Is Vancouver’s New Social Housing Plan Just Way Too Big?

By Carol Volkart

ABC Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung says the city’s new social housing plan is like “boiling the ocean” to get 10 glasses of desalinated water. Veteran developer Michael Geller says it’s like “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

The criticisms from both a key councillor in the majority party that has so far supported the plan and a prominent development-industry figure with social-housing experience point to the big question hanging over council’s Dec. 9 vote on the Social Housing Initiative.

Is the plan to allow 20-storey social housing towers on one-third of the city’s residential land area and six-storey buildings on another 20 percent too big a pill for Vancouverites to swallow? Especially since there’ll be no public hearings for such projects, and only 30 percent of their units must be below market.

In Dunbar, 20-storey towers could be built on two blocks on both sides of Dunbar Street, while six-storey social housing buildings could be built in the “village” areas east of Blenheim. All with no rezoning or public hearings required.

The Social Housing Initiative has grown like Topsy since 2022, when the newly elected ABC council agreed work should begin on a plan to allow 12-storey social housing projects in some multi-family zones and potentially other zones.

Now, the plan is for up to 20 storeys. And social housing projects with no public hearings will be allowed not just in a few zones, but in 49 percent of the city’s residential land area, amounting to 52,729 parcels.

Of that,  the 20-storey towers will be allowed in 32 percent of the land area, or 35,157 parcels. Six-storey buildings will be allowed in another 17 percent, or 17,592 parcels.

Those numbers weren’t in the original city documents, but were released just 24 hours before a high-stakes Nov. 27 public hearing in response to a request from CityHallWatch, an online site that tracks civic affairs.

And they appear to have spooked some ABC councillors.

ABC grills staff on size of plan

“Has there ever been a rezoning of this size in a major Canadian city?” asked ABC Coun. Mike Klassen, reflecting what appeared to be a general concern of his party colleagues. General manager of planning Josh White quickly pointed to a 270,000-parcel rezoning in Calgary, and noted Vancouver’s new R1-1 zoning for multiplexes in 2023 covered about 65,000 lots amounting to more than 50 percent of the city’s land area.

ABC Coun. Peter Meiszner underscored the size concerns. When staff confirmed the plan affected 53,000 parcels, he said, “Wow. That’s a lot,” and added he was surprised it would allow 20-storey towers in “pretty predominantly single-family home areas” as far out as West Point Grey.

Kirby-Yung, who is deputy mayor, reached for superlatives in describing the amount of change the plan would mean in a city already in the throes of major upheaval. She questioned why it had to be so big if, as staff said, only about 10 social housing projects are built each year, a number not expected to increase significantly under the new plan.

Opening 53,000 parcels to accommodate 10 projects a year is like “boiling the ocean maybe to  get 10 glasses of desalinated water,” said Kirby-Yung.

The orders of magnitude of the numbers “are quite striking in terms of the sheer breadth of changes in relations and allowances relative to the number of projects that staff are reporting they would see coming forward which seems a very finitely defined and small number to manage to expedite through the process,” she said. “Was there consideration given to that?”

During the discussion, Josh White said the size of the plan reflects the city’s efforts to ensure social housing is spread across the whole city, not confined to certain areas. And now that senior governments are offering funding for social housing, he said, the plan is aimed at ensuring  Vancouver projects are “shovel ready” and at the head of the line.

Both Kirby-Yung and Klassen asked whether staff had considered a more targeted approach.

If cutting time is the issue, “have we actually compared and contrasted options?” asked Kirby-Yung. Instead of “doggedly pursuing this  . . .  have staff looked at an alternative, and done analysis about how we can bring that time down?”

She also raised the question of the reliability of projections about social-housing numbers, given staff’s under-estimation of rezoning applications for the Broadway Plan.  How many were predicted for the Broadway Plan and how many were actually received?

Assistant director of planning Dan Garrison agreed the applications “vastly outweighed what we predicted.” However, he said, the Broadway Plan is different from the social housing plan because it allows a broad range of development while social housing is restricted to government, non-profit and co-ops.

Public concerns, falling support

But residents’ concerns about the possibility of a Broadway-style flood of social housing towers had clearly leaked through to Klassen, who asked what will prevent towers overwhelming the lower-density neighbourhoods that represent most of the city.

Senior housing planner Jessie Singer responded that it is “very, very difficult” to build social housing because of the costs. “That will limit the number, so you won’t see the type of development that happened on Broadway.”

Klassen then posed a series of questions that could have been taken directly out of the correspondence concerned residents had written to council:

• How can the city reassure residents they won’t see a large social housing building go up right beside them? Singer said the city can’t guarantee what will happen on any given lot, but generally, four neighbours would have to sell to a non-profit in order for a social housing project to be built next door.
• Could social housing grow even higher, given that in the past three years, it’s grown under the plan from 12, then 18 and now 20 storeys? “What prevents it from being 24 or even higher?” Singer responded that development permits restrict builders to what’s in the district schedules.
• Is it correct that social housing does not contribute to infrastructure or amenity costs? Singer confirmed social housing is exempt from development cost levies and community amenity contributions.
• How much money will social housing projects actually save “resulting from such a very broad change to our city’s plan?” Singer said she didn’t have exact figures, but she has heard the sum of half-a-million dollars cited.

ABC Coun. Brian Montague used his questions to point out how public support for the plan had fallen over the past year. Singer confirmed that support had flipped to mostly negative from mostly positive a year ago.

About 60 percent supported the “high-level” plan when it went to an engagement process in the fall of 2024, she said. When a more detailed plan was presented at a second engagement process this summer, about 60 percent gave it a thumbs’ down. “So a process that went from high level to more detailed flipped support from 60 percent to 20 percent,” Montague observed.

The most supportive councillor about the plan was OneCity’s Lucy Maloney, who asked a series of questions enabling staff to list the reasons it’s needed and what it will accomplish. That included  the dire need for social housing and the opportunities it gives to a wide range of people to live in Vancouver, from seniors to low-wage workers to essential workers such as nurses and firefighters.

COPE Coun. Sean Orr said he’d been reading articles about the plan online that made it sound “a lot more scary than it is.” In fact, he said, “it sounds quite reasonable and well thought-out.”

Regarding concerns that only 30 percent of units in social housing buildings must be at below-market rent, he elicited staff reassurances that in fact, 30 percent is just the bare minimum, and the below-market proportion is often at 64 percent.

 Speakers criticize size of plan, towers

At the hearing, the 40 speakers were almost evenly split between opponents and supporters, while there were 63 written submissions in opposition and 19 in favour.

While supporters emphasized the need for more social housing and the value of spreading it citywide, opponents focused on the size of the plan, the impact of 20-storey towers in low-rise residential areas and the anti-democratic nature of cutting out public hearings and residents’ right to be heard.

Michael Geller said he has “serious” concerns about blanket rezoning one-third of the city to allow highrises up to 20 storeys and 6 FSR without public hearings. Considering the number of  expected social housing projects, he compared it to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

As a former program manager of social housing for CMHC, he said he believes social housing should be allowed everywhere in the city. But jamming towers into “quiet low-scale neighbourhood streets at ten times the height and density of existing homes” is inappropriate for many reasons.

Former TEAM for a Livable Vancouver councillor Colleen Hardwick was almost cut off from speaking when Mayor Ken Sim objected to her use of the word “farce” in relation to the public hearing. When she was allowed to continue, she said she can’t understand why the city would recommend such extensive rezoning specifically for highrises, especially when only 30 percent of the units may be subsidized. “Six storeys is one thing; towers are another.”

She said the “one-size-fits-all” approach ignores the local area plans that had been carefully created over the years. “In the virtuous name of social housing, local democracy is being steamrolled along with the neighbourhoods.”

Dunbar resident Gary MacIsaac raised another concern about towers that he said had nowhere been considered in the city’s proposal. The shadows cast by allowing them in such a large area of the city will affect the ability to generate renewable energy through solar photovoltaic panels, he said.

“This blanket approach to widespread city rezoning appears to have been developed with no consideration of impacts on other government programs which encourage installed renewable solar energy generation and future solar PV expansion.” He urged council to “immediately remove any consideration of the blanket 20-storey tower rezoning from the report” until the issue had been reviewed.

A hot potato since Day One

The plan to fast-track social housing has been a hot potato ever since Christine Boyle, then a OneCity councillor, now NDP housing minister, dropped it in the previous council’s lap in 2021. Which shot it down after hearing from about 100 speakers, an unprecedented number for a councillor’s motion.

Fast-forward to December 2022 and a round of applause for Boyle from the newly elected ABC-majority council, which approved her revived motion directing staff to begin work on such a plan.

“Look at us, working together,” laughed ABC’s Meiszner, according to a Vancouver Sun story at the time. Dozens of speakers addressed council about the motion, with the vast majority in support and only a handful opposed.

But the initial motions only proposed 12-storey projects. By the time the Social Housing Initiative went to the public for consultation in the fall of 2024, towers had grown to 15 to 18 storeys in “neighbourhood centres,” which is what the Vancouver Plan calls main shopping streets like Dunbar. In “villages,” the height was six storeys. At that point, the public was 60 percent supportive of the plan

By the time the initiative went back to the public for a second round of consultation in June-July 2025, the heights allowed in neighbourhood centres had climbed again. This time, it was 20 storeys “to allow more flexibility across various site types.”

And as Montague’s questions to staff pointed out,  support for the plan had flipped – to 57 percent negative. “Public feedback submitted through the comment form was largely negative,” a staff report about the engagement process said. “Concerns were raised about the citywide scope of the proposal, the high-density tower forms, the capacity of existing infrastructure, and safety issues.”