A home in North Vancouver is being spared the wrecking ball and is literally on the move to a new location where it will serve as emergency transitional housing.
Rather than being demolished, the home is being transported to the Squamish Nation reserve where it will function as a new community resource.
“This is something that if people are displaced it will be a place for emergency housing if they don’t have a home or waiting to get into a place,” Squamish Nation Elected Councillor Wilson Williams explained.
The move is being done in partnership with a company called Renewal Development, which specializes in keeping old homes out of the landfill and giving them a new lease on life.
More than 2,700 houses are torn down every year to make way for higher-density housing in Metro Vancouver, according to the regional district.
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Renewal Development estimates as many as 700 of those homes could be saved, and says it has found a way to do it for about the same cost as demolishing them.
“Our mission, though, is to save as much of the home as we can,” Renewal Development owner Glyn Lewis said.
“In this case, we are relocating the entire upper floor and we will demolish the lower floor which wasn’t able to be moved.”
The company uses a blended financial model in which homeowners pay the same cost as a traditional demolition would have cost, while the receivers cover the remainder of the move cost.
“We really believe more of those homes should be rescued, relocated and repurposed,” Lewis said.
One District of North Vancouver city councillor wants to see a bigger uptake on the concept.
Coun. Lisa Muri is bringing a motion to council that would seek to incentivize the repurposing of old homes over demolition by refunding homeowners their demolition permit fees if they participate in the program.
She said that the rebate could amount to thousands of dollars.
“A lot of these homes, they were built very, very well in the 1950s,” she said.
“If there’s land available, and certainly partnering with the nations, there is an opportunity to move these homes nearby.”
It’s not the first high-profile move Renewal has completed in the region.
In 2023, the company saved Vancouver’s historic “little yellow schoolhouse” from demolition by moving it to Squamish Nation land in North Vancouver, where it now serves as an early childhood education centre.
The company also moved 10 single-family homes from Port Moody to the Sunshine Coast for the shíshálh First Nation earlier this year.
The latest project is being watched closely by the provincial government, other developers and First Nations.
“We have a generational plan, this is part of it,” Wilson said.
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