1 of 1 2 of 1

Red Door Housing Society has only a dozen single-room units in its inventory of 12 affordable rental properties across Metro Vancouver.

Most of the Vancouver nonprofit’s housing stock consists of two-, three-, four-, and five-bedroom apartments and townhomes geared for families.

What the group noticed over the years, and especially in the case of single mothers, is that as children grow up and move out, parents are left in homes that are too big for their needs.

“Now she’s over-housed, so we have to say to her, ‘You know what? You got to move on, you can’t live in a three-bed with no children’, and there’s nowhere to go,” Red Door executive director Susan Snell told the Straight in a phone interview.

In addition to these cases, the housing nonprofit also gets a lot of inquiries from seniors looking for affordable housing.

“If you’re a senior and you’re on pension, you just don’t have the money to rent in Vancouver when you’re talking $1,800 [of monthly pension], and your rent is going to be between a thousand and twelve-hundred [dollars], depending on the area,” Snell noted.

Red Door hopes to help alleviate some of these issues with the redevelopment of one of its properties in Vancouver.

The group has applied with the City of Vancouver to rezone 870 East 8th Avenue, current site of Mi Casa, a three-storey rental building with 22 two- and three-bedroom units.

Red Door is planning to replace the rental property with a seven-storey building with 51 rental units. Nineteen of these are going to be one-bedroom units. The remaining 32 will be two- and three-bedroom units, representing an increase by 10 units of the current stock.

“We really have a desperate need for all types of housing,” Snell said. “We just wanted to branch out, and do a little bit more for … older single women that we are right now saying, ‘you have to go’, and they have nowhere to go. We just want to help them out, that we can at least help some of them and move them in there, and also house seniors, because we get calls from seniors, male and female, that are just desperate for housing.”

According to Snell, younger people may also be able to rent at the new Mi Casa, especially students going to the nearby Vancouver Community College on Broadway.

A one-bedroom unit will rent starting at $750, which Snell said is below market rates of at least $1,000 in Vancouver.

The two- and three-bedroom units will also rent for 10 percent, 40 percent, and 60 percent less than market rates, Snell added.

Red Door will shoulder the cost of redevelopment. According to Snell, the nonprofit will apply for any kind of government assistance so it can put more resources to keep rents low.

Snell noted that the current Mi Casa building is in “bad shape”, and Red Door “just can’t make the numbers work” if it simply renovates the 22-unit rental at a cost of $3 million to $4 million.

“We decided that we would look at redevelopment so that we could add more units to the site, and actually have a new building,” she said.

According to Snell, any future redevelopment of its other properties may include adding one-bedroom units to address the housing needs of old and young singles.

Snell expects a new Mi Casa to open its doors in three to four years.