B.C. Housing ordered to reveal details of deal to sell Little Mountain lands to developer

The public may finally learn more about the details of the controversial Little Mountain land sale in Vancouver.

An Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) adjudicator has ruled that B.C. Housing, the government agency that sold the land back in 2008, must release the purchase agreement it struck with developer Holborn Holdings Ltd.

The Little Mountain lands lie between 37thand33rdavenues and MainandOntario streetsin Vancouver. The area usedto be home to 224 units of social housing that werefirst completed in 1954.

The ruling is a result of separate Freedom of Information requests filed by the CBC and former NDP MLA David Chudnovsky who is a long-standing opponent of thesale that affected hundreds of families.

The CBC initially made its Freedom of Information request in June2018, but the documents returned were mostly redacted. A request for review was made to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner that led to the recent order to release the documents.

"How could we have a situation where we have a crisis in affordable housing and have this giant vacant lot?" askedChudnovsky. "If we can look at the contract, perhaps we'll understand for certainhow this has come to be."

The six-hectare site was initially managed by the federal government, butwas transferred to the province and B.C. Housing in 2007. The land and its buildings were then privatized by the B.C. Liberal provincial government with a sale to Holborn in 2008.

The developer's stated plan was to build 1,400 market value homes and 234 units of social housing, child care, a new community plaza and public park. The hundreds of residents who were evicted were told they could return once the new social housing units were completed, but that never happened. Most of the site has remained vacant for the past decade except for 53 units of social housing which opened in 2015.

Chudnovsky is particularly interested in the sale price of the land and the provisions that may have allowed Holborn not to build for more than a decade.

"If we find that the contract has within it more provisions that weren't in the interest of the people of the city, it underlines the argument that we've been making that the government should take back the mountain. That this deal has been a failure. There's a vacant lot 13 years later," he said.

Timeline for Release

The CBC requested an interview with both Holborn and B.C. Housing, but neither responded by deadline.

Holborn argued in the OIPC proceedings that the release of the purchase agreement would harm its business.

"Individuals without knowledge in real estate without the knowledge to understand the complexity of the deal could incorrectly interpret the information," wrote the company's lawyers.

Those same people could "interpret the information unfavourably to Holborn, which could be injurious to the interests of Holborn in attracting buyers for its property developments," they added.

But OIPC adjudicator Celia Francis disagreed in her ruling."It is not clear how disclosure of the information at issue, which is now several years old, could reasonably be expected to cause the harm Holborn fears and Holborn did not explain," she wrote.

The order stipulates that B.C. Housing must deliver the documents by Nov.5, but the parties involved can still request a judicial review at the Supreme Court of British Columbia until Oct.23.