Three Metro Vancouver houses arrive in Haida Gwaii for conversion into subsidized housing

Three mid-century houses from Metro Vancouver completed a multi-day barge trip up the B.C. coast and arrived in Haida Gwaii on Oct. 2. The Old Masset Village Council plans to convert each house into a triplex for subsidized housing. Chief councillor Donald Edgar said some families of 10, 11 or 12 people are living in one small house, and the community is looking for a faster way to move people into homes. The houses had been headed for landfill, he said, but are being reused.

The homes stood on Coquitlam development sites and were slated for demolition to make way for higher-density projects. Edgar had initially worried about their age and remaining useful life, but said he visited them in Coquitlam and found they were still in good condition. Two came from an Appian Way land assembly where Anthem Properties needed to remove 11 houses for a new development. Renewal Development assessed features such as roofs and windows, then checked each home's dimensions and the proposed transport route to determine whether it could be moved and reused. The other nine houses were unsuitable because they were in poor condition or too large to ship. Renewal Development provided Anthem with demolition services for those houses, a process chief executive Glyn Lewis said saved the developer some money. The third house came from another Coquitlam development site on Madore Avenue.

Lewis started Renewal Development six years ago after seeing the amount of waste from demolitions. He said about 2,700 single-family homes are demolished across Metro Vancouver each year to make room for higher-density development. He estimates about 700 are still in good condition and could be relocated and repurposed. Lewis said demolishing well-maintained, renovated homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars wastes heritage character, materials, embodied carbon and financial value. He said developers pay $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000 to tear some of them down.

Before the homes left for Haida Gwaii, the Old Masset Village Council replaced their stucco siding and asphalt roofs with metal roofs and durable siding to suit the local weather. Lewis said the work would cost much more if done in Haida Gwaii or other coastal communities, which do not have building-supply stores such as Home Depot. The houses travelled from Coquitlam down the Fraser River to a barge site, where crews secured them with steel beams. A tug then pulled the barge on the three-day trip to Haida Gwaii.

The council plans to build foundations and the two lower units before placing the relocated houses on top. It will try the three houses first to see whether residents like them, and could bring in another 17 units later. Edgar said building homes in Haida Gwaii is extremely expensive and the rescued houses could provide homes for more people at lower cost. He also said rents are rising and subsidizing rent in some of the homes the council is purchasing would benefit residents. Lewis estimates relocating and reusing the houses costs about 20 to 40 per cent less than building new homes or bringing in modular housing.