The Four Failures of the CD-1 Rezoning: 2086-2098 West 7th Avenue, and 2091 West 8th Avenue
Failure to consult the neighbourhood
Failure to respect neighbourhood culture
Failure to have clear objectives for who in Kitsilano needs supportive housing and a reasonable plan to meet objectives
Failure to plan for safety as West 8th and Arbutus is changed into an inner city area with a terminal subway station with no toilets and a bus loop
1. Failure to consult the neighbourhood
Whether Minister David Eby says 52 people attended Zoom Neighbourhood Dialogues, or BC Housing says it was 39, these weren't consultations.
A consultation starts with open-ended questions, like how could your neighbourhood better support marginalized people, what type of model would be appropriate, where do you think a new building would best fit in?
The Shape Your City online Open House was equally unresponsive to input, had scripted answers and didn't post questions about the co-impact of the subway/bus loop on this project, as this was deemed to be inappropriate. However, responses were clear in that more than 75% were opposed to the project in its current form.
Since the consultation process has been so poor, there has been an outpouring of people wanting to speak at the public hearing, creating a de facto neighbourhood consultation in front of the Mayor and Councillors.
2. Failure to respect the neighbourhood.
Failure of the City to understand neighbourhoods is not unique to West 8th and Arbutus.
Whether it's been hearings for 1477 West Broadway, the Broadway Plan or the Vancouver Plan, people repeatedly say that neighbourhood character is being ignored and destroyed. Chief planner Theresa O'Donnell has no value for neighbourhood plans, even though the Kitsilano Plan from the 1970's expressing concerns about prices and families being pushed out of the area is still relevant today.
The City of Vancouver Planning Department is not set up for listening. The planners are sequestered away, listening to each other and the ideology of the day, and not actually working inside the city neighbourhoods and understanding their unique needs and problems.
On June 28th, it was learned that any substantive content about tenanting, services and building site modifications would be handled at the Development Permit stage where the public has no input.
Even more shocking was that after nearly 4 years in office, Councillors were learning this information for the first time.
People do not believe that the City will enforce any secret contract agreements with BC Housing or their operators. This has not occurred with the former Howard Johnson in Yaletown or the Margeurite Ford in Olympic Village. People don't want to be involved in meaningless Community Advisory Committees. Perhaps if planners had offices in the former Howard Johnson or the Marguerite Ford, there would be enforceable contractual agreements between the City and BC Housing, and BC Housing and their operators.
The City selected this specific location for BC Housing in Feb 2019. They had been waiting for the Broadway Plan to pass in order to justify the height of this building. They created shadowing policies to undermine the independent St Augustine School under the Broadway Plan, which was partly improved by Councillor Dominato's amendment.
The failure for the City to respect the neighbourhood of West 8th and Arbutus and its culture is fundamental to the opposition.
West 8th and Arbutus does not have street culture and that's why people like it. It's quiet. There are many children here with the elementary school, pre-school and Delamont Park. There are many more children from 4 other local schools. There is the abstinence-based women's recovery house.
The quiet won't last with the forced introduction of the subway/bus loop and high rise buildings, also without the input or consent of local people.
Another speaker said that putting people with street life into a new area doesn't remove the street. It just brings street life to the new area.
The neighbourhood does not want the inner city street life of Downtown with its crime and disorder.
To have function and safety in the neighbourhood, street culture needs to be kept out.
BC Housing arbitrarily decided to place a harm reduction building into this particular location.
A harm reduction-focused supportive housing project is not appropriate for this high profile area right beside a bus loop where dealers will come to find a market to sell drugs to.
3. Failure to have clear objectives for who in Kitsilano needs to be housed and a reasonable plan for meeting objectives.
The City planners don't know who the Kitsilano homeless are. City planner Alison Dunnet had no answer for Councillor Wiebe when he asked about a Kitsilano homeless needs assessment. And because nobody in the City knows who the homeless are, no one's asked what kind of building they would like to live in.
William McGrath, social justice activist at St Augustine Church, 10 year shelter veteran and Speaker 111 does know who they are. They are people that like to sleep in the rough, don't like being bothered, tend to have alcohol use disorders and don't like being in contact with the Downtown homeless that use injection drugs. William stated that drug injection sites and their activists do not belong in this neighbourhood.
Speaker 15 Tracy Reimer knows the local homeless, too, because they share the benches that she and other social housing residents installed into the treed area south of Delamont Park. The former Montessori lot is now an ad hoc dog park, since the bus loop space can't be used anymore. So contrary to what housing activists have stated, this housing project will displace area people from their cherished green space.
If the City or BC Housing had cared to ask, they would know that the women of Sancta Maria House need long-term housing for themselves and their families and that the church had sponsored a 9 member Rwandan refugee family that had to be housed in Surrey because there was no appropriate housing in Vancouver.
Instead, new people will be parachuted into the neighbourhood, not necessarily with the same neighbourhood cultural beliefs. In the words of Nick Blackman from MPA, his buildings "create a sense of community," but it's an insular community disconnected from the surrounding neighbourhood.
Heather Oland from VAHA said that this location is good for supportive housing, but the reason has not been explained.
From listening to Speaker 15, Tracy Reimer and Speaker 2, Laura Wilkie, this location is not well-suited to the MPA residents. People with serious mental health conditions and possibly head injuries may not respond well to over-stimulation from noise and many people at the bus loop, promising to bring 3500 people per hour during peak hours of operation, and the Greenway, especially once the street car is in service. They advocated for a quiet location for the MPA residents.
To defend against the visibility of this location, MPA had requested the architect to design this fortress to keep residents inside and others outside. During the Nov 10, 2021 Urban Design Panel meeting, architect Bruce Haden said that the operator was clear in that the residents did not want a public life and did not want interaction with those on the Greenway.
4. Failure to plan for safety as West 8th and Arbutus is changed into an inner city area with a terminal subway station with no toilets and a bus loop.
Mayor and Councillors are familiar with the concept of activation space, that it is necessary to bring in a healthy mixture of people to keep an area safe. For example, the Parks Board placed a Kafka coffee shop into the new park downtown to activate the space and dissuade public drug use. (That didn't exactly work out.)
Even the Broadway Plan Urban Design Panel had recommended activation space, enhanced green space and daycares at every transit station.
The bus loop is surrounded by the subway station, this proposed building with its entrance on the opposite side on West 7th, the Greenway, a City-owned co-op building Maple Creek that will be demovicted for density and a schoolyard that's empty in the evening.
If there is a problem at the bus loop or on the Greenway, where can a person go for help before a crime happens? How often do Transit Police stop a crime in process?
The proposed building does not offer any natural surveillance on any side. There are no balconies and the windows appear to be visually obstructed. There is no guarantee that the proposed residents would be interested in or be capable of participating in any neighbourhood safety program.
Due to the sheer oversize of the building, site lines between the school and the park are impaired. Visibility of the Greenway is impaired.
So, this 100% social housing building is not adequate for activation and safety of the neighbourhood surrounding the bus loop and subway station.
There needs to be friendly extended hours businesses and daycare accessible from 7th, 8th and Arbutus on the lower levels and housing units on the upper levels.
Recommendations:
Clearly reject this proposal and bring in a mediator to have a proper consultation on the design and function of the building. This should include the Kitsilano homeless that already that exist in the neighbourhood. Council has a history of rejecting a townhouse project beside Vancouver Hospice. The developer decided to work with Vancouver Hospice to create a design that would be a better fit for that location. Councillors were universally pleased with the outcome.
The building philosophy needs to be compatible with the non-street culture of the area. A harm reduction focussed building next to a bus loop is a poorly thought out location.
Green space needs to be protected in the park deprived Broadway corridor. If current residents and building tenants are agreeable to a shared green amenity space on 7th that can activate that segment, that would be ideal.
Tower location, orientation and size would be determined by independent shadow modeling and according to the tolerances of those directly impacted by shadowing of the building - St Augustine School yard, Delamont Park and Greenway.
The building should have balconies and unobstructed windows for natural surveillance. Future residents, not the Housing Operator, should have commitment to keeping the area safe.
There needs to be a mixture of unit sizes, to serve different resident needs, which makes the modular construction not cost or time effective, as per the staff report ("While there can be different module configurations, the more configurations there are, the greater the costs." Page 48 of https://council.vancouver.ca/20220517/documents/rr3.pdf)
The modular concept may not work in this location.
There needs to be protective lower level businesses to activate at least West 8th and Arbutus. Rezoning for 100% social housing in this location does not activate the neighbourhood and contribute towards safety of the area. The design and size of the building creates a physical obstruction that impairs neighbourhood safety.
There needs to be neighbourhood art as part of this project, since this building is at the high profile entry point to Kitsilano by subway. It needs to be a showcase for Vancouver, British Columbia and visitors from around the world.