him media coverage, is that sensible Green policy?
Perhaps a better sum up of Council’s performance to date is a ‘hmmm‘”.
- Bill McCreery, architect, VanRamblings reader, politico, keen city observer.
Much of what Bill McCreery writes in indisputable; he, like many across our city, is frustrated at the slow pace of change at City Hall and the cumbersome nature of decision-making, not to mention an unbecoming naïveté and acquiescence to staff, masked as the defining, seemingly newfound ethos at City Hall, now guided by “being respectful of others.”
There’s a lot of that going on at Vancouver School Board, as well - which not only makes for dull politics, it makes for unproductive, unfocused politics, politics too often in the sway of an entrenched bureaucracy, with the decision-making that takes place not for the people, but rather at the expense of the interests of the very people who elected our city officials into office, responding to a campaign of hope for better, when all we’re getting now is the same ol’ same ol, an utterly unacceptable status quo.
The lack of action thus far in civic governance is frustrating, maddening.
Swept into office on a wave of optimism and the belief that change, change for us, for parents & for children, for seniors & for renters, for the disenfranchised, for the struggling single mother and all the struggling families across our city was possible, and as assiduously as our electeds apply themselves to their work at City Hall, day-by-day, and week after frustrating week, the hope the electorate felt emboldened by last October fades into the miasma of an “I’m alright, Jack” ethos that has set our well-heeled civic officials apart from the “hoi polloi” who thrust them into office.
Sadhu Aufochs Johnston, the City Manager of Vancouver, British Columbia, the CEO.
When Mayor Gregor Robertson and his majority Vision Vancouver Council assumed office at City Hall in December 2008, the first order of business for the fledgling party was to appoint a new City Manager to carry out the programme the party had announced, run on and committed itself to during the course of their thirty-day (and night) winning campaign for office.
From 1999 until 2008, when she was unceremoniously turfed from City Hall, Judy Rogers was the city manager for the City of Vancouver, our city’s first female city manager. At the time of her dismissal by the new Council, Ms. Rogers had worked for the city of Vancouver for 25 years, spending 10 years in the role of city manager, after having become assistant city manager in 1994, and deputy city manager in 1996. She started her new employment as Vancouver City Manager on New Year’s Day in 1999.
In 2008, within one week of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson taking office, Rogers was fired by Robertson to be replaced by Dr. Penny Ballem — who had only recently voluntarily left her role as Deputy Minister in the province’s Ministry of Health — as the new head of Vancouver’s civic administration, to provide a “fresh start” for Robertson’s and Vision Vancouver’s agenda. Ms. Rogers received $572,000 severance pay.
The catchphrase around Vancouver City Hall from late 2008 until September 15, 2015, when Mayor Robertson announced that Dr. Ballem’s service had “concluded” and Sadhu Aufochs Johnston would be her replacement was “get ‘er done.”
Dr. Ballem well understood her role: fulfill Vision Vancouver’s agenda, don’t second guess the decision-making of the new Vision Vancouver Councillors and Mayor, pave the way for substantive change and remove any impediments to change, and under no circumstance, ever, ever, ever use the word “no” when addressing Vision Vancouver Councillors, and the Mayor, during Council meetings, or when Council was in session at City Hall.
Finally, though, the people of Vancouver (and the Vision Vancouver Council) had had enough of Dr. Ballem’s strong-armed tactics, as the years went by her loyalty to her “masters” proving increasingly counterproductive to the carrying out of the Vision Vancouver agenda. Mayor Gregor Robertson all but promised the electorate during his 2014 campaign for office that he’d get rid of the cantankerous, and to many off-putting, Dr. Ballem — and after a 10-month delay, on Sept. 15, 2015 he proved true to his word.
Dr. Ballem received $556,595 in a severance package when she left Vancouver City Hall.
On September 1st, 2009 Dr. Penny Ballem announced that Sadhu Johnston would be hired as Deputy City Manager to lead the city’s environmental efforts. Note should be made that Mr. Johnston’s hiring was not that of Dr. Ballem, but of Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Vision Vancouver braintrust, who had come to know and like Sadhu Aufochs Johnston through their mutual association at Cortes Island’s Hollyhock “Lifelong Learning Centre”, which a few reporters have inferred is a “cult”, as Georgia Straight reporter Shannon Rupp wrote in an article published in The Straight on March 28th, 1996, with Rupp writing that the …
“… artificial feeling of love & acceptance is what people are paying for, but I have to admit I find these get-togethers oppressive. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of Hollyhock is its culture of conformity — Goddess forbid anyone should question anything. After five days here, I’ve found Hollyhock is really two places: the site itself is delightful, but the half-baked spiritual and psychological concepts it peddles make me uneasy.”
Over the course of the past six months as the new Mayor and eight novice Councillors have settled into their term of office and their newfound responsibilities at City Hall, as VanRamblings has attended or watched City Council and committee meetings, we have observed city manager Sadhu Johnston consistently, egregiously and unremittingly turning into “Dr. No.”
When Vision Vancouver were in power, telling the Mayor and Vision Vancouver Councillors that they couldn’t do something they had their minds set on, or even implying that there was a “no” in his address to Vision Vancouver electeds would have been tantamount to a tendering of his resignation — Sadhu Johnston was kept on at City Hall after the dismissal of Dr. Penny Ballem, to carry out Vision’s agenda, which he does these days every time he speaks at Council, and every time he scolds a Councillor with a near denunciation of their naïveté, that his is “the way things are done.”
Malcolm Bromley, General Manager of Vancouver Park Board since July 2010
The time is nearing for our current City Council to put their stamp on civic governance in the city of Vancouver.
More than one Councillor — and dozens of VanRamblings’ readers — has expressed a concern about how, as Bill McCreery puts it at the outset of today’s post, that some Councillors have been “overly swayed by staff” and that a change of city staff will be required in order that our new Council might fulfill their campaign commitments to the people of Vancouver.
“There are those of us who’d like to see a change at the top,” various Councillors have told VanRamblings, “but having to pay more than $550,000 in severance pay to the city manager, or the $1.2 million Vision Vancouver paid out in severance money to 11 employees in 2016 is just not palatable, to Councillors or the public.”
VanRamblings is not suggesting that Sadhu Johnston be fired or dismissed, rather that the accomplished Mr. Johnston be transitioned into another position of authority at City Hall, while maintaining his current salary.
Vancouver’s Mayor and Council need a leader at the top of the City Hall bureaucracy who will carry out their agenda, and not the defeated Vision Vancouver agenda. Who would that person be to replace Sadhu Johnston?
Take a look at the photo above — that is Malcolm Bromley, the current General Manager of the Vancouver Park Board, who is one of the most passionate persons with whom VanRamblings is acquainted about city-building. Most of the members of Council are familiar with the many accomplishments of Mr. Bromley, his commitment to democratic engagement, and finding a path that will enable the electeds to carry out their commitment to the citizens who elected them to office.
Councillors Melissa De Genova, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Michael Wiebe sat on Park Board when Mr. Bromley was GM. In 2014-15, when Sarah Kirby-Yung was Park Board Chairperson, Malcolm Bromley was instrumental in helping Ms. Kirby-Yung fulfill her commitment (and it was her commitment to the people of Vancouver, and not to her Non-Partisan Association party) to ban cetaceans (whales and dolphins) in captivity in Stanley Park.
VanRamblings has written previously that UBC’s Patrick Condon, Park Board’s Malcolm Bromley, and the Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry are the finest minds in our city on the topic of city-building, the three seasoned urban geographers familiar and admiring of the work of each member of the triumvirate VanRamblings has identified above.
Fiscal responsibility is always a concern in governance. Transitioning Malcolm Bromley from Park Board General Manager to the role of city manager, while maintaining his current salary (although he’s due for a raise), perhaps transitioning Sadhu Johnston into the role of GM of Environmental Innovation, while maintaining his salary, downsizing City Hall’s bloated communications department, would mean savings in staffing costs — and a better run city, with a bureaucratic governance in place that will facilitate the agenda of Mayor & Council, rather than appear to impede.
As we say above, “the time is nearing for our City Council to put their stamp on civic governance in the city of Vancouver,” to let the public know that they’re in charge and ready to get to work on the people’s business.
“The Death of Cynicism,” the name VanRamblings has assigned to this week’s series?
As VanRamblings has suggested throughout the week, the electorate of Vancouver displayed their unerring wisdom on Oct. 20 2018 in electing the finest group of change makers ever to sit around our city’s Council table.
Last year, when writing about the incoming Council, we wrote that it would take a year and half for our new Councillors to “find the bathrooms,” a metaphor for how long it would take new Councillors to begin to implement their agenda. And so it is, and is proving to be. Only by shaking up the bureaucracy at Vancouver City Hall, putting their own senior staff in place to carry out the new Council’s agenda, will this Vancouver City Council achieve their goal of creating a healthier, fairer and more just city for all.
VanRamblings remains confident that our new Council will usher in generational change, and that by 2022 the vast majority of the electorate will come to view governance in our city differently, knowing that the Mayor and all 10 Councillors are on their side, working for them, while achieving and putting into practice the change that will serve us all, each and every one of us, on the road to the death of political cynicism and the renewal of hope in our city, in every neighbourhood, across every diverse community.
