The Vancouver Chinatown Foundation has come forward with an offer to help build affordable housing in the Downtown Eastside in a new partnership with the city that also includes Vancouver Coastal Health.
The housing is slated for 58 W. Hastings St., where a tent city sprung up in early July. The mayor promised to build a facility with 100 per cent social housing after meeting with area residents and housing advocates.
But as Mukhtar Latif, the city’s chief housing officer and CEO of the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency, told Postmedia, the problem was coming up with the cash to build.
“How do you get $20 million when there’s no money around?” Latif said.
Enter the Chinatown Foundation, which approached the city with an offer to contribute to the project. The foundation plans to contribute $25-30 million to the project. That would allow about 50 per cent of the planned 250 units to go out for subsidized rates.
Meanwhile, Coastal Health plans to build a health care facility in the building.
“This is huge. It’s a really creative partnership bringing to the table private foundations and health to create a really innovative new model of housing and health,” Latif said.
But the city needs more partners to come to the table if the mayor is to keep to his promise that the entire facility will be social housing. For that, Latif and others at the city are looking to senior levels of government.
The city took ownership of the lot last year as part of a rezoning application, Latif said.
