Jericho Lands
Jericho Lands
The Jericho Lands make up 90 acres / 36 hectares of land south of Jericho Beach on Vancouver's west side, formerly owned by National Defence. They were purchased by a consortium which includes the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and the federal Canada Lands Company.
The consortium and the city have been working on the development plans for the land. I attended a virtual presentation Monday evening (slides). The approach is to have taller buildings and more open space (like Oakridge), rather than shorter buildings which are more filled-in (like Olympic Village).
The plan is to build 9,000 housing units, enough for 15,000 to 18,000 people: by freeing up more existing housing, this would really help with the musical-chairs problem Vancouver has, where lower-income renters get pushed out.
Of the total housing units, the plan is that 20% will be social housing and 10% will be market rental. My understanding is that the social housing buildings will be mixed-income, with 30% of the units below BC Housing's Housing Income Limits and 70% market, so there'd be a total of about 500 subsidized housing units and 2200 market rental units. The rest would be long-term leasehold strata - the First Nations don't want to sell the land.
It's a pretty long process. The policy statement goes to city council for ratification in spring 2022. If they ratify it, it then takes three years to rezone all the land. Then it takes 25-30 years to do the build-out. (For comparison, the Senakw project is adding 6000 housing units, and they expect to have completed a first phase by some time in 2022.)
From participating in the Q&A (where we entered questions via chat), I think the key conflict is between (1) people who are primarily concerned about Vancouver's housing shortage and who want to build more housing, and (2) people who are primarily concerned about overcrowding and want to limit more housing. Everything else seems secondary.
My suggestion would be to focus on building more housing, while striving to address the opposition's concerns about overcrowding by committing to deliver services like childcare and transit.
This is one of several major projects, like Olympic Village, the River District (East Fraserlands), Senakw, and False Creek South.
Read more:
The opposition - West Point Grey Residents Association
Kenneth Chan, Homes for up to 18,000 people proposed for Point Grey in Vancouver (Daily Hive)
Frances Bula, Indigenous development on Vancouver’s west side to include three 38-storey towers (Globe and Mail)
Justin McElroy, Jericho Lands proposal includes new homes for up to 18,000 people in Vancouver's West Side (CBC)