Dan Fumano: The fight for — and against — affordable rental housing in Vancouver

There’s a word often tossed around Vancouver council meetings lately that might sound odd to the untrained ear: “MIRHPP.”It stands for Moderate Income Rental Housing Pilot Program, and city staff, politicians and many others hope MIRHPP will achieve what an earlier program could not: produce rental housing that’s affordable for low-to-medium-income households.

The numbers suggest he’s not exaggerating. Through much of the 1960s and ’70s, the City of Vancouver built an average of 2,000 new units of rental housing every year. That number plummeted to a few hundred per year over the next three decades, which the city attributes to the end of federal tax incentives for rental housing, and new legislation enabling condo ownership.In 2008, the city approved zero rental units.

MIRHPP aims to produce homes for those incomes, with 20 per cent of each project’s floor space secured at rates currently 30- to 40-per-cent below market rents, including $950 for a studio and $2,000 for a three-bedroom. Unlike Rental 100 homes, rents for MIRHPP units can only be increased by the province’s maximum annual allowable rate, even when a new tenant moves in.

But will communities accept bigger buildings if it means their new neighbours will get affordable homes? Or if they don’t, will council approve those buildings despite neighbourhood opposition? “The only way they can make work is to make it higher,” Osburn said. “Make the units smaller, and make the building higher. Well, that’s like the ghetto. You’re dropping the ghetto in Kitsilano … We are one of the treasures of the city.”

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