On June 1, the remaining 13 families at Vancouver’s oldest social housing site received notices that B.C. Housing has applied for permits to demolish their homes.

The letter—signed by the agency’s Vancouver Coastal Region director, Dale McMann—doesn’t indicate when the actual demolition work at Little Mountain Housing is expected to be carried out. Communications staff didn’t make McMann or another official at B.C. Housing or the Ministry of Housing and Social Development available by for an interview before the Straight ’s deadline.

Vancouver city councillors have expressed doubt that there’s anything council can do to stop the knocking down of the 224 social housing units in the area, which served as homes to thousands since they were built in the 1950s.

However, Coalition of Progressive Electors councillor Ellen Woodsworth told the Straight that it is “just absurd that we would tear down perfectly good housing and leave a site vacant for maybe who knows how many years”.

“The market is flat right now; nobody is building,” Woodsworth said, a view shared by her COPE council colleague David Cadman.

According to Cadman, there has been no public consultation about plans for the six-hectare property at the base of Queen Elizabeth Park. “I don’t believe that they’re going to be building anytime soon,” he said in a separate interview.

The provincial government has chosen Holborn Properties as its development partner for Little Mountain Housing. It has also pledged to replace the 224 social housing units with new ones, although Vision Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs believes a better deal could have been made.

“I’ve always thought that it’s regrettable that so little was achieved for affordable housing on this site,” Meggs told the Straight . “I think that there were options that might have provided even more housing, certainly under the economic conditions that prevailed two or three years ago.”