Why this Okanagan city can’t get affordable housing in new highrises

While controversy swirls around rental affordability in a 25-storey downtown Kelowna highrise, the next project on city-owned land could be just as unaffordable.

There’s good reasons for that, going back a number of years, Coun. Luke Stack told iNFOnews.ca.

“Everyone forgets that, a few years ago, the number one priority of the city, from all the citizens, was to fix the downtown – to breathe life into the downtown, redo Bernard, attract residential housing there, get commercial established,” he said. “That was all part of that and now that it’s getting going, everyone forgets that the objective these last few years was to revitalize our downtown core.”

That’s why two massive downtown housing projects on city lands did not stipulate an affordability factor.

When the City of Kelowna sells or leases land, it can put rules around what gets built there.

In the case of the former RCMP site on Doyle Avenue, the developer is leasing the land for up to 99 years and was not asked to provide affordable housing. Instead, the city requires him to build some cultural amenities in the 25-storey tower.

“There’s quite a lot of amenities that this developer has to provide to the city,” Stack said. “We felt, by the time you loaded it up too heavily, it would not be economically feasible for anyone to go ahead. We had to balance different objectives.

That project is now mired in controversy because the developer volunteered to provide an affordable component but council rejected his offer this week because it was truly unaffordable.

READ MORE: Kelowna councillor 'insulted' by developer's plan for attainable housing in downtown highrise

Last month, a rezoning application was filed for two city-owned parcels of land straddling Highway 97 downtown, one on the former McDonald’s site on the south side and one north of the highway on a former gas station site.

The land sale has yet to close so, technically, the city still owns the land.

Plans call for a 40-storey rental tower on the northern parcel and six storeys on the south.

READ MORE: New 40-storey highrise tower proposal part of 'gateway' to downtown Kelowna

The requirement to make some of those affordable was not part of the deal, Stack said.

“We didn’t ask for it,” he said. “The objective on that site is that we wanted something really attractive coming into the city and we were looking for the development of some commercial property.”

That doesn’t mean the developer won’t, voluntarily, come forward with an affordable component but they’re not required to do so.

“If you roll the clock back four years, those were some of the big priorities that we were trying to focus on,” Stack said. “Now, there’s issues today we have to start thinking about. It’s going to take a couple of years for them to come around and be established.”

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