It’s the final chapter in the story of Mountain Court. The last of the tenants of the aged but affordable Lynn Valley rental complex are moving out to make way for redevelopment.
The District of North Vancouver has negotiated compensation packages for the demovictees, which we’re glad to see even though it doesn’t do a lot to offset the hardship of losing one’s home.
Sadly, Mountain Court has come to typify a larger problem as our official community plans recommend much of the new growth happen not in single-family neighbourhoods but where these older rentals now stand. It would be naïve to think we can solve the problem simply by halting redevelopment. Many of these buildings are reaching the end of their useful life, which means there are plenty more sad stories to come.
Almost all of these old rental complexes and three-storey walk-ups were built with federal subsidies or tax incentives. But, the Brian Mulroney government halted those incentives in the early 1980s, leaving it to the free market to supply rental apartments. Given the choice, the free market produced exactly zero purpose-built rental suites in North Vancouver for almost three decades.
Now we’re in a crisis with vacancy at less than one per cent and landlords setting exorbitant rents, which Mountain Court’s former residents are now learning first hand.
The feds put up more than $11 billion for housing over 11 years in the most recent budget, which we absolutely applaud though we still don’t know how or where it will be spent. We urge the feds to move quickly. We’ve got 30 years of lost ground to make up for and you can’t make more older, cheaper housing any more than you can make a 600-year-old Ming vase.
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