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The closure of a modular housing site on Cambie Street comes as authorities will likely miss a self-imposed deadline for new housing.
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Tenants and advocates are protesting the upcoming closure of nearly 100 units of temporary modular housing in Downtown Vancouver, saying it will only make more people homeless worse in the city.
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The July closure of the Larwill Place modular housing site on Cambie Street comes as provincial authorities appear poised to miss a self-imposed deadline to create 330 units of housing for Downtown Eastside residents by the end of June.
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“There’s no reason they couldn’t find another place to put Larwill,” said Jean Swanson, former city councillor and current board member of the Carnegie Community Centre Association. “It’s just ridiculous — and it’s nice housing.”
The province’s housing minister, Ravi Kahlon, said in March that the province would provide 330 “new homes” for people experiencing homelessness in the DTES.
If the 98 units lost from Larwill Place are included in the province’s count of 330 “new homes,” then the city will actually lose housing for people at-risk of homelessness.
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Only 89 of the 330 units announced are new and under construction at city-owned sites. The rest of the units cited as “new homes” are made up of renovated or repaired SRO and supportive housing sites, including 95 units at a building that was damaged during the 2022 Winters Hotel fire and 68 units on Main Street, which B.C. Housing will start accepting tenants this summer.
B.C. Housing did not provide a timeline for when the 89 new units would begin accepting residents.
Postmedia News visited the two sites, one at Western Street and the other on Ash Street, on Tuesday and found that the buildings — portable sheds that previously housed oil-and-gas workers in northern B.C. — were several weeks behind schedule.
Other units included in the province’s count are existing SROs or supportive housing units that have been renovated or repaired after fire damage, including units repaired following a fire in the neighbouring Winters Hotel last year.
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Larwill Place consists of 98 units across two buildings near the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain Station. All units are self-contained with a private bathroom and a kitchen. The site focuses on providing housing for people that are either struggling with or at-risk of homelessness in the downtown core.
A study commissioned by B.C. Housing six months after Larwill Place opened found that housing stability increased for 90 per cent of residents who moved into the units. Roughly two-thirds of residents said their health and quality of life improved and nearly half said their addiction issues were “better” after moving in.
Swanson said she spoke to residents who said “they feel that they’ve won the lottery” after moving in.
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The rooms are “three times as big as an SRO,” she said. “They have their own bathrooms, they have cooking facilities, they don’t have bugs, they don’t have rats.”
“If these modular housing units aren’t preserved, the people from those units will take up all the social housing that’s in the works … and we won’t be able to make a dent in homelessness,” Swanson said in a statement.
Part of the Larwill Place site will be the home of the new Vancouver Art Gallery. The gallery expects to break ground on the new building this fall, according to Jasmine Bradley, the gallery’s director of strategic communications. A mixed-use commercial development is also planned for the site.
B.C. to provide 330 new homes for people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
More than 100,000 B.C. households at risk of homelessness due to rental crisis
ngriffiths@postmedia.com
@njgriffiths
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