Vancouver developer apologizes for housing scandal at Little Mountain

It’s arguably the biggest social housing scandal in Vancouver’s history and today the developer responsible for the Little Mountain project apologized for the multi-year delay that’s left a massive plot of land vacant during a housing crisis.

The 15-acre parcel on the east flank of Queen Elizabeth Park has been mostly vacant since the provincial government signed a controversial deal with Holborn Group in 2008, selling the property for just $334 million with an interest-free loan, in exchange for the redevelopment of 224 dilapidated social housing units.

Only 53 have been built.

Holborn CEO Joo Kim Tiah made a rare public appearance with Vancouver’s mayor and other dignitaries for a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of 48 units of social housing, where CTV News asked him if he felt he owed an apology or explanation as to why it was taking so long to build.

“Obviously yeah, I feel bad about the whole situation,” he replied. “If it makes it better yeah, I would apologize for how it's taken so long. It was never the intention.”

He went on to say there was a “very long back story” as to why it’s taken so long, and had earlier thanked the current council for a concession to change the priorities for occupancy at the site, which allowed him to get the financing to break ground. Some 1,600 units of market housing are also planned for the land though they have not gone on pre-sale yet. 

Tiah is best-known in Vancouver as the entrepreneur behind the Trump Hotel; it has since rebranded to Paradox. 

Province pressured developer to make progress

Mayor Ken Sim began the ground breaking by acknowledging “this development has a long and checkered past,” before going on to say “we can litigate the past and come up with reasons why we can't do it and get really positional, or we can say, 'look, there are a lot of people who need housing here.’”

When CTV News asked why he was confident Holborn would deliver on the 48 units in a timely manner when they had a track record of broken promises, Sim took credit for the progress, since “there were no shovels in the ground up until we came into office.”

But Sim’s predecessor, Kennedy Stewart, is the city’s signatory on a 2021 Memorandum of Understanding between the developer and the province to push Holborn to finally begin construction. 

And on Thursday, the current housing minister confirmed That David Eby – B.C.’s housing-minister-turned premier – has been involved behind the scenes.

“The premier last year tried to sit down with Holborn, sit down with the city to encourage them to build this housing faster,” Ravi Kahlon told CTV News. “Everything about Little Mountain has been a disaster and the (BC Liberal) government at the time should never have sold given private lands to a developer with no real conditions about timelines, no conditions about paying interest back.”

In 2020, Holborn had only paid $40 million of the $335 million purchase price. 

A cautionary tale for governments

As the province makes a suite of policy changes and funding commitments to make it easier and, in some cases, more affordable, to build housing during a crisis, the Little Mountain will serve as a cautionary tale. 

Hundreds of low-income families were forced out of the run-down buildings with the promise that they’d be back in new units within a couple years, which only happened for a handful of people in the 53 units in the one building that’s been erected at the site.

“What's the hold up? What happened? I guess that's politics,” said Michelle Wright, a former resident of the community who was ousted with her family at the age of 12 and hopes to return with her own young children. “It was heartbreaking to watch 700 families get torn apart and displaced and a lot of pain in that.”

Coun. Christine Boyle, who’s not a member of the majority ABC party on council, acknowledged there will be public skepticism that Holborn will deliver on its late 2026 move-in date for the new units.

“The deal that Rich Coleman and the former BC Liberals gave to Holborn on this site was a travesty from the beginning,” she said. “It's not enough to make grand promises, people can't live in promises.”

David Chudnovsky, the former MLA for the area who’s been fighting to expose details of the deal and advocating for impacted Vancouverites for years finds some solace in the fact the project was so thoroughly botched, it’s unlikely to be repeated. 

“This kind of deal will never happen again, that's for sure,” said the retiree. “This could've been a model social housing community, a model sustainable community, and 17 years later it's mostly still a vacant lot.”