An attempt to get the City of North Vancouver out of the business of creating affordable housing failed at council Oct. 28.
Coun. Guy Heywood introduced a motion directing council to give community infrastructure projects priority over social housing.
He cited two recent development projects in which council traded extra density for affordable housing units while there is no funding plan for replacements to North
Shore Neighbourhood House and the Harry Jerome Recreation Centre. "It really is time that we focus on the infrastructure that is actually housing the services for our most vulnerable citizens," he said.
Replacing Harry Jerome is expected to cost up to $70 million and the aging North Shore Neighbourhood House's replacement cost hasn't been estimated yet.
By stepping outside its jurisdiction and taking on affordable housing units, the city risks creating a spike in taxes for its citizens, Heywood argued.
"Maybe we have tipped now into a trend towards long-term fiscal unsustainability if we continue to try and act like a mini-Vancouver in our jurisdiction that doesn't have a West Side to pay its bills." Heywood added the "boom that we have been using to fund the renewal of our infrastructure won't last forever and I think we need to re-focus on our priorities."
Coun. Craig Keating, one of council's most vocal advocates for affordable housing, shot back that if the city was behaving like a mini-Vancouver, it was complete with a mini-Non-Partisan Association in Heywood.
Keating added that Heywood's motion was predicated on the "baseless" assumption that the city was putting affordable housing ahead other projects.
"There is no evidence for that whatsoever," he said before launching into a list of 25 cultural and recreational projects the city had invested in, either with tax dollars or development deals in recent years. "The argument becomes, somehow, we're doing too much for social housing. It does not bear scrutiny."
Keating said council can probably have a new North Shore Neighbourhood House built by a developer in exchange for allowing more density in a new condo tower, the same way the council got the city's new library and renovated city hall. "We can achieve a brand new facility that will cost the taxpayers precisely nothing," he said.
Couns. Pam Bookham and Don Bell joined Heywood in voting for the motion, both of them noting that council has a range of needs it must respond to beyond affordable housing.
But, while they couldn't agree on what local priorities should be for affordable housing, council was unanimous at the following week's meeting that the federal government and provinces need to take a more active role in ensuring stable access to housing.
Council passed a motion from Coun. Linda Buchanan calling on the city to join the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' campaign to lobby the feds for a national housing strategy. Buchanan's motion cited increasing difficulty for working people to obtain housing.
