Apparently wanting to show that it is listening to the community after all, Vision councillors agreed yesterday that three floors of the 11-storey social-housing project at Broadway and Fraser should be removed.
The decision represents a significant victory for neighborhood residents who had been fighting the project’s scale since its initial proposal. The intersection of Broadway and Fraser sits at the edge of Mount Pleasant, an area that has maintained much of its low-rise character despite increasing development pressure throughout the city. Local residents argued that an 11-storey tower would fundamentally alter the neighborhood’s character and set a precedent for similar high-rise developments.
The project, originally designed by Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects, was intended to be a model of mixed-income housing that would integrate social housing units with market rental apartments. The building’s design incorporated ground-floor commercial space and amenities aimed at serving both residents and the broader community.
That comes after 70 speakers showed up over three nights of public hearings a few weeks ago, with many saying that the building just doesn’t fit in with that section of generally one- to three-storey buildings.
The public hearings revealed deep divisions within the community about development and affordable housing. While many speakers opposed the building’s height and scale, others argued that the city desperately needed more affordable housing options and that NIMBYism was preventing necessary social infrastructure. Some speakers noted the irony of opposing affordable housing in a neighborhood where rising property values were already displacing long-term residents.
The intensity of opposition caught city staff and Vision councillors off guard. The project had been in development for over two years and had gone through multiple design iterations and community consultations. However, the formal public hearing process revealed that earlier consultation efforts had failed to adequately address community concerns about height and density.
Raymond Louie brought in the motion, which I’m told was suggested by planning director Brent Toderian, to reduce the height, with the suggestion that the 103 social-housing units and 24 regular rental apartments be reconfigured.
Toderian’s suggestion reflects the city’s ongoing struggle to balance affordable housing needs with neighborhood character concerns. The planning department had initially supported the 11-storey height as consistent with the area’s designation as a transit-oriented development zone, given its proximity to the future Canada Line station. However, the political reality of intense community opposition forced a reconsideration of these planning principles.
The proposed reconfiguration would involve spreading the same number of units across fewer floors, potentially requiring a larger building footprint or reducing unit sizes. Both options present challenges: expanding the footprint might require additional land acquisition, while smaller units could compromise the livability standards that BC Housing requires for social housing projects.
Unfortunately, that motion comes after the non-profit that will run the building, Broadway Youth Resources Centre, has already exhausted the money that it was given by BC Housing to come up with a design. So it’s hard to see what they can do at this point except just lop the top three floors — the market rental apartments — off and go with only the social housing.
The timing of this decision highlights the dysfunction in Vancouver’s development approval process. BC Housing had allocated $1.2 million for the design phase, assuming that the project would proceed as originally conceived. Broadway Youth Resources Centre now faces the prospect of having to return to BC Housing to request additional funding for redesign work, with no guarantee that such funding will be available.
The financial implications extend beyond design costs. The removal of 24 market rental units eliminates a crucial revenue source that was intended to help subsidize the operation of the social housing component. This mixed-income model had been seen as financially sustainable and socially beneficial, creating economic diversity within the building.
Another example of what’s wrong with the city’s current public-consultation process. This would have been a good idea if it had come before a million dollars was spent on architectural drawings, open houses and more. And now the rental housing will likely disappear. That’s something the community actually wanted, so the project would be more mixed. It’s also something that was going to provide a revenue stream for the new building.
The case illustrates broader problems with Vancouver’s approach to community consultation and development approval. The city’s process often involves extensive technical work and financial commitments before meaningful community input is solicited. This front-loaded approach creates situations where expensive design work must be scrapped due to political decisions made after the fact.
