All about B.I.R.C.H.

Robyn Fenton
Executive Director
B.I.R.C.H.

This is the plan: The Bowen Island Resilient Community Housing (BIRCH) has partnered with Bowen Island Municipality to develop a community rental housing project on a portion of Lot-3 of the community lands. The project will provide about twenty-five units of secure rental housing for Bowen Island Community Members. These units will be in a variety of sizes from studios, up to 3-bed family units as may be confirmed during the process development and funding. The building will be four stories with approx. 25,000 sq.ft.

With the assistance of the development consultant – CitySpaces – and with funding from the VanCity Community Foundation and the Bowen Island Community Foundation, BIRCH completed the feasibility study and financial plan in August 2019. The next phase is the Schematic Design. BIRCH has received CMHC seed funding of $28,000, with an additional $29,000 from the VanCity Foundation to proceed.

In June BIRCH was given the disappointing but not completely unexpected news that BC Housing is unable to fund this rental housing project in Snug Cove.

In this talk Robyn provided details of the current plans and visions. This was followed by a lively question & answer session. The Zoom recording is below.