Olga Ilich says she has been "nipping at the heels of the city" over the issue of affordable housing for quite some time. Now she says she's effectively been told: "OK smart guy, we've got a job for you."
That job is to co-chair the mayor's task force on housing affordability with Gregor Robertson.
The mayor is taking a significant gamble with the commitment to deal with what is arguably the most difficult problem facing this city. But Ilich seems a good choice to lend a hand. She has spent most of her adult life as a developer building houses in the Lower Mainland. She started using land her company controlled back in the 1980s to build social housing and has been a planning and development adviser to the cities of Richmond and Surrey.
But she is probably best known for her one term in Gordon Campbell's government where she served in a number of cabinet posts as the MLA from Richmond Centre.
When she quit after one term, she joined an exodus of powerful women leaving Campbell's government. Along with Ilich that included Penny Ballem, Carole Taylor and Tamara Vrooman. You begin to appreciate what a small world this is. Most of them, oddly enough, have ended up working in one way or another with Robertson and his Vision administration.
Taylor has moved on to become the chancellor at Simon Fraser University. But Ballem went to work for Robertson as his city manger. And while Vrooman became CEO at Vancity Credit Union (on whose board I sit), she was Robertson's appointee to the board of the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»International Airport.
Robertson met Ilich when they were both MLAs in Victoria. She first jumped on board to help him out after the Stanley Cup riot when Robertson set up a "Brand Task Force" to repair whatever damage had been done to the city's image internationally.
Ilich got the most recent call from Robertson to fill that spot a few days after his inaugural speech where he promised to make housing affordability his top priority. Ballem was involved in the decision to appoint Ilich.
Ilich in no way underestimates what she has been asked to do. "I think it is very difficult." But she won't be doing it alone. A call has been sent out for experts in the areas of finance, real estate, market development, architecture and design, academia, federal and provincial policy, non-market housing development and land use planning.
And you would have to clear-cut a small forest to provide the paper for the reports that already exist on the subject, including the city's most recent 10-year housing and homeless strategy. That sets a goal of 38,000 new affordable homes, including 5,000 new purpose built rentals and 20,000 new ownership housing units.
It's a daunting task. It makes Robertson's first-term goal of eliminating street homelessness by 2015 a relative walk in the park. This will take more than throwing open a few lowbarrier shelters and convincing the province to put up the bucks to run them.
Ilich says she doesn't want to get ahead of her committee but clearly the city needs to "increase the supply" of land available for building. Think increased density. The city did it in Coal Harbour, they did it in False Creek and the Fraser Lands. And they will do it along the Cambie Corridor.
Making housing affordable, though, would also require the city to not "load all those costs onto the project," by which she means having less demanding building standards including allowances for parking. The city will also have to move projects through the bureaucracy more "expeditiously."
One other catch: Ilich is aware that aside from long-term improvements in affordability, Robertson is expecting "quick starts" next spring. These would be "immediate changes and new approaches to improve affordability."
To which she says: "We're going to give it a good old try."
