Facing a financial shortfall, The City of Vancouver has until April to decide what to do about the fact that the social housing component of the huge Athletes Village is over budget by as much as $77 million.
This latest problem means that council will have to find millions of dollars more to maintain the social housing component in the village, or reduce the number of units.
To address the problem, the city has the following options:
- It could spend an extra $32 million to finish the 250 units, which are supposed to be converted into low income housing and rent them out at market prices
- For 56 million - - it could rent half of them at market price -- and the other half would be affordable housing
- It will take 77 million to keep the original plan -- affordable housing for all 250 units
There is another option. The City could move the social housing somewhere else. Mayor Gregor Robertson says he is committed to building 250 units -- but he's not necessarily committed to building it at the Olympic Village.
"If we can't find the hard dollars to put into this site we're going to have to find the dollars to build a comparable number somewhere else and meet the commitment that we've made, he said.
But what about the City's commitment to Olympic organizers who ponied up $30 million for the village?
"When we made that commitment, there was an expectation there would be 250 units of social housing,'' said Dave Cobb, a spokesman for the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee. "It's very important part of our deal."
That's a deal the city may have to break unless it gets help.
"If the province is willing to put money in we can secure these units,'' Robertson said.
But the province has refused to bail out the project before. That likely leaves Vancouver taxpayers on the hook -- for the ever-increasing Olympic Village bill.
With a report by CTV British Columbia's Shannon Paterson
