It’s time to #takebackthemountain

Fourteen years ago Little Mountain, once home to more than 700 people and  224 social housing units was sold by BC Housing and the BC Liberal government to Holborn – a huge multi-national development company. In 2009 this thriving community was demolished and since then it’s been an enormous vacant lot. The selling price was $334 million. The developers got a loan for about 90% of this to pay for the property. They don’t have to pay any interest until 2026. That’s seventeen years – no interest payments.

Who loaned them the money? We did– the people who sold it to them – the people of British Columbia. The terms of the contract make it easy for Holborn to simply sit on the land and watch its value increase. No deadlines for building. No requirements to build. BC Housing paid for the environmental remediation; any First Nations claims are the responsibility of BC Housing; so was the cost of demolition, of moving the residents, and of real estate fees. This is a sweetheart deal. No wonder Holborn fought so hard to prevent it from being made public, and no wonder they’ve been sitting on the land doing almost no building for all these years while the value of the land goes up and up and up.