City council handed out an early Christmas present Tuesday, announcing $19.8 million for a 129 unit project for subsidized rental housing.
The site, located at 8111 Granville Ave. on its southern frontage, and 8080 Anderson Road to the north where the old KFC outlet was situated, is owned by the city. In addition to offering affordable rental housing units, it will house community amenity space.
Five, non-profit societies will help develop the property. They include Atira Women's Resource Society, Coast Mental Health, S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Affordable Housing Society, Tikva Housing Society and Turning Point Housing Society.
CMHA Pathways Clubhouse will also be a community service provider in the project.
The new residences will include studios, one and three bedroom units and have basic rents that will not exceed $850 per month.
According to the city, each of the nonprofit housing societies involved with the project will generate its own occupancy and resident management policies which will include tenant selection and eligibility requirements.
"Given limited availability of other funding sources, subsidized housing is difficult to build and operate - innovative partnerships are required for projects to succeed," said Mayor Malcolm Brodie in a press release.
Funding for the project comes from the city's Affordable Housing Reserve Fund which collects money from developers to provide residences to low income earners.
Earlier this month, city council approved spending $11.7 million for the Kiwanis Towers on Minoru Boulevard across from Richmond Centre which will provide 296 units of affordable rental housing for seniors.
Combined with the Granville Avenue development, it represents a step in the right direction to provide housing for those on low incomes. But much more needs to be done to meet the local demand for affordable housing, said De Whalen, an executive member of the Richmond Poverty Response Committee.
"When you look at what affordable housing means - taking up about 30 per cent of your income - and you realize that many of the jobs in Richmond are in the lower paying service industries, many with no benefits, that leaves a lot of people in need of affordable housing," Whalen said. "Plus, if you look a the local poverty rate at 20 per cent - that's one in five people - it can create pretty high demand."
How high? Whalen estimated the actual need for affordable housing is in the 4,000 unit range in Richmond.
"So, what has been provided so far is nowhere near what is required," she said.
But in the past six years, the city has provided just over 1,100 units that fall into the affordable category.
"Since the approval of the City's Affordable Housing Strategy in 2007, a total of at least 973 housing units have been secured in a variety of the strategy's affordable housing categories - 460 of these fall under the strategy's top priority category defined as subsidized rental housing for low income households," Brodie said.
The Granville Avenue development is expected to be complete by spring 2016.
