District of North Vancouver council has punted debate for a new affordable housing strategy into 2019.
Coun. Mathew Bond brought a motion to council Monday night asking staff to begin drawing up a strategy for the $150 million district voters gave council a mandate to spend on affordable housing in last month’s non-binding referendum, which passed with 51.6 per cent support.
In addition, Bond moved for staff to begin pre-zoning district-owned lands within the official community plan’s four designated town centres - Lynn Creek, Lynn Valley, Lions Gate and Maplewood - plus other lots nearby or on transit corridors to accommodate up to 800 units of non-market housing by 2022.
Having the land use and zoning locked down for affordable housing would put future non-market housing projects in a much better position to receive funding from senior levels of government, Bond argued.
A week earlier, the newly elected council voted 5-2 to reject a proposal for an all-below-market housing project on the parking lot of the old Delbrook rec centre.
Bond acknowledged that most of his new council colleagues ran on a platform of slowing development, but he added the district already has a rental and affordable housing strategy passed in 2016 after two years of study and consultations with the community and hundreds of pages of staff research.
“We’ve already spilled a lot of ink on a plan for rental and affordable housing in the District of North Vancouver and I don’t know how much ink is left in staff’s pens to do more study. We need action,” Bond said.
Before Bond’s motion could face a vote, however, Mayor Mike Little intervened with a suggestion that the debate and a decision be deferred until January or February 2019, after council has had a chance to meet and discuss affordable housing strategies in more detail.
Little said he personally did not favour using district land to create housing offered at 10 or 20 per cent below market rates, adding he believes district land should only be offered for true social housing and for people with disabilities.
Little’s motion to defer the debate into next year passed 5-1, with only Bond opposed.
Coun. Lisa Muri did not attend the meeting.
