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Here’s an illustration of the precarious tightrope Vancouver City Hall must walk in its new pilot project aiming to build affordable rental homes: residents fighting taller affordable-housing projects in their neighbourhoods believe the city is giving away too much in sweetheart deals to developers, while at the same time, some developers are abandoning the projects altogether.

At the start of last year, the city began accepting applications for a pilot project that’s been described as its most ambitious attempt yet at getting new rental housing built that’s actually affordable for a lot of Vancouver renters. Under the Moderate Income Rental Housing Pilot Project, or MIRHPP, developers receive concessions — the most significant of which is extra density — in exchange for producing rental buildings with some homes permanently secured for below-market rents.

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But of the 20 projects initially selected by the city in March 2018 to submit rezoning applications under the MIRHPP program, six of those proponents have now formally withdrawn, the city confirmed Tuesday. Graham Anderson, a planner in the city’s housing policy department, said in an email that the city has since replaced those abandoned projects with other wait-listed proposals, out of the 55 total applications the city received during its intake period in early 2018.