For Purpose-Built Rental, Lots of Hype and (So Far) Few Results

There has been a lot media coverage lately surrounding the return of rental apartment construction in the City of Vancouver, with some even referring to it as a “renaissance”. Many are praising the City of Vancouver for approving incentive programs that have resulted in over 2,000 rental units approved in 2012 and 2013.

Certainly some of this media focus is justified. Since 2009, incentive programs have regenerated interest from developers in rental apartment construction that had been largely dormant in the City of Vancouver for over 30 years since federal tax incentives for new rental apartment construction were scrapped and the condo trend took over.

But how are all these incentives doing in terms of delivering units? Nobody seems to be asking an important question: are rental apartment buildings actually being built under these programs?

Let’s back up and look at the history of the rental incentive programs that have been implemented during Vision Vancouver’s time in power.Shortly after Mayor Robertson took office in 2008 he sought to implement a strategy to address affordable housing in the City. The first step in this process was the creation of the Short Term Incentives for Rental (STIR) program, which was adopted by Council in June 2009.

STIR was developed as a pilot program that offered developers a variety of incentives to encourage the development of market rental housing. The primary incentives included: tax assessment breaks, DCL waivers, parking reductions, density increases and expedited rezoning and development permits. The main caveat was that the rental apartments were to be secured for 60 years minimum.

Because it was only a pilot project, STIR eventually ended in December 2011.After two and a half years, STIR resulted in the application for over 1,600 units of market rental housing in 19 projects. Despite Vision touting the program as an overwhelming success, only a couple of 100% rental projects actually broke ground during that period; one of which was Blue Sky Properties 106-unit building at 1142 Granville Street. Gregor Robertson used that groundbreaking as an opportunity to talk about the effectiveness of STIR, but behind the scenes, there was concern within the City that the majority of applications being submitted were, in reality, condo projects that were seeking to include a portion of rental to achieve some of the incentives in the program, while helping achieve other objectives such as increased density. The City was already looking for ways to address this problem.

After STIR officially ended in December 2011, the City undertook a review of the program and decided to keep the incentives going through a modified policy, now referred to as Rental 100. The main difference in the Rental 100 policy is the City’s stance on ‘mixed’ rental/strata projects. In Rental 100, only projects in which 100 per cent of residential units in the project are secured as rental tenure would be considered. Rental 100 was formally put in place in May 2012. The City projected that Rental 100 would create an additional 3,350 units by 2021.

A preliminary analysis of mixed strata/rental projects and 100% rental projects indicates that there have been over 3,800 units proposed (ie. at some stage of application), and yet only 1/3 of these units have been completed or are under construction, and most of these are in larger condo projects, such as PCI’s Marine Gateway, Intracorp’s MC2 and Westbank’s Granville & 70th.

	Project/Site/Address	Total Market Rental Units	Rezoning Status	Primary Rezoning Policy	Construction Status
	275 Kingsway	202	Proposed	Rental 100
	963 East 19th Avenue	39	Approved - 2014	STIR
	1418 East 41st Avenue	35	Approved - 2014	STIR
	1755 West 14th Avenue	122	Proposed	Rental 100
	458-476 West 41st Avenue	50	Approved - 2014	Rental 100
	Oakridge Centre	290	Approved - 2014	Various
	2095 West 43rd Ave	56	Proposed	IRPIAHC
	7645-7675 Cambie St.	138	Proposed	Rental 100
	Arbutus Centre	45	Approved - 2011	Various
	Beach Towers	133	Approved - 2012	STIR
	1215 Bidwell St.	49	Approved - 2010	STIR	U/C
	3819 Boundary Rd.	25	Proposed	Rental 100
	3002-3036 West Broadway	83	Approved - 2013	Rental 100	U/C
	Burrard Gateway	87	Approved - 2013	Various
	4533-4591 Cambie St.	35	Approved - 2013	Various	U/C
	7790 Cambie St.	27	Proposed	Various
	7350 Cambie St.	96	Proposed	Rental 100
	MC2	110	Approved - 2012	Various	U/C
	1401 Comox St.	186	Approved - 2012	STIR	U/C
	Rogers Arena Towers	614	Approved - 2012	Various	U/C
	33-41 East Hastings St.	67	Approved - 2013	Various
	3501-3523 East Hastings St.	87	Proposed	Rental 100
	1142 Granville St.	106	Approved - 2010	STIR	Complete
	Granville & 70th	31	Approved - 2011	STIR	U/C
	508 Helmcken St.	109	Approved - 2013	Various
	Vancouver House	98	Approved - 2014	Various
	2768 Kingsway	38	Proposed	Rental 100
	3068 Kingsway	30	Approved - 2013	STIR
	1568 E King Edward	77	Approved - 2013	Rental 100
	3120-3184 Knight St.	51	Proposed	IRPIAHC
	445 SW Marine Drive	70	Proposed	Various
	Marine Gateway	46	Approved - 2012	Various	U/C
	3195 Oak Street	39	Proposed	Rental 100
	1754-1772 Pendrell St.	26	Proposed	Various
	3522 Porter St.	192	Approved - 2011	STIR	Complete
	1396 Richards St.	129	Approved - 2013	Various
	4320 Slocan St.	41	Approved - 2013	Various
	1155 Thurlow St.	168	Proposed	Various
	5648-5658 Victoria Dr.	30	Approved - 2013	STIR
	TOTAL	3857