A new City of Burnaby staff report has detailed city plans to build hundreds of rental homes, including many offered at rents below market rates.
If the plan comes to fruition, the homes would be built on more than five hectares of land in the Edmonds area at the southeast comer of Southridge Drive and Byrnepark Drive, with construction beginning as soon as the middle of 2023.
This site, called the Bevans Lands, consists of 20 properties, 17 owned by the city and three owned by developer Mosaic Homes.
Proposed are as many as 334 rental units split between two four-storey apartment buildings and one townhouse development. For the apartments, 70% of them would be at or below market rates and the other 30% would be at 80% of CMHC market median rates. For the townhouses, 50% would be at CMHC market median rates and 50% at market rates. The developer of both projects would be Mosaic Homes. The apartments would be operated by Community Land Trust.
Funding for the apartments will be the most difficult part of the project, says the report, which will be presented to council on Monday night.
“For the apartment portion of the Bevan Lands, staff will continue to support CLT's efforts to source and secure capital funding for the 118 rental apartment units,” reads the report. “The proposed housing development program on the Lands has had to adapt several times in response to information obtained from due diligence studies and, most importantly, the absence of capital funding from the second (2021) intake of BC Housing's Building BC Community Housing Fund,” said the report.
