Sweeping new housing policies reshaping Downtown Eastside approved | Daily Hive

Policies enabling taller buildings up to 32 storeys in the Downtown Eastside to generate new social housing and rental housing approved by Vancouver City Council

Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. (City of Vancouver)

After hearing from roughly 300 public speakers over three emotional and often heated public hearing dates, Vancouver City Council approved City of Vancouver staff’s recommendations tonight to proceed with a major overhaul of Downtown Eastside zoning rules that will allow much taller buildings — some as high as 32 storeys — in an effort to speed up the construction of brand new purpose-built social housing to replace aging and dilapidated single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels and deliver more affordable housing.

The changes apply to two specific areas: the very core of the Downtown Eastside — formally known as the Downtown Eastside/Oppenheimer District — which generally spans a one- to two-block radius around Oppenheimer Park, and a smaller, separate area along Main Street immediately south of the Dunsmuir and Georgia viaducts and Chinatown, near Thornton Park and the future new St. Paul’s Hospital campus.

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To help stimulate more housing and a healthier mixed-income Downtown Eastside population with middle-income workers and families, the inclusionary housing requirement for both areas has also been amended from 60 per cent social housing and 40 per cent market rental housing to 20 per cent social housing and 80 per cent market rental housing.

This 2014 policy of a “60-40” ratio has resulted in only two completed building projects with a combined total of just over 200 units in the past decade.

To better access the increasingly limited pool of federal and provincial funding for new social housing, affordability requirements have been amended from one-third of the units at shelter rates to 20 per cent of the units at shelter rates and 10 per cent of the units at or below Housing Income Limits — aligning with the funding eligibility guidelines of senior governments.

Additionally, City Council has also approved enhanced tenant protection policies, as well as relaxations to better enable SRO replacements.

And in order to support taller building heights, some slight amendments have been made to the protected mountain view cones. City staff noted that the maximum policy height of 32-storey towers will not be possible everywhere, even under the new rules. This includes building shadowing considerations for Oppenheimer Park.

Depending on the precise property location, both general areas will now allow significantly taller buildings, but only if developments meet strict conditions tied to rental housing and social housing delivery.

Until now, most buildings in the Downtown Eastside were limited to about four to eight storeys, with a few locations allowing up to 10 storeys. Under the newly approved plan, those limits stay in place as a starting point — but developers can now apply to build much taller buildings if they include social housing.

downtown eastside vancouver policy changes 2025

View cone changes for added building density and height to support the improved viability of market rental housing, social housing, and SRO replacement projects in the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District and Thornton Park areas. (City of Vancouver)

Added building density and height to support the improved viability of market rental housing, social housing, and SRO replacement projects in the Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer District. (City of Vancouver)

In plain terms, City Council has created a trade-off: if a developer builds 100 per cent rental housing and includes at least 20 per cent social housing, the City can allow the building to go much higher.

Allowing taller buildings creates more floor space, which improves the financial and economic viability of a project through economies of scale, while still requiring rental housing and social housing components.

Taken together, the changes represent a major shift from the Downtown Eastside Plan approved in 2014 under a Vision Vancouver party-led City Council — a plan that has been increasingly subject to much debate in recent years, with critics arguing that the area plan’s prescriptions, stipulations, and limitations have contributed to the area’s incredible growth in the concentration of poverty, crime, and public disorder, and ongoing mental health, addiction, and public safety challenges.

However, the majority of public speakers were opposed to changes — primarily Downtown Eastside residents, as well as activists, advocates, academics, and other people who work in the area’s community and non-profit organizations.

Opponents argue the plan will increase displacement and homelessness by reducing the proportion of deeply affordable housing required in new buildings and weakening protections for SRO tenants.

They warn that allowing mostly market rental housing towers in the Downtown Eastside will drive up land values, making it harder for governments and non-profits to build shelter-rate housing for people on welfare or disability. Critics also raised concerns about gentrification and loss of community.

“The plan proposes to dilute the concentration of low-income people with middle-income folks who won’t like homeless folks sleeping in their doorways. It will be a toxic mix of richer residents who are irritated by people living on the streets and want more cops to move them,” said Jean Swanson, a Downtown Eastside activist and former Vancouver city councillor, during her remarks as a public speaker to City Council.

“SROs are closing now due to fires, aging conditions, and maintenance issues”

But City staff asserted that the new policy framework is designed first and foremost to greatly accelerate the replacement of rapidly aging SRO buildings in extremely poor condition, by improving the financial and economic viability of not only publicly-supported and not-for-profit housing projects, but also private-sector developments.

“The goal of the work is to increase social housing and accelerate SRO replacement with new self-contained social housing. It is not to replace or reduce low-income housing in the neighbourhood… It adds another tool to the toolbox,” Edna Cho, senior planner for housing policy in the City’s planning Department, told City Council this evening in her closing comments.

“We also heard concerns that these changes would raise land values or overly incentivize private development. To clarify, there are no peer private development options being proposed through these changes. No condominiums are proposed and there are no projects that would be fully market rental. Extensive economic testing showed that these zoning changes will not destabilize land values and that senior government partnerships will continue to be necessary for these projects.”

This helps address rising construction costs, high borrowing costs to cover the construction costs, the elevated financial risk with building in the areas, and the current approach on depending on federal and provincial funding.

Furthermore, continued Cho, “SROs are closing now due to fires, aging conditions, and maintenance issues that will only worsen in the coming decades. We all know that we cannot address this crisis alone. We need to work with all partners, all levels of governments, non-profits, [and] even private partners. So while we continue to seek the ideal, we can move forward now and do the good that we can.”

Following City staff’s recommendations, the ABC Vancouver party’s majority in City Council approved the policy changes in a 5-4 vote. Green councillor Pete Fry, COPE councillor Sean Orr, OneCity councillor Lucy Maloney, and Vote Vancouver councillor Rebecca Bligh opposed the changes.

Various proposed amendments by the dissenting city councillors — such as excluding private SRO properties from the new policies, and delaying any policy implementation by punting back the recommendations to City staff for further consultation and evaluation — were rejected by the ABC majority.

“Action versus inaction”

ABC councillor Peter Meiszner emphasized shrinking federal and provincial budgets mean the City must find “new and innovative ways” to replace SRO buildings that are often “unlivable and unacceptable.” He argued that despite decades of effort, “every single year it continues to get worse and people are suffering,” adding that what he heard during the hearings was a “doubling down” on past strategies and “an endless wheel of more and more consultation.”

“Residents in this neighbourhood deserve better. They can’t wait any longer,” said Meiszner, calling for “self-contained, dignified social housing” and a healthier, more balanced community. While acknowledging fear in the neighbourhood, he said he supports City staff’s plan because he believes “it will move us towards achieving the goals that we all want to see.”

ABC councillor Lenny Zhou said the Downtown Eastside has spent a decade under a “well-intentioned policy,” but one that has produced “an outcome none of us can accept,” pointing to “worsening street disorder, declining public safety, deteriorating housing stock, [and] vacant small businesses.” Restricting mixed-income housing and preserving substandard SROs, he said, “has not delivered stability or dignity… it has entrenched the crisis.”

“This is not about displacement,” said Zhou. “It’s about creating the conditions for safety, recovery and long-term community stability.” He added that social and supportive housing must be “well-managed and accountable,” arguing that [other] communities are not rejecting housing for vulnerable people but “a model that failed to respond to real-world impacts.” If the previous approach were working, said Zhou, “we would not even be here today,” adding that repeating it “is not compassion.”

ABC councillor Mike Klassen said the current “fragile” situation of the Downtown Eastside is driven by how it is made up of only one income type. “Mixed income is how we cross subsidize deeply affordable units, fund SRO replacement, support local services and create long-term stability rather than a perpetual crisis management,” said Klassen.

“I’m supporting this plan because it confronts reality. It enables replacement rather than symbolic policy,” added Klassen.

ABC councillor Lisa Dominato framed the decision bluntly as a choice between “action versus inaction.”

“We can try something or do nothing. And I’d like to be on the side of trying something and it may not be perfect. There’s the old adage of don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. And I think we need to be bold and to try different measures. We know that the plan that was put in place hasn’t been effective,” said Dominato.

Mayor Ken Sim also echoed the calls for a pivot toward change.

“Some voices, including those who told the fact that they have served on previous Downtown Eastside panels and advisory processes seem to only want to maintain the status quo, but refusing change is still a choice. And in the Downtown Eastside, the status quo has kept this community in crisis. The status quo in the Downtown Eastside is not working for residents, for tenants or for the people living in crisis. Doing nothing is not compassionate and delay is not a plan,” said the Mayor.

Too much of a “real estate plan”

However, Green councillor Pete Fry found the comments made by the mayor and ABC councillors to be “offensive.”

“I was there when Vision Vancouver tried to take it on 10 years ago and initiated the Downtown Eastside Plan because the area was broken then. It’s broken now, but that doesn’t mean that nobody’s tried and frankly, this is a complicated piece,” said Fry, lamenting that the ABC-led City Council’s decision tonight rewinds on the previous lengthy consultation work conducted with the Downtown Eastside community for the original approval of the area plan in 2014.

“We had everybody working together and looking at each other as humans and recognizing what the challenges were… They put in the time to do the work. This Council has not put in the time to do the work. I appreciate that City staff have put in the time, but not the work that’s necessary for this incredibly complex ecosystem and environment with very fragile people.”

Fry also asserted City staff’s recommendations are too much of a “real estate plan,” which he suggests “is not going to solve the problems here.”

COPE councillor Sean Orr commented, “I listened intently to the staff say the current plan isn’t working. And while that may or may not be true, I think the scale of this plan is out of whack with what the neighbourhood has said they want.”

“Overall, this plan reduces commitments to social housing and affordability, increases risk of gentrification, as the experts have said, undermines tenant protections, weakens community control and meaningful consultation and fails to meet the scale of the housing crisis,” said Orr.

Vote Vancouver councillor Rebecca Bligh, who triggered the City staff process to develop these Downtown Eastside recommendations two years ago after City Council approved her member motion, appeared to express regret in her closing remarks, saying the outcome was not what she had intended and warning that the new policies could worsen conditions in the neighbourhood.

Two years ago, she acknowledged that the 2014-enacted Downtown Eastside Plan’s ratio of 60 per cent social housing and 40 per cent market rental housing was problematic for struggling to catalyze such mixed-income projects.

But she asserts the approved approach tonight is a clear departure from the desires of residents, activists, advocates, and community and non-profit organizations.

The policies “before us does not reflect that collective work. It narrows the ambition behind it. It separates housing from the social in-house supports that people need, and it moves ahead without the commitments and safeguards that the community insisted were essential,” said Bligh.

“No one believes the current conditions in the Downtown Eastside are acceptable. What I am defending though, and what has fuelled every day of my work on Council is a vision that this community dared to imagine.”

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