Bob Rennie, in a speech, champions density approvals as key to affordable and social housing
Bob Rennie
Sun
Earlier this month Bob Rennie addressed an annual meeting of the local development fraternity. This extract from his speaking notes picks up the two-city leader — Seattle and Vancouver — in the marketing and sale of new-home projects as he explains how he came to sell all 536 Woodward’s apartments in one day.
We run our company on two simple sayings — whoever gets to the truth first wins and whoever adheres to a position previously stated when times are changing is destined to fail.
While we started our Woodward’s meetings [our stated intention was] ”let’s deliver absolute affordability.”
But in the next meeting, the focus for my job [became] to persuade the Woodward’s developers that:
– Poor people don’t buy condos.
– Let’s deliver a higher quality than is currently available downtown or in Yaletown.
– Let’s not hide from what the Woodward’s neighbourhood is.
– Let’s use images of street people and local merchants through the campaign.
– And let’s use two tag lines – “Be Bold or move to Suburbia” and “This is an intellectual property.”
– Well, none of this works if you don’t believe it.
– I believe you can cause change a billion dollars at a time but nothing gets done a million dollars at a time.
– This is social engineering. The rich and poor living together.
– If Woodward’s were 87 condos on top of social housing I would not be here talking about it.
– My goal was to establish a marketing model that would allow the fortunate and less fortunate to walk down the street together.
– Well, we are really only expanding on Millennium’s L’hermitage model at Richards and Robson when we achieved 47 non-market units and 202 luxury condos.
– If you have lived in Vancouver all your life — you looked at Woodward’s as questionable and forgotten. But if you have lived in any other major city or travelled, then you a Woodward’s district as the emerging future.
– This is diversity. [Additionally] this is sustainability, and not the rhetoric of simply lower heat cost.
– Well it doesn’t take Larry Beasley (the powerful, and soon to retire, co-director of city hall’s planning department) or Bob Rennie to figure out that the city has no where else to go but east.
– And if not east, then you would have to believe the city of Vancouver is going to stop growing.
– We are moving east; one of these two possibilities does exists.
– So, on Woodward’s I spent more than $3 million of Ben and Ian’s money before we sold a single unit [Ian Gillespie and Ben Yeung, the developers]. The result was
. . .
– From Nov. 5 to the first week of April, more than 6,300 people registered [an interest], either through the Internet or on the telephone.
– From April 8 to 13, more than 4,000 people visited the presentation centre.
– On April 13, 1,600 buyers spent up to six hours calling, to register to write an offer on April 22. And the right to come back to the presentation centre to pick up a wristband.
– From April 14 to 21, 1,100 buyers picked up their wristband entitling them to their place in line. We scheduled 160 per hour.
– On April 22, buyer’s slept overnight to be at the front of their line. We sold out that day. The developer kept nothing back. We had only 28 rescissions . . .
– So, what can we learn from all this: The consumer is very aware of change and the consumer is watching.
. . . Very noticeable in the buyer lineup were buyers in old wool sweaters, buyers who ride bikes and buyers with their parents’ paycheques . . . and this is our buyer of tomorrow. We have a huge shortage of affordability. I could have sold out the bottom half of the tower three times that day. . . .
– Woodward’s is that comprehensive community that will cause change. . . . But is it a model of living for the future? Or is it a model of development for the future?
– Social housing and non-market housing is in a crisis situation. We have to find a way to produce non-market housing that attracts investors to buy into an ethical fund. Buy social housing condominiums just like we buy a studio and rent it out just like we buy into an ethical stock fund.
– This is actually something that our company is working on. We spoke with the city five years ago and we were too early and now we have to do it before we are too late.
– The model of private and public needs being met through development really is a win/win and we have to start getting creative in every city and municipality.
– But the real crisis is in affordability and this is where the politicians and planners need a huge wake-up call, or where the hell will our children live?
– Millennium has an application in to develop 16 acres above Park Royal . . . [but] nobody wants density in West Vancouver. So where does an empty-nester or 25-year-old go? They leave. This is not a sustainable community.
– In Port Moody, we are looking at a development in which the one-bedroom apartments would be 875 square feet. I want them to be 600 square feet, to create affordable product.
The answer is no because there are too many doors. There is a unit cap.
– These are just two examples of the obstacles we face in producing an affordable product.
– What if the City of Vancouver and surrounding cities and municipalities bonused density to provide affordable housing? Based on price per door achieved.
– Nobody has the answer, but nobody is addressing the problem. We are all relying on bylaws and zoning, a reliance that does not respect the real changes and challenges that we face.
Bob Rennie made these comments at a gathering of the Pacific region of the Urban Development Institute.