One of Vancouver Island’s earliest below-market-price housing communities for seniors is getting a $4.25-million boost from the federal government. The money will go toward a four-storey 55+ housing complex at 3700 Cedar Hill Rd. called the Woodlands.
It’s the last of three planned non-profit housing complexes on 6.75 acres of land near the intersection of Cedar Hill Road and Cedar Hill Cross Road. The lands have been used for lower-cost seniors housing since 1950.
In 1949, Percy Dawson, then a newcomer to Victoria from Fort Williams, Ont., knocked on the doors of what is now known as St. Luke Anglican Church at 3821 Cedar Hill Cross Rd.
“Mr. Dawson, following the Second World War, realized that there were a number of women who were left either widowed — or as the term was used then — as spinsters as a result of the war,” said Karen Hope, executive director of Dawson Heights Society. “So he approached the minister at St. Luke’s and said, I’d like to make a donation.”
As the church retells the story in its archives, the rector had expected a donation of a few hundred dollars. But to their astonishment, Dawson donated $100,000 — the equivalent of $1.58 million today.
The money was enough to purchase several acres of land and build seventy-five units of housing, including cottages and terrace homes, by 1950.
Many of those cottages, which had become increasingly expensive to maintain, were replaced in 1999 and 2003 by two multi-unit rental buildings for seniors, as part of a 1994 master plan to redevelop the community by Dawson Heights Society.
The rest were demolished in recent years to make way for the Woodlands housing complex.
On Monday, the federal government announced that the project will get $4.25 million as part of $106.8 million from the federal Affordable Housing Fund for building and repairing lower‑cost housing units on Vancouver Island.
When complete, the Woodlands will feature a mix of one- and two-bedroom suites for seniors on fixed, moderate and low incomes. The 85-unit building is expected to be complete by the end of the year and will start accepting residents in early 2025, Hope said.
Hope said the original inhabitants of the recently demolished cottages will have first priority for the units.
B.C. Housing is contributing an annual operating subsidy that has yet to be determined, as well as a Community Housing Fund grant of $1 million to the project, down from the $8.5 million committed in 2018, before the budget had been finalized and funding partners confirmed.
A total of 28 projects on Vancouver Island are receiving contributions or low-cost loans through the Affordable Housing Fund, including 14 Island First Nation communities that are receiving a combined $2.86 million for repairs and renovations to 177 units of housing.
The largest single contribution announced on Monday was $33.6 million toward Timberline at North Park, a 102-unit retirement community that broke ground in Port Alberni two years ago.
Other lower-cost housing projects across B.C. are receiving a combined $38.5 million.
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