Southwynd Place redevelopment

Multi-Tower Project With 847 Social Housing Units Proposed For South Vancouver. Howard Chai, Storeys.

Describes an application to redevelop an existing low-rise seniors housing complex (Southwynd Place), just north and east of Marine Gateway. The current complex has 90 apartments.

For the site, the Kiwanis Club and Soroptomist International have proposed three high-rise towers and one low-rise building that would together deliver 847 social housing units split between 255 units provided at rates below Housing Income Limits (HILs) as defined by BC Housing and 592 units provided at rates above HILs rates.

Sounds like the 255 below-HILs apartments are for "seniors, single-parent and low-income families," and the 592 apartments above HILs rates are intended as "workforce housing." The 70% close-to-market apartments cross-subsidize the 30% below-market apartments, which is typical.

They're planning to temporarily relocate the current residents to a new social-housing building near City Hall, another Soroptimist project.

The existing building would need to be entirely demolished first. The applicants are proposing that the tenants of the existing building be relocated to the Soroptimist project at 550 W 13th Avenue, which broke ground in December 2023 and is expected to be completed prior to the demolition of Southwynd Place.

Financing is complicated, which it usually is with non-market housing:

According to the development team, they intend to seek financing for the project from the City of Vancouver's Community Housing Incentive Program (CHIP), the CMHC's Affordable Housing Fund, the CMHC's Apartment Construction Loan Program, Vancity, BC Housing, BC Builds, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund. "Financing will be confirmed through a parallel process to the City's regulatory approval process," the applicants said.

They are targeting a 7.5-month timeline to achieve rezoning in order to meet lender requirements and unlock funding from some of the aforementioned lenders.

In other words, they're hoping to get rezoning approval by mid-October.