District of North Vancouver council members are offering up their own homes for affordable housing – in a manner of speaking.
District council voted unanimously at their last regular council meeting to adopt a new policy directing staff to offer any single-family homes the district purchases to non-profits at a nominal rate to be rented out at affordable rates.
Local governments occasionally purchase homes with plans to demolish them for expansion of parks, roads or other municipal infrastructure. The district currently owns 14 single-family homes, 10 of which are rented out at market rates, four of which are in the hands of non-profits.
The new policy will apply to any new homes the district acquires but does not anticipate demolishing for a period of two to five years.
How much the new policy will cost the district in foregone rental revenues would be hard to predict, according to a staff report, "as few properties may become unavailable."
District council has previously rejected affordable housing projects on district-owned land but Coun. Jim Hanson moved the motion Oct. 7 after first asking staff to prepare a detailed report on the matter in April.
"This reflects a philosophy of mine and, I believe, of this council, to – as much as possible – use district assets for social purposes and I believe the policy achieves that aim," said Hanson,
Mayor Mike Little commended Hanson for bringing the motion forward.
"I think it's probably something people probably thought we were doing already with these properties. We don't get into the habit of acquiring properties as a resource revenue area. It's certainly something we can demonstrate by showing that we're going to use a relationship with a non-profit to put these properties back into use as an affordable source of housing."
