Shawn Oaks: high-rises near Oak and 41st
More housing vs. less change
City website: 5505-5585 Oak St (Shawn Oaks) enhanced rezoning proposal.
A couple weeks ago I went to a city-led open house for Shawn Oaks, near Oak and 41st. It currently has about 70 strata low-rise apartments, built back in the late 1960s. It's one of several large sites on 41st near Oak - the Jewish Community Centre, the former Oakridge transit centre, the Louis Brier seniors home - that are getting redeveloped for more housing. They're close to Oakridge Station, and on the R4 rapid bus line between UBC and Joyce Station (a potential future SkyTrain route).
The plan is for two high-rises (about 30 storeys each) with 450 condos, six-storey social housing with 180 apartments at no cost to the city (an in-kind tax on the project), and a one-storey daycare with 37 spots (ditto).
There were a number of neighbours at the open house who argued that this was too much change, too soon. They pointed out that there's a lot of single-detached houses on the adjoining streets, and they didn't think the six-storey social housing was an adequate transition.
I wrote up an email to the city planner.
Thank you for your work on this project!
I'm a Vancouver resident (I live in the Riley Park neighbourhood). I'm a volunteer with the Vancouver Area Neighbours Association, which seeks to counterbalance opposition to new housing.
More housing is good
I support this project. The 450 market condos and the 180 social-housing apartments are both desperately needed, as well as the 37-spot daycare.
More housing is good. When we’re in the middle of a terrible housing shortage, less housing is really, really bad.
With vacancy rates near zero, we need all the housing we can get. On the non-market side, people spend years on waiting lists. On the market side, because we don’t have enough housing to accommodate all the people who want to live and work here, prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people to give up and leave. (Housing costs have to rise about 2% in order to force 1% of people to leave.) It’s a bad situation for everyone, even older homeowners: when younger people can’t afford to live here, the healthcare system will come under increasing strain.
Because land in Metro Vancouver is limited by ocean and mountains, in order to build more housing we need to allow more height and density. I know not everyone likes high-rises, but where land is especially expensive and it makes sense to build high-rises, we should allow them to be taller.
This particular site is close to 41st (with the R4 rapid bus between UBC and Joyce Station), and it's walking distance from Oakridge Station. So high-rises make sense.
The spot rezoning process
I attended the open house at Van Dusen, and talked to some of the opponents. The spot rezoning process is basically a mini-plebiscite on every project, and of course nearly every referendum or plebiscite held in Canada in the last 150 years has failed. Similarly, if you ask people next to a proposed project if they think it should be built, the answer will almost always be no. People like their neighbourhood the way it is, that’s why they live there.
This is amplified by self-selection: the people who are most motivated to come out and speak to city staff or to city council are the people who are most fearful of change.
The general view expressed by opponents was that this was too much change: they wanted to bargain it down to less height and to less housing, like a maximum of six storeys. My impression is that the public benefits - the social housing and the daycare - didn’t carry any weight with the opponents.
I sincerely hope that city staff won’t try to placate local opponents who fear change by trying to reduce the height and density. It’s not going to work. Reducing the height from 33 storeys to 30 storeys isn’t going to make any difference, when what people want to see is six storeys or less.
Indeed, I would suggest that once you agree to allow a high-rise, neighbours will be upset no matter how high it is. So it would make sense to allow more storeys, to spread fixed costs like land over as much floor space as possible. As CMHC has pointed out, in Metro Vancouver there’s a huge gap between the expected value of adding one more floor to an existing project, and the cost of adding that floor. There's no such gap in Montreal.
Pushing down on a balloon
One thing that I find puzzling: in a more geographically central location, with easy access to jobs, land prices will be higher, and so it would make sense to allow more height and density. Surrey just issued development permits for a similarly-sized parcel of land in South Surrey (part of the Semiahmoo mall). This is land that is much further out, without easy access to transit - it takes an hour to get to King George Station by bus. BC Assessment says that the land is worth about $21M. The approved density is 3.7 FSR, with 550 apartments on 1.2 hectares of land.
The Shawn Oaks site is much more geographically central (it appears to be assessed at $53M), but is allowing hardly any more floor space: 4 FSR, with 630 apartments on 1.29 hectares of land. This doesn't make much sense to me. Shouldn't a parcel of land in a central location have more floor space on it than a parcel of land in South Surrey?
When Vancouver doesn’t allow enough height and density, it’s like pushing down on a balloon. People don’t vanish into thin air - they end up getting pushed out to South Surrey, battling traffic, and also contributing to it.
References
CMHC analysis of the gap between price and construction costs to add an additional floor. morehousing.ca/cmhc-wedge
Benefits of allowing a few more floors on each building. morehousing.ca/sydney
Michael Manville and Paavo Monkkonen on housing as a locally unwanted land use. morehousing.ca/unwanted-housing
More
Shawn Oaks unique site profile, city document, 2015.
Redevelopment of Shawn Oaks site to include two condo towers & social housing lowrise. David Taylor, Vancouver Market, June 2024.
Over 600 homes proposed near Oak Street and 41st Avenue corner in Vancouver. Kenneth Chan, Daily Hive, July 2024.
First Capital to redevelop Semiahmoo Shopping Centre in South Surrey. Howard Chai, Storeys, July 2024.