The future of older rental apartment buildings

Frances Bula has a current posting regarding an older apartment building for sale in the West End. www.francesbula.com

West End apartment for sale: “Rented significantly below market – need upgrades”November 26th, 2012 · 13 Comments

Hope this one ends well. From a recent listing.

Prime West End! The Randi Lynn is a three storey plus penthouse 23-suite apartment building.  Only 3 blocks to Sunset Beach—a prime English Bay address in the heart of the popular West End district, offering tenants immediate proximity to the employment, entertainment, shopping, beaches and recreational areas of Vancouver’s downtown core. Rents significantly below market.  Needs upgrades.

There were 12 comments Some are very thoughtful, but others reek of partisan mis-information. That being said, I decided to offer the following comment since I think this is an important topic.

There is a serious problem in Metro Vancouver related to older rental buildings that are in poor condition and under-utilizing the site relative to current zoning, and current rezonings elsewhere around the city.

While the City’s rate of change policy and requirement of 1 for 1 replacement of rental units would seem reasonable, especially from the point of view of renters, the realty is that very few older rental buildings are being redeveloped with a mix of condo and rental units since the numbers generally don’t work…not just in the West End but in other parts of the City.

In our report to the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force we did look at the possiblity of ‘laneway apartments’ that might be added to some sites occupied by older buildings, and there could be some opportunities for this…but they too are limited.

As we generally seem to be accepting increased densitities around the City, I suspect that what will be needed is some further density increases in the RM zones where many of these buildings are located, if we want to see older rental units replaced by newer rental units (along with condominium units).

Now I can hear some of you gasp at the thought of newer units since you know they will likely be more expensive to rent than the older units. This is true…just like new cars are generally more expensive than old cars. However, at a certain point older cars are taken off the road since they are no longer roadworthy or worth the cost of maintaining.

Unfortunately we are not taking older apartment buildings ‘off the road’. Instead , in many cases, they are being allowed to further deteriorate, since the owners don’t want to renovate them for fear of being accused of ‘renovictions’, or they under-utilize the site and the costs for major redevelopment do not make sense.

I am in conversation with a number of apartment building owners who are interested in exploring whether they might be able to obtain approvals for an FSR above current zoning in order to redevelop their sites with a mix of new rental units and condominium units.

With a mix of rental and ownership units, they will not need the almost fivefold increase in density that the developer of 1401 Comox rental building sought…and ultimately received. But they will need some increase.
Otherwise, as noted above, in many instances the buildings will simply deteriorate (and yes, provide lower rents) until they burn down or fall down, or are destroyed in an earthquake, putting lots of tenants out on the street.

Then we will all ask why wasn’t this situation predicted and why didn’t we do something before it was too late?