The need for the city to get more aggressive in its efforts to deliver more affordable housing was cited by Mayor Gregor Robertson as the main reason the city’s chief housing officer was fired this week.
Robertson said it was city manager Sadhu Johnston’s decision to terminate chief housing officer Mukhtar Latif, who led the city’s housing department and was the CEO of the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency.
“The city manager’s assessment was we need to take it to a much higher level,” Robertson told the Courier Wednesday. “That’s a decision that he made to make some changes with the staff, and I think it’s a good call.”
The mayor acknowledged that Latif had “scaled up” the city’s delivery of housing since he was hired in 2013. He said about 1,000 units of housing are in development but he’s heard from CEOs, families, seniors and young people that the city needs to escalate its efforts to build more housing.
“[Latif’s] delivered pieces along the way these last couple of years,” Robertson said. “But in looking at making big changes with our housing policy and mobilizing a lot more city land and developer partnerships to get that built into affordable housing, the feeling is this is a moment where we can make a change and bring in some new leadership and more capacity.”
Luke Johnson, a senior planner with the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency, is now serving as interim CEO of the organization, which is on the books to deliver 2,500 affordable housing units by 2021.
The city is currently re-tooling its housing strategy, which included holding a major conference last fall and gathering feedback from the public, and expected to roll out a new approach in the coming months.
“There’s a whole new level of magnitude that we need to hit now to get more rental housing, more affordable housing, more pressure on the province and the feds to show up with funding,” said the mayor, who has requested funding from senior governments to build housing on 20 city properties worth $250 million. “It’s an incredibly difficult struggle to keep Vancouver affordable, the population is growing, the pressure is intense. So we need to tool up the team and we need to roll out some big initiatives this year.”
Johnston declined an interview this week to discuss why Latif was out of a job. In a statement provided to media Tuesday, Johnston said the city recently established a “housing leadership table.” Johnston is the chairperson of the committee. All major initiatives will be vetted and prioritized to ensure progress is made throughout the organization, he said.
Johnston was appointed city manager last year after being in an acting role for several months. He replaced Penny Ballem, who hired Latif. Ballem’s contract was not renewed by council in September 2015.
Knocking Latif out of city hall was Johnston’s first major shake-up at city hall. In a Courier interview in March 2016, Johnston said he had “a ton of respect” and learned a lot from Ballem, who was described by the mayor as “a force of nature” and seen by some at city hall as a micro-manager.
“But there are things that I will do differently in the way that I work, and in my leadership style,” he said, adding several times in the interview how important it was for leader to “set the tone” of an organization so it achieves great things.
Robertson said he had “confidence in the city manager around his decision and in what team he needs to roll out the programs that council is going to decide on in the next couple months.”
The city has confirmed Latif will get a severance but are still working out the details. Latif, who worked extensively in the United Kingdom before taking a job with the city, could not be reached for comment.
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