Social Housing Finally Arrives at Little Mountain

If you search 167 E. 36th Ave. on Google Maps, the site of the new Vancouver city-owned social housing building in the Little Mountain development, you will find Google Street View is stuck in 2009.

That’s fitting. The Holborn Group promised new social housing buildings when it bought the land from BC Housing in 2008 and tore down existing social housing.

But there was just one replaced social housing building for almost a decade before it was joined by two new social housing buildings this year.

Last week news media, city officials, a Musqueam representative and guests gathered at the official opening of the sole city-owned social housing building at Little Mountain.

The 48 units of studio and one-, two- and three-bedroom homes, including three accessible units, are expected to be open for occupants later this year.

Ten units will rent at the shelter rate for people on income assistance, 14 units will be under BC Housing’s Housing Income Limits, and the remaining 24 units will be at the lower end of market, approximately 10 per cent below market-rate rents.

MCed by ABC Vancouver Coun. Mike Klassen, the media conference included as speakers Musqueam councillor Gordon Grant; Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim and his fellow ABC Vancouver Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung; Holborn Group principal Joo Kim Tiah; SUCCESS CEO Queenie Choo; and Joel Bronstein, executive director of Little Mountain Neighbourhood House.

Fellow ABC Vancouver Couns. Lenny Zhou and Lisa Dominato were also present. No opposition party councillors attended.

In responding to questions from the media about the 16-year delay in Holborn’s delivery of the development, Sim credited the current council with an ABC majority for the delivery of the social housing building.

“This project was stuck for a long time, for decades before our administration came in. We made this happen,” he said.

Three of the five social housing buildings in the development are completed, before any market housing buildings have been finished. Two more social housing buildings are also expected to be finished this fall.

Holborn is also currently advertising sales for Vesa, which will be the first market-rate condo building to open at Little Mountain. Prices range from the high $600,000s for the smallest one-bedroom unit to over $1.7 million for a three-bedroom unit with a den.

“Holborn has advanced this all within the period where development in the province has stalled,” said Holborn’s Tiah. “Little Mountain has always been a cherished neighbourhood and community, and it brings me great joy to be able to bring this project together with our partners.”

Further developments including a grocery store, shops, restaurants, cafés and a permanent community garden — not the temporary garden established during the long construction delay — are still to come.

The boarded-up Little Mountain buildings captured by Google Street View in 2009 had been home to more than 700 people living in a BC Housing social housing development until it was closed in 2008.

It is unclear at the moment how many of those original 700 residents will return to the neighbourhood, though they do have right of first refusal for the units.

When asked by The Tyee, SUCCESS CEO Choo could not say how the new development’s rents would compare with those paid by the original tenants.

She said the housing operator is waiting for the city to hand over the keys to the building before booking tours for prospective tenants. The city told The Tyee it expects to hand the building to SUCCESS in the coming weeks.

Former BC NDP MLA and longtime Little Mountain neighbour David Chudnovsky said most of the former social housing development’s residents have long moved on since 2007, when BC Housing first told them they would have to leave.

“They were promised that in 2010, by the time of the Olympics, they’d be back in their new units. That was almost 20 years ago,” said Chudnovsky. Chudnovsky is a co-founder and board member of the OneCity municipal party, but spoke for himself during the interview.

“It is completely preposterous for anybody to take credit for anything 19 years later. It’s outrageous.... People lived in a community, the community was destroyed. They were promised they were going to get new social housing units, and they didn’t.”

A developer with a controversial history

During last week’s press conference, a reporter with Radio-Canada asked Tiah what guarantee he could provide that the remaining social housing buildings at Little Mountain would be completed by the fall.

“Guarantees? I guess, my word,” said Tiah, who also pointed at the nearby buildings that are under construction.

But Holborn’s promises have been questioned by many over the years. And not just because of the lengthy and repeated delays in construction and delivery of Little Mountain’s promised 1,500-plus homes, despite Holborn receiving a $211-million interest-free loan from the province to buy the large land parcel, and another, $88-million, low-interest loan to replace the social housing.

The interest-free loan received a five-year extension in 2021 and comes due this year. Documents Holborn released in 2021 after a legal battle revealed that it had paid the B.C. government just $35 million of the total $334-million price for the Little Mountain site.

In 2017, Holborn opened the controversial Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver. The development has since removed Trump’s name and is now called the Paradox Hotel.

In late 2024, the developer was again in the news when the city ordered the company to demolish the Dunsmuir Hotel at 500 Dunsmuir St. in downtown Vancouver. The city’s chief building official recommended the demolition after over a decade of neglect from Holborn had made the building a danger to public safety.

The historic building, erected in 1907, was initially a luxury hotel with almost 170 rooms. Later it became temporary accommodations for returning veterans, housing for single men, a student hostel and eventually temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness.

It had remained vacant since 2013, with Holborn electing not to complete the estimated $10 million to $15 million in necessary repairs to stop further physical deterioration.

Under the city’s single-room accommodation bylaw, designed to protect the city’s stock of aging low-income housing units, Holborn could have been fined up to $300,000 per unit lost at the Dunsmuir Hotel.

If the city had pursued action, that could have cost Holborn up to $50 million in fines.

But when asked about this fine at last week’s press conference, Klassen noted the city declined to pursue action against the developer.

“I think it was evaluated by the city and there was no penalty that came from that,” he said, adding the city had earlier that week approved new non-market housing in another development proposed by Holborn Group, which would include the former Dunsmuir Hotel site.

Holborn’s downtown Vancouver plans

Holborn’s multi-site development plan for downtown Vancouver consists of three residential buildings with a total of 1,546 new housing units, plus an additional 272-unit social housing building in the Downtown Eastside. The development will also include a 920-room hotel that, at 305 metres, would be the highest tower in Western Canada.

When the Dunsmuir Hotel became vacant in 2013, the city lost 167 units from the single-room occupancy stock — the small rooms in aging hotels that provide housing to the poorest people in Vancouver. But Holborn’s proposed new development would provide just 105 new social housing units.

At the Little Mountain press conference, Kirby-Yung told news media that Holborn’s market housing occupancy permits will not be granted for the downtown development until the social housing building opens.

Single-room occupancy hotels often do not include cooking facilities in their small units, and often offer just one or two toilets per floor. Given their limited size, it is also difficult to have guests, and some buildings do not allow guests at all. The city is working towards a goal of replacing the units with more suitable low-income housing, Kirby-Yung said.

“That is a goal for our council collectively, to provide more dignified housing. It’s not always a one-to-one replacement,” she said.

Community amenity contributions from the project will include child care and potentially an Indigenous art gallery, she added.

“We’re looking at providing quality rooms that are self-contained, that people can build lives and live in dignity. So this was part of the goal, as was the financial calculation.”

Holborn approval sends ‘strong message,’ says mayor

Asked what message the city is sending by approving another Holborn Group development despite its controversies, Sim told reporters last week that it sends a “very strong message” that the city is serious about housing.

“We are going through a housing affordability challenge across the city of Vancouver, and the message it sends is we will create an environment where homebuilders of all shapes and sizes will have an easier time in the city of Vancouver building all sorts,” he said.

Asked by The Tyee why Vancouverites should trust that Holborn will deliver on the promised housing in downtown Vancouver, Klassen pointed to what’s been delivered at Little Mountain so far.

“We have to look at the outcomes,” Klassen said.

Former MLA Chudnovsky draws different conclusions when he looks at the outcomes of Little Mountain.

“No self-respecting city council, or, for that matter, provincial government, should work with Holborn after the tragedy they’ve created at Little Mountain,” he said.

“City councils and governments of all kinds need to learn from their errors.... One of them was doing business with this organization, Holborn.”

While Chudnovsky said he is pleased there is social housing finally available for people who need it, he urged people shopping for market-rate housing in the city to skip Little Mountain.

“It would be a reasonable thing for people of conscience to find other places to live than to buy a place at Little Mountain from Holborn,” he said.

“There’s got to be a price to pay on Holborn’s behalf for the way they’ve treated those people and this city for all these years.”

For his part, Tiah thanked Vancouver residents for their patience as the company worked to finally replace the lost social housing.

“To former and new residents, we welcome you to Little Mountain. Thank you to the Little Mountain community for your patience, your resilience and your belief in what this neighbourhood can become again: a foundation for so many,” he said during the press conference.

“We appreciate all the support from members in the community and remain committed to honouring the legacy at Little Mountain, and delivering on our promises to this great community.”