SUN: Olympic village social housing will proceed despite lack of provincial aid

Vancouver mayor: Project should open by winter; B.C. rejected all three operator bids

By Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun | September 29, 2010

VANCOUVER - Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the city will proceed, if necessary, to find operators for social housing units at the Olympic village without the logistical assistance of the province.

“It’s key that we get people into these units before winter — that’s my goal,” Robertson said Wednesday. “The city owns the buildings and so we can move forward with finding an operator ourselves and managing this without BC Housing.”

Robertson’s remarks came two days after B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman rejected the only three bids filed by non-profit agencies to operate 252 units — half of which are non-market housing.

“It’s disappointing and frustrating to run into this roadblock,” said Robertson, noting that the city and the province have cooperated successfully on a number of social housing projects in recent years. “No one can recall running into this before.”

Robertson and Coleman, who were both attending the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual convention in Whistler, met Wednesday to explore potential options.

The bids were made under a bid process negotiated over the past six months between the city and the province.

The city believed the selection of an operator would be expedited with the help of BC Housing, which negotiates such requests for proposals regularly throughout the province.

However, for reasons the city says it does not understand, Coleman turned thumbs down on the three bidders to operate the $110-million buildings.

“I don’t know why this went sideways,” said Robertson.

Coleman, in a media statement Wednesday, said the province entered into the bid process as “a favour to the city” but “we have been unable to attract a suitable operator.”

Coleman earlier said that two of the three bids were from operators who didn’t have the experience in operating a mix of market and social housing units while the third bid was for a co-op, which is not part of the ministry’s mandate.

The operators are to provide $46 million up front to the city, which is the mortgage, guaranteed by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation and BC Housing, and based on the variety of rents that will be paid.

The below-market tenants, who are expected to be from the 10,000 people on BC Housing’s waiting list for social housing, will be mostly low-income families, not hard-to-house people with addiction and mental illness issues found in many social housing projects in the Downtown Eastside.

Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer said the city still doesn’t understand why the bids were rejected.

“The Portland Hotel Society is one of the bidders and they run a lot of housing in the city. It’s hard to see anything that would be concerning about them at the Olympic Village given their track record, which is very good.”

Reimer said the Olympic Village social housing project is “absolutely a simple deal, compared to the complexities we have on the other 14 sites we are trying to build on.

“There must be a piece of information that we don’t have that would that would have made this decision make sense.”

NDP housing critic Shane Simpson was also critical of the province’s stance, saying, “these bids are no different than we’ve seen — it’s a standard operating agreement they are talking about.”

Robertson, meanwhile, said he was surprised that only three of the 22 potential bidders who viewed the site in August decided to bid.

“It’s confounding that it’s been slow and hasn’t drawn more operator interest to a brand-new building that should have lower operating costs because of energy efficiencies.”

dward@vancouversun.com