2020 - Vancouver - Coal Harbour Float Homes
A live-aboard in Coal Harbour has multi-million dollars views, but a unique float home in the heart of downtown Vancouver will only set you back the price of a bachelor condo.
Nestled among yachts and luxury cruisers in Coal Harbour Marina, the small homes boasts all the comforts of a luxury home.
4 of these are the only ones in Coal Harbour. They were built in the mid-1980s in Victoria and were originally intended to be used like an RV - “Winnebagos on the water."
The History of Float Homes in Vancouver":
In 1987, Canada’s federal government began to dismantle Vancouver public wharves. The wharves, then operated by Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), used to run like car-camping spots in a government park.
Boats pulled in; mariners paid a fee for electricity, water, and washrooms; and the money went toward maintaining the dock and its amenities.
But throughout the late 1980s and early ’90s, this system deteriorated as the two departments narrowed their mandates to commercial shipping and fishing.
Whatever didn’t fit into those parameters was divested to local or volunteer groups that often barred residing on a boat full-time. Today, that process is nearly complete; less than one percent of former DFO wharves allow liveaboards.
DFO says that its wharves were never designed to berth liveaboard boats. But, seeing as these wharves did house liveaboards for decades, it’s more likely that they wanted to cut the workforce that managed the docks.
The end of government-run liveaboard slips was a big first step toward delegitimizing living on a boat. It removed a swath of slips from the shoreline, drove up demand at private marinas, and crowded the already packed provincial and municipal docks.
Today, there are 120 official liveaboard boat slips left in the city of Vancouver—all with wait lists, some a decade long.
Today few of these slips are used for float homes. This in a city of over half a million people, where demand for slips is always high.
Along the sleek walkways of Coal Harbour in Vancouver’s West End, there are many blinding-white super yachts that no one lives on.
“In the ’70s and ’80s, Coal Harbour had a different look,” remembers Judy Ross, a real estate agent who specializes in liveaboard accommodations, both boats and float homes.
Back then, a slip at Coal Harbour would have cost an estimated $145 a month, but the waiting list was already four years long.
In the early ’90s, Marathon Realty—the real estate arm of Canadian Pacific Railway that owned Coal Harbour Marina at the time—“decided to clean it up and do, what I call, ‘sanitize’ it,” says Ross.
“[There were] pristine, brand-new, all-concrete docks and sewage connections for everyone. But they didn’t want to allow the [liveaboard] people back in.”
As a result only the 4 grandfathered liveaboards remain.
2020 - Vancouver - Coal Harbour Float Homes
A live-aboard in Coal Harbour has multi-million dollars views, but a unique float home in the heart of downtown Vancouver will only set you back the price of a bachelor condo.
Nestled among yachts and luxury cruisers in Coal Harbour Marina, the small homes boasts all the comforts of a luxury home.
4 of these are the only ones in Coal Harbour. They were built in the mid-1980s in Victoria and were originally intended to be used like an RV - “Winnebagos on the water."
The History of Float Homes in Vancouver":
In 1987, Canada’s federal government began to dismantle Vancouver public wharves. The wharves, then operated by Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), used to run like car-camping spots in a government park.
Boats pulled in; mariners paid a fee for electricity, water, and washrooms; and the money went toward maintaining the dock and its amenities.
But throughout the late 1980s and early ’90s, this system deteriorated as the two departments narrowed their mandates to commercial shipping and fishing.
Whatever didn’t fit into those parameters was divested to local or volunteer groups that often barred residing on a boat full-time. Today, that process is nearly complete; less than one percent of former DFO wharves allow liveaboards.
DFO says that its wharves were never designed to berth liveaboard boats. But, seeing as these wharves did house liveaboards for decades, it’s more likely that they wanted to cut the workforce that managed the docks.
The end of government-run liveaboard slips was a big first step toward delegitimizing living on a boat. It removed a swath of slips from the shoreline, drove up demand at private marinas, and crowded the already packed provincial and municipal docks.
Today, there are 120 official liveaboard boat slips left in the city of Vancouver—all with wait lists, some a decade long.
Today few of these slips are used for float homes. This in a city of over half a million people, where demand for slips is always high.
Along the sleek walkways of Coal Harbour in Vancouver’s West End, there are many blinding-white super yachts that no one lives on.
“In the ’70s and ’80s, Coal Harbour had a different look,” remembers Judy Ross, a real estate agent who specializes in liveaboard accommodations, both boats and float homes.
Back then, a slip at Coal Harbour would have cost an estimated $145 a month, but the waiting list was already four years long.
In the early ’90s, Marathon Realty—the real estate arm of Canadian Pacific Railway that owned Coal Harbour Marina at the time—“decided to clean it up and do, what I call, ‘sanitize’ it,” says Ross.
“[There were] pristine, brand-new, all-concrete docks and sewage connections for everyone. But they didn’t want to allow the [liveaboard] people back in.”
As a result only the 4 grandfathered liveaboards remain.