About STIR

February 13, 2012. City Council quietly allowed the STIR program to expire on December 15, 2011. Prior to that, WEN obtained legal advice and released the findings on November 15 indicating there was reason to believe the STIR program was legally flawed. WEN has not received any response from the City about these issues but City staff have said that STIR projects “in the pipeline” before December 15 will continue to be processed (including 1401 Comox and Beach Towers proposals in the West End).

More information

• STIR program controversy: Legal framework flawed, program must be scrapped says West End Neighbours
• WEN Challenges STIR

What is STIR?

The City of Vancouver states that it designed the STIR program to address the need for rental housing by encouraging the development industry to create it. The program includes two streams: a simple stream and a negotiated stream, but in general, the program aims to increase market rental units secured as rental for the life of the building or 60 years, whichever is greater.

The STIR incentive package includes:

• Rental property assessment (on rental units only)
• Development Cost Levy waiver (on rental units only)
• Parking requirement reductions (on rental units only)
• Discretion on unit size Increased density
• Expedited permit processing

Part of the intent of the program was to encourage continued development activity during the uncertain economic times of late 2008 and early 2009. (It turned out the development industry recovered much more quickly than was anticipated.) The City hoped that the incentives offered would create new rental housing stock and would assist with housing affordability.

The Short Term Incentive Rental Housing (STIR) program was intended to give incentives to developers to build affordable rental units. Instead the STIR projects are awarding developers millions of dollars to build massive market-rate rental units that violate existing City planning documents and the West End Zoning Guidelines.

(Click on the image below to enlarge.)

Here is a slideshow with our perspective:

In November, 2010 the media covered a story about a the first STIR project to start construction at 1142 Granville Street. See the STIR Case Study for more details.

Information on the City websites about STIR and rezoning applications

The official City website on the Short Term Incentives for Rental Housing (STIR)

City of Vancouver Rezoning Centre – Applications

Rezoning Application for 1401 Comox Street

Rezoning Application for 1201 – 1215 Bidwell Street and 1726 Davie Street

Background

It is more than a story about the heights of towers, excessive density and or views stolen and handed to developers. The STIR program was rammed through City Council by Vision Vancouver’s elected councillors, in virtual secrecy, with absolutely NO PUBLIC CONSULTATION in June 2009, giving multi-million dollar subsidies to developers who had a hand in creating the STIR program and who will benefit from huge windfall profits by subsidizing tower construction, letting them off their regular obligations to pay for the added burden on community infrastructure andallowing them to ignore existing community plans, guidelines and zoning policies.

In June 2009, when concerned citizens expressed the view that the STIR program did not include public consultation, the answer of elected Councillor Geoff Meggs was “The consultation was the election and this was the delivery.” This appears to be the view held by all Vision Vancouver members of council, because they have voted consistently as a bloc on this issue.

Short-term rental-unit incentives draw fire from critics (see quote from Councillor Geoff Meggs)

Shaken but not STIR’d by $112,273 per unit rental subsidy

Many people feel that the STIR program needs to be stopped or changed and the West End first needs a new community plan. Here’s why:

1. First of all, the West End already has a detailed Community Plan that provides guidance on key aspects of the community, including building height, density, space between buildings, etc. It was produced through a comprehensive process in 1989 and later slightly revised. It is still in effect today.
2. The city is doing site-by-site radical rezoning in the West End while ignoring the existing community plan and zoning regulations.
3. Developers will receive millions of dollars in giveaways (we estimate $24 million for Millennium, Westbank, Peterson for the Bidwell and Comox sites and as-yet unknown millions for the Devonshire Properties at next STIR project, Beach Towers on Harwood) through foregone “development cost levy” fees. Essentially, taxpayers are subsidizing these billion-dollar, privately held companies (no public reporting) so that they can build rental apartments that will be rented at top-end market prices.
4. These developments will add to the burden on public infrastructure but not contribute funds to improve it despite the extra burdens of increasing the population. The Planning Department is not required to look at the cumulative impacts of the projects. Yet our only elementary school is already full to capacity and has no room to expand. Our library is at a capacity. Our electrical power grid serving the West End is aging and cannot bear any increased load. And so on. Planning Department, where is yourplan? Vision Vancouver, where is your vision?
5. The STIR program was rushed through very quickly in June 2009. Developers played a major role in formulating the program, but communities had no chance to provide input (or even hear about it — no one was asked and no staff or proponents of the program mentioned the dramatic implications on OUR community).
6. In effect, the STIR program is acting like a Trojan Horse to justify extreme changes to zoning (e.g., nearly a 400% increase in height at 1401 Comox when currently zoning permits a maximum 6 stories, and increasing the density by 500%). None of these rezoning applications in the West End would even be considered at all without the STIR program. None of these issues were discussed in the development of the STIR program.
7. The West End rental vacancy rates fluctuate. At the time of the introduction of the STIR program December 2009, a CMHC report stated that vacancy rates in Vancouver had quadrupled calling into question the need to rush to create several hundred new rental units in the West End, especially at the cost of irreversible changes to the character of the neighborhood.
8. There is no proof that these particular projects will lead to more affordable housing. There is only a hypothesis by some proponents.  If rentals are in short supply, there are other ways to add more rentals. How about all the empty units in the city, purchased as investments but kept empty? How about the hundreds of units that almost entered the rental market with a major local hotel (Coast Plaza) that was going to convert to hundreds of rentals? There are other ways.
9. Hundreds of letters, comments, and questions have already been submitted to the Planning Department against these proposals, yet most of them have not yet been answered.
10. A neighborhood cannot stay the same forever, but there are key questions to ask: How should change happen? Should it be directed by development companies? By politicians? By public servants? Or by the affected community? Perhaps a bit of each. Should changes be imposed haphazardly, site-by-site? (As Vision Vancouver is now doing in the West End.) Or should change proceed with a comprehensive plan? Is is possible to create a plan for the West End? Answer: One already exists. Obviously it was possible. To update a community plan through an open and transparent process obviously takes time and effort and such an approach is what a “visionary” city like Vancouver deserves. Our city is supposed to know how to do good planning. But Vision Vancouver’s defacto lot-by-lot rezoning policy in the West End  will eventually cost everyone (including politicians and developers) much more.

Birth of STIR

The minutes and video June 18 Council meeting where Vision Vancouver rammed the program through Council

The minutes do not provide a public record of who spoke against the policy or what they said. Councillor Meggs defends the program and claims there was appropriate consultation because the election was the consultation, though he admits that STIR was developed very quickly. He uses the words “affordable” and “affordable rental housing” a number of times. He also says that there will be “lots of opportunities for course corrections if it proves that we’re wrong.”

The “Neighborhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver” sent a letter letter to Mayor Robertson and Councillors, June 17, 2009, the day before the Vision Vancouver caucus (Councillor Raymond Louie as chair of meeting) rammed the STIR program through Council against requests for more time. The documents were posted on a Friday. Vision Vancouver intended to get the STIR program passed the next Tuesday, but impassioned pleas were able to carry the discussion over to Thursday June 18.

At no point did the city notify the general public that this policy was about to be passed.

Download the whole 3-page letter from NSV:  NSV letter to Mayor Gregor on STIR, 17-June-2009.

These are excerpts from the letter:

…We object to this inadequate public process for this substantial change in land use policy….

…b) The proposals would do nothing to increase the supply of rentals that would be affordable to most Vancouver renters…

…c) STIR appears to be a development industry driven initiative that is contrary to, and in conflict with, the neighbourhood based planning platform that this Council was elected on. We are especially concerned about proposed incentives that increase height and density through a negotiated process, as this could abrogate council-approved local-area plans and Community Visions, undermine heritage incentives, further devalue the density in the Heritage Density Bank, and inflate the value of land. The report cites a City Plan policy that additional area planning not be required before considering site-specific rezoning for ‘social or affordable housing projects’ to ‘encourage housing for lower income and special needs residents’. Clearly this exception was not intended to apply to apartments that could be sold after 20 years, would not be tied to affordability requirements, or market rentals in general, as would be the case under the STIR proposal.

…d) If DCL [development cost levies--normally charged to developers in order to pay for extra demand on city infrastructure] exemptions are granted as an incentive for developers to build rental stock, theCity needs to find an alternative means of funding amenities and affordable housing. Waiving DCLs is a classic example of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.…

…e) Market [priced] rentals are not ‘amenities’ and developers should not receive significant bonuses or waiving of fees, DCL’s, or taxes to build them….Expanding the concept of ‘public benefit’ to include market development, even rental housing, is to start down a slippery slope.

… We are very disappointed that the Vision Vancouver dominated Council has not honored its election commitments to work with the community to find supportable approaches to land use planning. We request that STIR be further deferred so that the public can be adequately involved in this process.

All of the above points were ignored by Vision Vancouver’s council, which voted as a bloc to pass the policy on June 18, 2009.