A large real estate developer is providing temporary housing for refugee claimants in B.C. in buildings slated for future redevelopment — a program one Toronto refugee advocate wants to see replicated in Toronto.
Concert, which is owned and backed by union and management pensions and has $8 billion in assets, has teamed up with two non-profits in B.C. that provide settlement supports to asylum seekers — Journey Home Community and Immigrant Services Society of BC — and launched Meanwhile Spaces, which is currently providing below market rent in vacant residential buildings for refugees from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Colombia, Ethiopia and Eritrea — four families and 11 men.
The transitional housing program started eight months ago.
“Why is Concert doing this? We believe that a housing provider should have different types of housing in its portfolio. That’s an important part of being a good steward in the community. We feel this is a responsibility we have,” says Andrew Tong, chief investment officer for Concert.
He added that refugees are important to Canada and add “so much richness” to the communities they settle in.
The homes for the refugees are in nine apartment suites spread throughout several buildings in one location in the Vancouver area — buildings that will be demolished in the future to make way for redevelopment.
The current market rental rates for two-bedrooms in these buildings range from $1,450 a month to $1,600. Concert is setting the rates for the two-bedroom suites the refugee claimants are staying in based on provincial guidelines for low-income renters, so a single person with two children for example would pay $860 a month, Tong says.
Concert isn’t saying exactly where the buildings are, to protect the privacy of its refugee tenants.
Concert, which manages tens of thousands of rental apartments, condos and seniors’ homes across Canada, including Toronto, is leasing the units to Meanwhile Spaces. (A grant for the program has also been provided by the Vancouver Foundation, a community and donor driven foundation).
Concert launched a similar program, no longer operational, with Immigrant Services Society of BC in 2016 for about 20 families of Syrian refugees.
Typically the stay for the refugees in these programs is three to seven months, Tong says.
The next step for these individuals is often subsidized housing for a while, says Doug Peat, director of housing development for Journey Home Community, one of the two non-profits involved in the Meanwhile Spaces initiative.
(Journey Home and Immigrant Services Society identify the refugees for the program and refer them to Concert.)
Refugees in the program receive “settler supports” such as help getting social assistance until they can obtain a work permit, assistance accessing food banks, guidance in finding medical services and advice on where schools are.
The program is making a “tremendous difference” now, Peat says.
“At the border now, if you’re single they’ll send you to Vancouver’s downtown east side to find a shelter. It can be rough there. The shelters are full or can be unsuitable. You enter Canada seeking safety from persecution, danger and war and your first experience here can be a shelter downtown,” he says.
Some claimants can end up on the street, he went on to say.
Jacky Tuinstra, executive director of Matthew House, an organization in Toronto providing housing and settlement supports to refugee claimants, says a program like Meanwhile Spaces could and should be launched here.
“Developers have for far too long been missing from the conversation about refugee housing, specifically but also more generally about affordable housing,” she says.
In terms of immediate support for refugee claimants who arrive with all of these complexities, we need a partnership with private sector developers.
“Government and the general public respond to this in emergency mode ... but there’s never ever a time when there aren’t refugees. We always treat them as a short-term crisis that will go away.
“We need to sustain (partnerships like Concert’s) to continue to support refugees of all nations. That will be a positive step. Hopefully when developers (come) to the table they’ll stay at the table,” Tuinstra says.