Little Mountain developer promises to deliver on social housing despite Vancouver easing requirements

The developer behind a troubled Vancouver housing project has vowed to build the 282 social housing units proposed for the site in a timely manner, despite the City of Vancouver relaxing a term of its agreement that would require the social housing to be completed first.

Holborn Properties Ltd. bought the Little Mountain site near Queen Elizabeth Park from the province in 2008 for $334 million. The 15 acres of land have sat mostly empty ever since.

After the sale, hundreds of residents were displaced from over 200 social housing units that were torn down. Part of Holborn’s deal with the province was that it would replace those units.

Over a decade later, 53 social housing units have been built, and 62 more are under construction, according to the developer. None of the roughly 1,400 market condos proposed for the site have been built yet.

On Wednesday, Vancouver councillors voted 7-3 to remove “occupancy permit holds” on the first two phases of the Little Mountain development. Those holds required Holborn to build all of the slated social housing units before it started on the market units. 

Holborn asked that the city remove the holds, saying it couldn’t secure financing for the project with them in place.

“When the banks come in and finance you they need to have something certain, like some collateral. And the collateral they look at is the market parcels,” Joo Kim Tiah, president of Holborn, told CTV News.

“They basically said they would not lend me anything as long as the occupancy holds are there because the market parcels basically have no value if they are subject to the occupancy holds of the social housing parcels,” he continued.

At the policy and strategic priorities standing committee Wednesday, OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle was strongly opposed to removing the holds and raised concern that Holborn wouldn’t make good on its promise to deliver social housing without the city’s ability to hold it accountable.

“We and the public have no reason to trust Holborn on this,” she told fellow councillors.

“This is a multi-national company with billions of dollars in assets and they’re coming to us and saying that they can’t finance the condos that they plan to build and want to get off the hook on building the social housing as quickly,” she said.

When asked about Boyle’s comments, Tiah said he was still obligated to build the social housing.

“The requirement of me to fulfill the social housing are clearly stated in the sales and purchase agreement with the province,” he said. “If I don’t deliver social housing the province can probably foreclose on me at a certain point in time, but it’s in my best interest to get the social housing done as quickly as possible because that’s how I repay the province.”

B.C.’s then-housing minister Selina Robinson revealed in 2020 that Holborn had only paid the province back $40 million of the $344 million. 

A freedom of information request in 2021 by former MLA David Chudnovsky revealed the developer received a loan from the province of $211 million, which is interest-free until Dec. 31, 2026.

City staff and BC Housing both recommended that council remove the occupancy permit holds. Staff assured councillors at the meeting that the province had the tools to make sure Holborn delivers on its social housing obligations. In a letter to the city, BC Housing said it was confident the requirements would be fulfilled without the city’s holds.

Councillors who voted in favour of removing the requirement, including ABC Coun. Mike Klassen, expressed that letting Holborn get the financing it needs to finally start the development in earnest was the pragmatic decision.

“The important thing is that we don’t kind of spend a lot of time looking in the rear-view mirror,” he told CTV News Tuesday. “Social housing is not a victim of this deal, this is a way to get more housing built faster.”

Tiah insisted that the sequencing of the development won’t change, and the request to change the agreement was solely about securing financing, not backing away from the social housing obligation.

“It’s not a break, without (council’s decision) it’s almost impossible for anyone to do this project,” he said. “The occupancy holds shouldn’t have been put there in the first place.”

Even though he now doesn’t need to build every social housing unit before moving on to market units anymore, Tiah promised Holborn would break ground on three social housing buildings by mid-2024—totalling 157 units.

One 48-unit social housing building will be owned by the city, and it will also contain a childcare centre, public plaza and community centre. The remaining buildings will be run by BC Housing.

“This project has a long history and it could be confusing because the mechanics of it are not easy to understand,” Tiah said of doubters. “They’re moving as quickly as possible, with this move from council it helps me to move even quicker.”

With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Isabella Zavarise