City Council rejects temporary modular housing sites exceeding 10 years

Temporary modular housing on the north side of the Larwill Place city block, next to the future Vancouver Art Gallery site. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

A member motion to look into the possibility of extending the permitted duration a temporary modular housing building can stay in a specific location was rejected by Vancouver City Council on Wednesday.

City Council voted against the motion based on party lines, with the majority held by ABC Vancouver opposed and the city councillors of the Green and OneCity parties in favour.

Currently, municipal zoning and development bylaws enable temporary modular housing structures containing supportive and/or social housing to remain on-site for up to 10 years.

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OneCity councillor Christine Boyle’s motion proposed to direct City staff to explore changing policies to enable such uses to extend for beyond 10 years, and consider more sites for such temporary structures or permanent housing.

According to Boyle, over 750 units of temporary modular housing in Vancouver carry leases that expire between 2024 and 2028. There are now about a dozen temporary modular housing sites across Vancouver, with the first location being the 2017-built, three-storey building with 40 units at 220 Terminal Avenue (next to SkyTrain Main Street-Science World Station).

“It is imperative that we protect the good, safe, dignified units that we have,” said Boyle during the public meeting before the vote.

“It is important that we send a signal to residents in these buildings, housing providers, and senior governments that we are committed to doing everything within our jurisdiction as good partners in truly tackling the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis at the scale needed and renewing these leases — being proactive about that.”

These structures are located on vacant lands owned by the City or private property owners, and in most cases, these sites are on lots awaiting a future permanent development.

The motion comes on the heels of the late July 2023 closure of the two temporary modular housing buildings at the Larwill parking lot on Dunsmuir street, next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Both buildings, constructed in late 2018, provide about 100 units.

Planning and public consultation documents prior to the construction start of the Larwill supportive housing units state the temporary modular structures would remain at the location for about three to five years, given the site’s planned permanent uses.

Nearly five years later, the Larwill site is now needed for the long-planned new Vancouver Art Gallery building, which will begin construction this fall.

BC Housing previously indicated the Larwill supportive housing residents will be relocated to other properties in the area, and this is the overarching strategy for all temporary modular housing sites.

“This whole [overall temporary modular housing] program is contemplated that these buildings are temporary, so from the outset, there has been an expectation of a need for tenant relocation as more permanent housing comes on stream. That is part of the program designed from the outset,” said City of Vancouver manager Paul Mochrie.

ABC councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung said she does not carry the same concerns as there is no displacement by BC Housing’s strategy.

“If I was concerned that people were going to be displaced and out of their home, I feel this would be a very different conversation. But given that there is a commitment and people have to be relocated by BC Housing or nothing can be done with the site, I actually think we’ve been sort of nibbling around the edges on supporting homelessness, and we need to be a lot bolder just like with our housing in general,” said Kirby-Yung.

Green councillor Adriane Carr said, “There’s absolutely no harm in asking” if such buildings can remain in place for more than 10 years, while also noting that not every site might be able to achieve a longer duration and that such buildings carry a much lower construction cost than conventional structures.

When the temporary modular housing method of rolling out more supportive/social housing was first launched, it had been assumed that the modular structures could be relatively easily dismantled and relocated to a new site if needed — and at a relatively low cost.

But Mochrie said that has not been the case for at least one instance, specifically for the temporary modular housing building that was previously at the Little Mountain site on 37th Avenue near Main Street. Prior to the construction of the temporary modular housing building, the lease term with landowner Holborn Properties had been established at three years. This 2018-built structure was removed in late 2021 in preparation for the site’s construction with permanent housing facilities, but the start of construction has been delayed to later this year.

According to Mochrie, it was determined by BC Housing that the cost of reassembling the modular structures previously used for Little Mountain was “orders of magnitude” greater than originally anticipated.

“It was expected that we would be able to relocate for a relatively low cost of a few million dollars, but the costs were way higher,” he said before noting that this was an earlier estimate and is not updated.

“These are BC Housing buildings, so the cost to disassembling and reassembling are borne by them, not the City. Our role in this project has been enabling sites with private and City lands.”

Based on his discussions with the provincial Crown corporation, he says that such temporary modular housing projects are not cost-feasible for short-term durations like five years and that BC Housing would be looking for longer leases of 10 years or more to support the rationale for such an investment.

Mochrie also noted that the problem is mainly with finding available suitable land for these projects and then suggested that due to the land scarcity, such sites should see intensified uses with more housing, which would require permanent structures as the greater potential is not achievable with low-storey temporary modular structures.

The City manager added there is potential for extending leases on some City-owned lands if there are no development plans in the short term, which is something City staff would suggest anyway.

“In many of those cases [on City-owned lands], it is possible to produce far more homes on those sites by deploying them for permanent housing than locating a temporary building for 10 or more years. Those are the tradeoffs,” continued the City manager.

In some cases, temporary modular housing on City-owned lands cannot be redeveloped into permanent housing as the areas are strictly under industrial uses. This is the case of the 2021-built supportive housing site within 100 temporary modular housing units on City-owned False Creek Flats land at the northwest corner of the intersection of Clark Drive and Terminal Avenue.

“Temporary modular housing, I don’t believe it is the answer,” said ABC councillor Brian Montague. “I don’t believe it’s good policy. It was a band-aid solution that was a decent solution at the time, but now we need to move away from a temporary model to a more permanent model and better policies.”

“I believe we could increase the number of units four to five times with what we have right now. Preventing the City from moving forward with better solutions isn’t the answer in a housing crisis. We need plans on how to optimize City lands and move forward to significantly increase the amount of housing in Vancouver.”

ABC councillor Lenny Zhou made comments suggesting other municipal governments in Metro Vancouver need to do their part in catalyzing supportive/social housing projects, including temporary modular housing buildings, within their own jurisdiction, instead of relying on Vancouver to meet the need.

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