Future of Stamps Place residents uncertain after province puts it up for sale
Posted October 28, 2014 5:25 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Families and seniors living in a large Vancouver social housing complex don’t know what the future holds now that the provincial government has decided to sell their home.
BC Housing is transferring ownership of Stamps Place to a non-profit.
Judy McGuire with Ray-Cam says everyone living at the Strathcona complex got a letter explaining the change at the beginning of October.
“Stamps Place, unlike some of the others, is directly managed by BC Housing. It’s not already managed by a non-profit. They say that they’re selling the land with the express purpose of helping the non-profit leverage the property to support their other rental housing. I don’t know how one leverages property without actually developing it. So that becomes a major concern for not only residents at Stamps Place, but frankly for a lot of the rest of the community.”
She says tenants are frightened. “They’re unsure of what’s going on. They have, BC Housing has had drop-ins, about three drop-ins. Essentially what they’re telling residents is don’t worry, you’ll be alright. Your rent will be OK, you know, you’re not going to lose your housing, but of course, once the property is handed over, even with any kind of agreement, nobody’s sure how long BC Housing can in fact mandate that. Nobody’s sure what happens. If the non-profit that takes it over, what if they can’t manage to do the repairs? What if they can’t afford to keep the housing up? Then what happens?”
Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs says the city has asked the premier for an explanation for the sale, but he says they’ve had no response. He’s worried this will end up being a repeat of the Little Mountain situation.
“A lot of affordable housing was lost. More than 200 units. None has been restored yet, although there’s one small building nearing completion. Hundreds of people dislocated for years while the site remains empty. That’s the great fear that I heard when I visited Ray-Cam,” Meggs explains.
NDP Housing critic David Eby says he has the same questions for the BC Liberals.
“Will the non-profits who have the opportunities to buy these, will they have the subsidies required to keep rents low? Will they have the money required to maintain and, where necessary, upgrade these properties so that they’re not falling apart? And finally, where will the money go? Once the government sells these properties, will they guarantee that the money will be reinvested back into social housing? As far as the government minister on this, I haven’t heard him on the record on any of those issues,” says Eby.
He isn’t sure of the motivation behind the sale. He speculates it could be to generate general revenue or offset debt. He says there could be some positive motivations as well.
“They could say ‘well, we just want to give the non-profits the opportunity to have some ownership and to leverage those properties into additional social housing developments.’ We just want an explanation because there are many nefarious explanations, but there are also some positive potential explanations for this policy,” Eby adds.
Housing Minister Rich Coleman says he is not available to answer any questions.
His staff emailed News1130 this statement:
“The Province is looking to transfer ownership of two properties currently managed by BC Housing to non-profit societies. This process began with the posting of Expressions of Interest for Nicholson Tower and Stamps Place.
BC Housing sent written notices to tenants and met with staff at Stamps Place on the same day that the Request for Expressions of Interest was released. This is the first step in this process, and all parties were notified at the same time.
Tenants will not be impacted by the transfer of ownership to a non-profit. BC Housing has provided tenants with additional written information about the process and will meet with tenants to address any concerns. Their tenancy and rental arrangements will remain the same. These tenants pay rent based on their incomes and they will continue to pay no more than 30 per cent of their income in rent.
In our updated provincial housing strategy we committed to strengthening the non-profit housing sector by transferring housing stock to non-profits where appropriate. We identified these two properties as suitable candidates for non-profit management because they both have stable tenant populations with established support programs, and well-maintained buildings. We will choose an experienced non-profit housing provider to manage the buildings.