Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Ian Mass with CityBeat for January seventeenth Allowing more childcare in residential neighborhoods, paying a living wage, safe public washrooms for everybody, and lots more. Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass joins us with his preview of Vancouver Council's agenda over the coming weeks with his regular City Beat Report. Hello, Ian.
Speaker: Hi, Lorraine. How you doing? I'm good, and it's nice to be talking to you. Yeah. Now, back in early 2023, Ken Sim and his ABC majority in Vancouver decided to let Vancouver's six-year commitment to pay their staff and contractors a living wage lapse.
Speaker: Council's going to re-examine that decision this coming week. What's happening there? Well, the re-examination is not coming from Ken Simm. It's really one city councilor, Lucy Maloney and Green Party councilor, Pete Fry. They've caught a motion called Good Pay for Good People's Work, recertifying Vancouver as a living wage employer. And they make the case, ah they don't have to make it, it's been made, that Vancouver has one of the highest costs of living in Canada and its workers need at least the bare minimum of living wage, which is now about $27.85 hour for Metro Vancouver.
Speaker: They point out that over 500 employers, including local governments, are certified as fair wage employers. So essentially, they're saying, let's get back to being a fair wage employer.
Speaker: ah But it's easy. Unfortunately, it's easy to see that this motion will likely go nowhere other than back into the garbage can. Yikes. Now, child care facilities with more than eight kids in residential areas are effectively banned in Vancouver. Council's going to decide whether to let a report go to public hearing that will open this issue up again. What are staff proposing there?
Speaker: Well, as you said, operating a childcare facility with more than eight children in a residential area in Vancouver is a difficult, near impossible task. Neighbors often are opposed. They're citing parking and drop-off issues, excessive noise from the kids, and just the overall sanctity of only houses in residential areas.
Speaker: After a public hearing in 2023 that the the public convinced the majority on council to not approve an expansion of a child care facility near Douglas Park, ah two political foes actually got together. ABC's Lisa Dominato and then one city councillor, Christine Boyle.
Speaker: And they convinced council that they wanted staff to explore options for making it easier and cheaper to expand childcare in residential neighborhoods.
Speaker: Now, that report's coming before council. It took over two years to be written, and it recommends allowing 16-kid childcare facility, daycare facility on the lot each lot,
Speaker: but only if one residential dwelling unit remains on the same site. That could be an independent suite or a lane house, whatever. But the idea is to retain housing supply while opening up the expansion of childcare in the neighborhood. Now, I expect Council will agree to send this off to public hearings, so we will be hearing more about this in the next month or so, but it'll be interesting to see how the public reacts to this. Well, that'll be a good one to follow up on. Now, Council will be considering a report that wants Vancouver to prioritize publicly accessible washrooms in Vancouver.
Speaker: Why is this important? Lots of us need washrooms, certainly public ones, especially for older adults, families with young children, people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, even shift workers, and obviously those experiencing homelessness.
Speaker: And it points out, the report points out that different parts of the city have different levels of need. The city already provides about 163 publicly accessible washrooms, but most of those are operated by the park board and libraries around town.
Speaker: So they've come up with what they call a washroom strategic framework. That's a bureaucratic way to say just say bathrooms. And they've come up with a plan about what they want to do first. They want to integrate public washrooms into major capital projects. So there's a lot of those going on around town. And That would just certainly expand it.
Speaker: They want to explore alternate models with the private sector, and they want to figure out how they can help you find these places. So they want to enhance wayfinding and signage to improve the awareness of existing facilities.
Speaker: Most interesting interesting piece of information is that the plan, and I quote, will be funded within the existing 2026 operating budget. So given that the city has cut 100 or will be cutting $120 million dollars and 400 jobs this year to meet its zero meets zero 2026 budget, it sounds like this particular project has almost secretly passed muster.
Speaker: Because it must mean there's a list of cuts and survivors, but the public and councillors, at least the opposition councillors, haven't seen that yet.
Speaker: Interesting. Now, one of the oldest single-room occupancy hotels in Chinatown is asking council to exempt it from a critical rule. what's What's going on there?
Speaker: Well, it's the old London Hotel at the corner of East Georgia and Main Street. It was built back in 1903 and added on after that a couple of times.
Speaker: And people may know this from the London pub there, which is a popular pub. The 73 SRO, single-room occupancy rooms, have been vacant since 2023. It's in bad shape.
Speaker: up top And so Providence Healthcare, which operates St. Paul's Hospital and many other medical facilities, is proposing that they take over and integrate these 73 rooms into their Road to Recovery initiative, which involves a continuum of care and housing for those struggling with substance abuse, or at least that's what they say on their website.
Speaker: So those tenants, they say, and likely true, need in-hotel support services. So Providence Healthcare wants to convert 23 of the 73 rooms to support the program's operational and programming needs.
Speaker: But the city has a policy that any organization or developer that wants to redevelop an SRO hotel needs to replace all the units that are being redeveloped.
Speaker: And in this case, All 73, preferably self-contained suites, and they all have to be rented at income assistance shelter rates, which is presently paltry $500 a month.
Speaker: So Providence is coming before council looking for an exemption to these rules so that they can begin extensive renovations and integrating the hotel into what I i said earlier, the Road to Recovery initiative.
Speaker: If approved, and i my guess is it likely will be, they're hoping to complete these rentals and have people moved in by early 2027, just in time to watch St. Paul's Hospital make its big move across Main Street to their new facility.
Speaker: Sticking with hospitals, Vancouver General Hospital, not to be outdone, wants the city to allow them to build a 26- and 28-story addition, which will include about 280 long-term care beds in its first phase. They want to do that across the streets from the Diamond Center. They're at 12th and Oak.
Speaker: But unfortunately, to do that, they're going to have to tear down an existing long-term care building called the Windermere Care Center, which has 207 beds and a 26-apartment rental property, 26-unit apartment building next door, as I said, Oak and West 12th, right across the street from VGA. So,
Speaker: The amount of new beds for long-term care are going up about 73, but we're losing a a fair amount of beds in this one and an apartment building. So we'll see what council does about that.
Speaker: Now, Ian, Green Councillor Pete Fry has a four-page motion going to council on Tuesday focusing on Vancouver tenants' rights when it comes to unethical landlords. What's he asking the city to do?
Speaker: Councillor Fry always has detailed, long motions, and this one's called, and I quote, tools for tenancies, closing the gap, by enforcing accountability and adding conditions to licensing landlords in the city of Vancouver. So what does that mean?
Speaker: Now, he's very careful to say right at the get-go that most landlords are great. Unethical landlords are rare. I'm not so sure about that statement. But anyways, he said it.
Speaker: And these unethical landlords exploit existing loopholes to undermine tenant security and well-being. And he uses some examples, harassment, unauthorized surveillance, illegal suite conversions, bad faith evictions, evasive subtenancy programs, and unlawful short-term rental operations.
Speaker: And he's come up with 10 detailed recommendations to deal with this issue. Unfortunately, this council has already cancelled the city's renter's office with a clear message that renters' rights are a provincial, not a municipal responsibility.
Speaker: So we'll see how this motion is handled, but I'm not optimistic. One city councillor, Lucy Maloney, has a motion called Paving the Way for More Nonprofit Housing in Vancouver. What's that about, Ian?
Speaker: Well, apparently non-profit housing providers are, rather than building from scratch, are buying already completed housing projects around Metro Vancouver.
Speaker: And Councilman Maloney says existing processes to change the legal use to non-profit housing apparently involves a great deal of money and a lot of uncertainty for non-profit housing providers.
Speaker: So she's got four recommendations that essentially wants the city to look at the whole issue of nonprofits buying completed projects. She wants to streamline this relatively new way to deliver social housing. And so we can have more quicker, I suppose, is what it really comes down to.
Speaker: Well, as usual, Ian, we've spent a lot of time talking about housing in Vancouver. I wonder why. But just this week, council approved a public hearing for an upzoning of the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel on the 1100 block of West Pender.
Speaker: You read the report where you're highlighting this story. Well, it's a tiny, tiny little ah report. It's not a tiny report. It's over 60 pages, but it's about a buffe tiny issue.
Speaker: And I just found it humorous. I mean, I could have talked about the redevelopment of the Army-Navy store down on East Hastings. which calls for two towers with rental and hotels. And that seems like a good proposal just coming out now.
Speaker: But instead, I wanted to talk about this existing hotel tower down Hastings in the more expensive part of town. It's called the Marriott Pinnacle. As you were saying, it's got 36 stories. It's been there for a a long time.
Speaker: 446 rooms and suites with 67 strata folks with, I suppose, a lot of money up on the top floors. It's a big building. It's about, and remember this number, 328,000 square feet of a building. That's a big building.
Speaker: So the hotel wants to do a tiny renovation on the main floor to expand the rest on, not by much, about 400 square feet in a 320,000 square foot building. But the city says what's now on the property just can't be changed without bylaw changes, reports, and public hearings.
Speaker: So council and public have to wade through about 65 plus pages of documents with seven different recommendations. It's clear the report is written by well-paid planners, reviewed by well-paid senior staff, and even vetted by even more well-paid lawyers on both sides.
Speaker: And on top of that, the city is charging the hotel $30,000 in community amenity contributions for their little ah restaurant renovation. and the community amenity contributions and development cost charges, plus whatever fees they need to pay to get the bylaw approval and building permits would come next.
Speaker: So unless I'm missing something, this seems like a ridiculous waste of money for everybody. Surely there's an easier and less expensive way to do these minor kinds of things.
Speaker: Anyways, that's it. There's lots more coming to council, but that's all that fits today. Okay. Well, we'll definitely have to keep our eyes on all of this. And I'm sure you'll be doing that with your next City Beat Report.
Speaker: You bet. Thanks, Laurie. Yeah, thank you. I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass. He was here with his City Beat Report. You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver.
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Speaker: Thanks for listening.
