Crews are converting the former Howard Johnson hotel into Bertha Cain Baugh Place, a future shelter for the homeless, near the Vancouver Mall. The city council approved a code update on Monday to remove language that previously differentiated between hotels and shelters for zoning purposes. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
The Vancouver City Council voted unanimously Monday to update the city’s Commercial and Transient Lodging Use language, removing a clause that previously appeared to differentiate between homeless shelters and other lodging operations, such as hotels.
The change eliminates a final hurdle for the Vancouver Housing Authority’s Bertha Cain Baugh Place shelter, which is slated to open later this year in the former Howard Johnson hotel building near the Vancouver Mall.
More broadly, the update removes a barrier to siting homeless shelters within the city, land-use manager Greg Turner told the council. It also brings the city’s code in line with HB 1220, a state law enacted earlier this year that prohibits cities from using zoning codes to ban homeless shelters or transitional housing in areas where multi-family housing or hotels are permitted.
Vancouver did away with most of its own restrictions on the siting of homeless shelters in 2018 when the city council passed an ordinance that eliminated the city’s former Human Services Facilities use classification. City officials had become concerned that the separate classification could run afoul of anti-discrimination laws.
The 2018 ordinance moved various kinds of human services facilities into other existing classifications of similar uses in the city’s zoning code, Turner wrote in a memo. Homeless shelters were added to the Commercial and Transient Lodging classification, which applies to hotels.
The change created a lingering point of confusion, however, because the city code’s definition of commercial lodging included the phrase “where tenancy is typically less than one month.” The phrase wasn’t taken out when homeless shelters were added, Turner explained, even though homeless shelter clients may sometimes need to stay for longer periods of time.
The issue surfaced earlier this year when the Vancouver Housing Authority announced in January it would acquire and convert the Howard Johnson hotel.
The owners of the Vancouver Mall challenged the project. They argued that the language of the city’s transient lodging classification allowed for only homeless shelters where residents would stay less than one month, making the proposed shelter out of compliance with the surrounding General Commercial zone because it would include “continuous stay” rooms.
“We weren’t going to be able to meet that requirement of 30 days” for clients at Bertha Cain Baugh Place, Vancouver Housing Authority executive director Roy Johnson said. “Any shelter system couldn’t really do that right now just because of the shortage of resources to get them housed at alternate locations.”
In a code-interpretation decision released in March, the city ruled that the code does permit homeless shelters within the General Commercial zone. It said the inclusion of the word “typically” in the code meant long-term stays are not a violation as long as clients typically stay less than one month.
The mall appealed that decision, according to Turner, but the council’s vote to remove the sentence from the code altogether appears to render the issue moot.
“Their appeal is still pending, so it would go to the hearings examiner, and the city is just waiting to see if they’re going to withdraw that appeal, but it’s essentially a moot point at this point,” he said.
The Vancouver Mall declined to comment for this story.
Renovation work is underway at the former Howard Johnson hotel, Johnson said, but the original planned September opening date for Bertha Cain Baugh Place has been pushed back to at least October.
The Vancouver Housing Authority announced in June it will seek out additional hotels and motels to purchase and convert to affordable housing, describing the process as a much faster option than building new facilities from scratch, and a way for cities to repurpose older buildings. The agency is still on the lookout, Johnson said, although it hasn’t found any other prospects so far.
