How will Vancouver’s latest affordable housing initiative change the face of the city? Join me, Jacquie McCarnan, as I reveal the transformative plans for the underutilized ICBC building at Lonsdale Quay. This episode of Keeping it Real shines a spotlight on my non-profit, North Van Cares, recognized recently by the Canadian Real Estate Association, and dives into the exciting collaboration with the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to provide affordable housing for essential service workers. We’ll also revisit the buzzworthy topics of stigmatized properties and real estate-related murders, and provide crucial insights from past episodes.
Get ready for a deep look into public reactions, the allocation of non-market housing units, and the qualification criteria for these new homes. We’ll discuss the rapid developments under the NDP's BC Builds legislation and voice concerns over potential disruptions to transit at Lonsdale Quay. This episode is a call to all residents to stay engaged, share their views, and understand the profound impact of this project on our community. Make sure to download or subscribe to Keeping it Real on your preferred platform, and celebrate Canada Day with an informed perspective on the future of housing in Vancouver!
LINKS: ICBC Building Added to the Province's Transit Oriented Housing Sites: https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/north-vancouver-icbc-building-housing-project
BC Builds Transit Oriented Housing: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0007-000232#:~:text=At%20least%2020%25%20of%20all,non%2Dprofits%20and%20First%20Nations.
BC Builds/Homes for People Home Page: https://www.bcbuildshomes.ca/
Keeping It Real on The Housing Supply Act: https://www.northvanhomesales.com/podcast/episode/7fee23de/10-the-new-housing-supply-act
How will Vancouver’s latest affordable housing initiative change the face of the city? Join me, Jacquie McCarnan, as I reveal the transformative plans for the underutilized ICBC building at Lonsdale Quay. This episode of Keeping it Real shines a spotlight on my non-profit, North Van Cares, recognized recently by the Canadian Real Estate Association, and dives into the exciting collaboration with the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to provide affordable housing for essential service workers. We’ll also revisit the buzzworthy topics of stigmatized properties and real estate-related murders, and provide crucial insights from past episodes.
Get ready for a deep look into public reactions, the allocation of non-market housing units, and the qualification criteria for these new homes. We’ll discuss the rapid developments under the NDP's BC Builds legislation and voice concerns over potential disruptions to transit at Lonsdale Quay. This episode is a call to all residents to stay engaged, share their views, and understand the profound impact of this project on our community. Make sure to download or subscribe to Keeping it Real on your preferred platform, and celebrate Canada Day with an informed perspective on the future of housing in Vancouver!
LINKS: ICBC Building Added to the Province's Transit Oriented Housing Sites: https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/north-vancouver-icbc-building-housing-project
BC Builds Transit Oriented Housing: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0007-000232#:~:text=At%20least%2020%25%20of%20all,non%2Dprofits%20and%20First%20Nations.
BC Builds/Homes for People Home Page: https://www.bcbuildshomes.ca/
Keeping It Real on The Housing Supply Act: https://www.northvanhomesales.com/podcast/episode/7fee23de/10-the-new-housing-supply-act
Hey everybody, welcome back to Keeping it Real, the Vancouverian area residential real estate podcast that has no gatekeeping. Yeah, that's kind of my spiel. My name is Jackie McCarnan and I am your host for Keeping it Real. I am a North Vancouver residential realtor and I'm also a philanthropist, and most of you already know about my non-profit North Van Cares, so here's a little bit that you might not know. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1:
The Canadian Real Estate Association is sending a film crew out to make a spotlight about me and about North Van Cares this week, and it's super crazy. I can't believe they're doing that Anyway, yeah, so I'm going to be filming for the next few days with them and then I will have something to show you in a couple of weeks. I think I don't know how it works. I hope you listened to last week's podcast on stigmatized properties and the haunted house in Ontario, because it was super cool and it actually had the second highest downloads of any of my episodes, and the first one, of course not surprising was the murder podcast. So look, if I could turn this into a like a whole murder real estate podcast, I would, but my goal here is to provide you with information that's going to be very helpful to understanding the real estate market, and that is only one very tiny part of the real estate market. In fact, I don't really think we have a ton of stigmatized properties here in Canada, but I'm going to look for more and I will do more stories about that. However, on today's episode I am going to drag you kicking and screaming into some information that you may not know, and I think it's very important for the residents of British Columbia, particularly North Vancouver, to know about this, and I'm excited to share it with you. It's very interesting in my opinion, but then, of course, I am by definition a real estate geek. But I hope you enjoy it. Just my little disclaimer here for my managing broker, who I swear is going to be on the show at some point. We just have difficult scheduling for the two of us. Anyway, everything you hear on the show is my opinion, based on my research and my experience, and, as you know, lots of different opinions, lots of different experiences. So if you have something to add, I am more than happy to listen. I guess I've kept you in suspense long enough. Three and a half minutes, two and a half minutes so I will get right to it to it All right. On this week's episode we are talking about something we've talked about before, which is the provincial BC builds legislation. So you can go back and listen to one of the other episodes I'm going to link it in the show notes where we talk about the province of British Columbia's plan to create more affordable housing and in this case something really interesting came up this week.
Speaker 1:
If you live in North Vancouver, you absolutely are familiar with the ICBC building that is down at Lonsdale Key. You know that place where we used to be able to park after six o'clock and you could leave your car there all evening. Take the C bus across, go out, hang out downtown and then take the last C bus over and collect your car and not have to pay for parking. And man, those were the days, but that's kind of over. But anyway, this huge big building down at Lonsdale Key is home to ICBC. For those of you listening from elsewhere, icbc is the insurance corporation of British Columbia. It's obviously a great big crown corporation. The thing with the building is it's kind of old and it's kind of ugly and it's also only half full. So it's not really rented very well and I guess the province of British Columbia came up with a deal, or offered ICBC a deal on purchasing that property to turn it into affordable housing. This all ties into the province's mandate to provide transit-oriented density around the province in communities over 5,000. And obviously the CBUS is a big transit hub, plus all those buses down there, I guess. So, working with the three First Nations Musqueam, squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations they are developing an affordable housing plan for that building. This is a brand new thing that just happened the last couple weeks so there's no word yet on how many units they're going to build there. But the province has a plan to use provincially owned land to build affordable housing.
Speaker 1:
So this is, I think, the third one in the province where they are having it as purpose-built affordable housing for middle-income earners. So you know they define middle-income earners. It's different all over the province because there are different levels of how much money you make in certain levels of jobs. But basically they want people who live in the community or who work in the community to be able to live there, want people who live in the community or who work in the community to be able to live there. So people who live in North Vancouver or work in North Vancouver in jobs like policing or firefighting or nursing or any of those kinds of jobs. They want to provide housing that is affordable to those folks so that they don't have a million mile commute. And having all of this near a transit hub makes it so that people who, for example, work in downtown Vancouver would be able to have access to housing in North Vancouver. That's the premise.
Speaker 1:
As I mentioned, I did a podcast in February, on February 23rd. I love myself because I actually made a note called BC Government Announcement Using Public Land for Rental Housing. So if you go back and listen to that you'll get all the details on what the plan is. But there's also a website called BC Builds and another one called Homes for People. That goes over everything and familiarizing yourself with those websites will help you answer questions that come up when we get an announcement like the province has purchased the ICBC building, because that announcement didn't come with a whole lot of answers and boy do I have questions.
Speaker 1:
A couple of more details on the announcement. The Minister for Housing, david Eby, said that they intend to break ground as soon as ICBC locates to their new building in East Vancouver. They expect that to be within the next two years. And then on the BC Build site, they're saying that it will take them between 12 and 18 months to put up the sort of housing that they're expecting to build. So we have to kind of cobble together the information that's out there. It's not all in one place, but now it's going to be, because I am putting it all in this podcast, you're welcome. Just a quick summary of that. In the fall of 2023, the province committed $394 million to purchase land near transit hubs and build up to 10,000 new homes over the next 10 to 15 years. So that's kind of the the idea behind this, and this is the third piece of land that they have dedicated to that vision so far.
Speaker 1:
I always kind of like to take these government initiatives and pull back to the 10,000 foot view. So, looking at this from a wider view, it makes a whole lot of sense Put a lot of density around transit so that people who work far away from their homes have the ability to get there. Or, like you know, if they build a big transit hub out in Mission and then make it really easy to get to downtown Vancouver. Although it's interesting to me and this is just me kind of waxing away here. It's interesting to me that, at a time when more and more people are working from home, the government is focused on moving people from A to B. I don't know, I'm not sure if it's short-sighted or if they know more than I do about the number of people that are working from home versus the number of people that are using transit. I mean, let's hope that the provincial government knows more than I do about the number of people that are working from home versus the number of people that are using transit. I mean, let's hope that the provincial government knows more than I do about the number of people using transit, because that's definitely not part of the research that I do.
Speaker 1:
The ICBC building if you've ever been in there, it's kind of I mean, it's kind of a perfect building for this, because it's mostly empty. There are no residents that have to be relocated, no residential renters or people that own in there, so nobody lives there, which is great. It's kind of old, it's getting old and it's right on top of transit. So from a larger perspective, it is a fantastic option. But I think the thing that people are going to have some issue with is that it is a really prime piece of real estate on the North Shore and we're going to have to really get a good sense of what they're going to put in there, because I'm not sure that you know, a great big tower at the bottom of Lonsdale is going to be attractive to anybody. But I digress.
Speaker 1:
The whole deal came about and was made possible through an agreement with the British Columbia Transportation Financing Authority, icbc, and the three MST nations, and I found this little piece of info interesting. So I guess David Eby oh my gosh, I could edit all that out, but I think it's fun to know that I make a lot of mistakes. During the announcement there was a little bit of politicking, and Eby alluded to the fact that the previous provincial government the Liberals, were planning to sell that building to the highest bidder and, for those of you who don't know, icbc is a crown corporation, so it is managed by the government swooped in and saved the building from large, nefarious developers who were going to build luxury condos on the water and charge an arm and leg and make it unaffordable to most of the people who live in North Vancouver. I that's the impression that some of the people on Reddit got. You know how I like to check Reddit see what people are thinking, but, um, I mean, that's just uh, that's just an opinion. I don't know what the? I didn't. I wasn't at the announcement, but I could see how a politician might allude to the fact that they are saving the day. We'll see.
Speaker 1:
There's a big part of me that thinks wow, this is amazing. You're going to build affordable housing in a beautiful place where people who live in or who work in North Vancouver can afford to live and live in like the nice part, rather than, you know, building something out in the sticks and having people commute in to their jobs. I really want to believe that that is the case, but I do have some questions. One little side note I found out too is that David Eby is the former attorney general in charge of ICBC, so I can't imagine that a lot of this didn't take place, with conversations, personal conversations and a back and forth, and you're going to see why I think so in a second.
Speaker 1:
Now, under the um, under the title of not weird or suspicious, but just the government paid 53 million to icbc for the property, which is just about half of the $100 million assessment of the land, which leaves $45 million on the table and there's a retired deputy minister named Richard McCandless who monitors financial performance at ICBC and he feels that the NDP government is shorting ICBC policyholders by not paying market value for this land. And I mean I can see that point as well. The NDP's defense of this price tag is that the building is quite old and it's going to have to be torn down rather than repurposed and you know it's full of asbestos and all that sort of thing. So I mean they may be right, but if land value is a hundred million, I don't know. I feel like they got quite a deal and maybe that's because of previous relationships, I don't know, maybe it's just a deal that worked well for everybody.
Speaker 1:
I don't have access to the financials of this deal and I think that they are probably going to be public knowledge. I just that's not my purview. I'm not great with the financial part of these things. I just like to see what the public perception is, and during the announcement the public perception was fantastic, but it really did leave a lot of questions like how many of the units are going to be below market value? How many units are they building? What is market value? What is, what is how do you qualify to be there? That sort of thing. Like I said at the beginning, there are answers to some of these questions but they are separate from the announcement to some of these questions, but they are separate from the announcement.
Speaker 1:
So if you're only reading about the announcement of the province buying the ICBC building, then you're not going to see the other parts of this and I'm going to link to that announcement plus the BC Builds and the Homes for People websites. But on the BC Builds site, which is pretty much the only place you can see where things are laid out, the province is dedicating 20% of the units that they build to non-market housing. Then the other 80% cannot be sold over market housing have to be market or less over market housing have to be market or less. But I mean, as I said in my other podcast, I feel like 20% is not a ton of money or I mean not a ton of units to be dedicating to non-market. So if you have 100 units, only 20 of them are non-market. The way the point reads is at least 20% of homes built under the BC Builds plan will be at least 20% under market for projects in partnership with First Nations and nonprofits. So again there's the caveat that the projects that are in partnership with First Nations, which this one is, will have 20% of the units under market value. Okay, the BC Build site goes on to say that everybody who gets a non-market unit has to qualify for that, and I believe it's year over year, if I remember from the last podcast I did.
Speaker 1:
One problem I see is that in the NDP's haste to make housing affordable in British Columbia, they're moving very quickly and I absolutely 100% applaud that, because in the past everything has moved at a snail's pace. The thing about moving quickly is that it leaves again lots of questions unanswered. And in this case, you know, trying to put together how many units are going to be there, how many are going to be available for non-market housing, is impossible. And since there doesn't have to be readings through council, we're not even going to know until they make an announcement. So it's not going to be an application before council to say, hey, we want to put up three 14-story buildings here at Lonsdale Key, 14-story buildings here at Lonsdale Key. If they decide that that's what they're going to do, coupled with the developer and the province and the First Nations, that's what they're going to do, but we're not going to have an opportunity to say hey, please don't do that. There are obviously going to be people out there who study this stuff considerably more in depth than I do.
Speaker 1:
This is only a part thing for me, this podcast, because ultimately, I'm a realtor and I have to, you know, get to sell, buy and sell real estate, but I would like to know more answers, and there isn't going to be a public forum about it. I would say, though, that it would be silly for the government, the provincial government to put up a whole bunch of stuff that is going to make the residents of North Vancouver angry, because, I mean, we're their constituents as well, and we we vote, so I think they're probably going to try to keep things as fair as possible. I hope so, anyway. That's that's my hope. If I were a politician, I would be trying to keep things fair. This is probably why I'm not a politician.
Speaker 1:
As information gets rolled out about this, I will try to continue to update my own website and I think I might even make a little page about BC builds and see if I can put together a bunch of the information there so that you can review that, and if anything is new, I can add the press releases to that page and I will link that in the show notes. I would absolutely love to know what you think about this. If you live in North Van and you have an opinion about the repurposing or the tearing down and rebuilding of the ICBC space, I'd love to know what you have to say. Oh yeah, actually I know that a lot of people are going to have a lot of comments about the disruption this is going to cause to transit at Lonsdale Key. I'm sure that there is a plan for that because the transit authority is included in this deal, but I think it's going to be a bit of a nightmare. Who knows, we'll see Reserving judgment on that. But again, I'm going to try to keep track of everything going on and I will have a dedicated page on my website for that. All right, kids absolutely would love to know what you think of this, so leave me a comment or send me an email. I can mention the email or text on my next podcast that I do about this. I think I'm going to revisit this in a couple of weeks just to see where we're at. That's all I've got for this on this episode and I thank you once again for listening. I hope you made it to the end.
Speaker 1:
I know that this is pretty boring for some people, especially if you don't live in North Van, but, man, if you live here, this is huge For those of you who don't live here. Lonsdale Key is the biggest hub in North Vancouver. There's so much action down there. It has seen a huge transformation over the last 10 years. Obviously, this is going to leave a big mark on the what it looks like down there. I hope it's going to be for the better. I mean, the ICBC building is gross and ugly, so I hope it's going to be for the better.
Speaker 1:
But from where I'm sitting right now to getting there, there's a lot of a lot of stuff we don't know. So let's find out together. As always, you can get Keeping it Real on Spotify, apple Podcasts or at northendhomesalescom slash podcasts. I'd love it if you download or subscribe. That'd be amazing and it would help me understand how many people are listening, even though I do get a report on how many times it's downloaded and you guys really like the stigmatized ones. I'm not gonna lie. That's the biggest. I hope you have a fantastic Canada Day long weekend and I will see you next week.