18 B C G E U
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
J U N E 2 0 2 5
building more above a school
in Coal Harbour.
Up north, BC Housing is
partnering with the City of
Prince George and Northern
Health on a new building that
will include a health clinic plus
51 apartments for people at
risk of homelessness.
Churches have partnered
with developers in many
cities to use what has become
surplus land to provide new
housing, often a mix of subsi-
dized and market.
There have been efforts to
build tiny-home villages for
homeless people (Portland,
Duncan, Victoria) or to
re-invent the single-room
residential hotel (San Diego).
But the most interesting
new ventures of all are the
ones where organizations that
don't usually do development
are wading in.
In the United States,
several private companies
have launched efforts to build
housing, sometimes for their
own employees, sometimes
just to add to the pool. A
company that manufactures
medical supplies in Indiana,
Cook Medical, started building
modest houses near one of its
facilities to provide staff with
places they could buy. People
began moving in a year and
a half ago.
In South Los Angeles, a new
Costco store is being built as
you read this, with 800 apart-
ments on top of it, available to
anyone who can pay the rent
once they are completed.
The housing crisis on this
continent, once concentrated
in New York and a few West
Coast cities but now every-
where, has produced some
innovative and novel efforts.
The City of Vancouver
put social housing on top of
a library in Strathcona and a
firehall in southeast Vancouver
several years ago. It's currently
DIVING IN
Some unconventional
organizations are
jumping into housing
development in B.C.—
with novel results
L A N D V A L U E S
by Frances Bula
Frances Bula is a long-time
Vancouver journalist and
the 2023 recipient of the
Bruce Hutchison Lifetime
Achievement Award from the
Jack Webster Foundation.
FITTING IN
Organizations and
developers alike are
finding unique retro-
fitted solutions to build
amid the housing crisis
