Provincial Supportive Housing in Port Moody?

Supportive Housing In Port Moody, BC

On June 24, 2025, I made the following verbal report at our Regular Council meeting. I felt it was important that all of Port Moody know about the pressures we are under from the Province:

I’m pleased to speak tonight about two letters we are releasing to the public from Ravi Kahlon, BC’s Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, to Port Moody City Council, dated May 8, 2025 and June 10, 2025, respectively. 

The first is a response to a letter sent by Council to his Ministry on February 4, 2025 regarding our endorsement of the Strengthening Poverty Reduction Strategy in BC and its related recommendations, particularly in regards to seniors.

The second is a follow-up to a meeting that took place on March 26, 2025 between the Minister and the Mayor, during which our Mayor provided him with a proposal to utilize a piece of City land for temporary supportive seniors’ housing. With the release of these letters tonight, I am now free to discuss some of the details of the decision. 

In both these letters, Minister Kahlon is pushing Council to reconsider a decision we made in Closed meetings opposing a permanent supportive housing development at 3051 St. Johns Street. 3051 St. Johns is the garden space next to our public safety building, the Port Moody police station, and Council’s decision on this matter when first approached by the Province was clear.

This piece of land is is not an appropriate location for permanent provincial supportive housing, due to a number of obvious reasons which include, but are not limited to:

1. The PMPD are strongly opposed to giving up this land, and have asked that it be set aside for public safety services and facility expansion as our community grows

2. The extremely limited amount of City land on which to build and provide City services and amenities as we grapple with population growth

3. Its location adjacent only half a block from a planned daycare at 3102 St. George Street, which will have 49 spaces for children

4. The very clear and public failures being reported at the 3030 Gordon supportive housing project in Coquitlam including growing operational challenges, massive costs and impacts to city services and resources, crime, illegal encampments and dumping.

   
   

   Coquitlam First Responders responded to calls at 3030 and 3020 Gordon more than 800 times in 2024. Port Moody simply does not have the resources to manage this sort of need. Further, the lack of wraparound services affecting Coquitlam has not yet been addressed.

   
   

   This City, and others like it, have received no assurance from the Province that supportive housing facilities such as these can be adequately and appropriately supported.

This Council has worked incredibly hard to deliver what the Province has asked of us in the last two and a half years when it began imposing its new housing legislation on municipalities. 

Will This Improve Housing In Port Moody?

Despite increasingly difficult market conditions, we have managed to add affordable and/or supportive units in almost every qualified approved application including:

• In conjunction with Beedie, we approved a dedicated 9 storey building with 60 units at 2806 Spring St, as a supportive women and children’s transition housing to be operated by ACT 2. It will include both second-stage and long-term housing with 24/7 staffing. 

• The under-construction Portwood project will provide 325 homes at 30% below market in perpetuity, 70% of those being 2 bedrooms. 

• An approved project at St. Johns and Buller will deliver 10 non-market homes to Kinsight for ownership and operation.

• Additional recent affordable approvals include 36 deeply affordable apartments for refugees with House of Omeed, 10 shelter rate units in a low-rise project, and efforts to add affordable housing in Inlet District on top of the rent-to-own building in conjunction with Wesgroup and CMHC. 

• AND, this Council has been working consistently with our MP, past and present, to explore the development of an affordable and/or seniors social housing site at 45 Mary Street, in the old federal post office building.

I’m not sure why then, in these letters, that Minister Kahlon persists in telling us that we’re not doing enough, and to reconsider supportive housing on our public safety site when we are already doing our part and have clearly informed his office that the answer is no. There’s a lot more that I think our residents should know about the reasons behind our decision, and so today I want to share that at our next closed meeting, I’m going to move that we release those details into the public realm.   

Earlier this month, the Province passed Bills 13 and 15 which should worry every one of us. They now give that government the legal tools to act in our place if we don’t do what they ask. Bill 13 renders all land use decisions directly subject to provincial override direction if it is deemed that it is a constraint on meeting BC housing targets. Bill 15 allows the Province to directly administer and approve all land use permits and approvals in TOD areas.  This is a direct threat to municipal autonomy and land use control.

Every one of our residents needs to know that this and other Councils are being strong-armed by the Province, and feeling threatened by these efforts to control our land use decisions.

Will this municipality be forced to accept a permanent supportive housing development on one of our sole remaining undeveloped pieces of public land, directly beside a daycare and our public safety building? Heads up, Port Moody. We should be very worried."

Following the above report to Council, the majority of Council voted to release the timeline of our full decision into the public realm. On October 28, 2025, we released the timeline and I presented the following verbal report at our Regular Council meeting:

On June 24 of this year, I made a verbal report to Council regarding the pressures we were facing from the Province regarding the establishment of a Supportive Housing facility at 3051 St. Johns Street.  In summary, this Council, elected in 2022, voted not to allow it for a number of important reasons, which I detailed in my report and on my Councillor Facebook page.

Despite this decision in 2023, our then-Housing Minister continued to pressure us to change our decision in subsequent communications.  After two of those communications were released from Closed into Open this year on June 24, I promised that at an upcoming Closed meeting, I would move to release the full timeline and details of Council deliberations around this subject into the public realm.  Today, the timeline and details of the conversations around this potential supportive housing site have been released to the public and are in tonight’s Council package. You can read the memo here.

I hope each resident takes the time to read the memo outlining the history of discussion around 3051 St. Johns.  I won’t get into the full details here, but here are the highlights:

• The conversations regarding potential locations for shelter, modular, supportive or low-income housing began during the last Council term, in 2019

• In early 2020, the City-owned property at 3051 was identified for additional study

• In September 2020, an MOU with BC Housing was initiated for the St. Johns site and was ratified by BC Housing and the City in June 2021

• n September of 2022, BC Housing initiated a site feasibility assessment as a next step

All of the above took place in Closed meetings.

In October of 2022, this new Council was elected.

In June of 2023, BC Housing presented to us, in Closed, potential designs for the supportive housing building at 3051 St. Johns, including expected costs to the City.  As you can imagine, this conversation was BRAND NEW to many on Council.  Speaking for myself, I was shocked that such important conversations about City land and supportive housing could and would take place without resident input. After conversation and input from key community stakeholders at that meeting, a majority of this Council voted against any further discussion of supportive housing at 3051 St. Johns.

I mention these specific highlights because I think it’s important that residents know when this conversation originated, and whether, after this year’s municipal election, this conversation might return, likely again in Closed. 

I have said time and again that I feel public engagement and input, particularly around City land, should not be conducted in secret. Our residents deserve to weigh in on how our tiny amount of municipal lands are being used, and for what purpose.  It is odd to me that some of the loudest voices around “public engagement” and “listening to what residents are saying” in our community seem to have no issue with Council making decisions about City land behind closed doors, such as in this case. That is inconsistent, and it’s disrespectful to residents. 

I’d like to thank key colleagues for their support in my request to release this information, and staff for their work in drafting this summary. As a final plea, I ask that this and future Councils ensure that any further conversations regarding supportive housing on City land MUST take place with the full participation of our residents. I know it will affect how I vote next year.

This issue isn't going away anytime soon. So, when residents are campaigning in debates or at your door in the coming months, ask them if they will support this proposal when it will almost certainly come back.