If anyone here can find reason why we should not build affordable housing on the North Shore, speak now or forever hold your peace.
The District of North Vancouver will hold two public hearings on Tuesday night for affordable housing projects – 80 units in a five-storey building at the former Delbrook Recreation Centre site and 106 units for seniors in six storeys next to the existing Kiwanis Lynn Manor tower.
For the Delbrook project the non-profit developer is putting up the capital costs. The district is offering the land and waving the development fees. All Kiwanis is asking is for their fees to be waived.
These are the Goldilocks of affordable housing projects, ones we’d like to see as templates for more in the future. Much more.
The Delbrook project may not be to the liking of some of its neighbours, however. They are correct to point out that, at five storeys, it is out of character with the neighbourhood.
But we remind those who are comfortably housed that we are in fact in a housing crisis and solving a crisis can’t be done with half measures.
Neighbourhood character cannot be the deciding factor when it comes to creating spaces for young people, working families and seniors.
Even with these units coming online, it is but a drop in the bucket for what we truly need.
To district council members, now and the ones to be elected this fall, we say this: When it comes to affordable housing, go big, or go home – the home we will remind you, you are tremendously fortunate to have.
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