On September 2, the federal government, the City of Burnaby, and the Burnaby Housing Authority announced nearly $92 million in combined funding to build 183 secure rental homes.
The new builds are set to rise at 6203 Marine Drive in the South Slope neighbourhood, near the Rosemary Brown Recreation Centre, schools, and childcare.
Of those units, 125 will have three bedrooms and 58 will have two — a split designed for families, rather than the studio- and one-bedroom-heavy stock that typically defines new rental supply.
The bulk of the funding, $84.5 million, comes through the federal Apartment Construction Loan Program (ACLP), a $55-billion initiative offering low-cost, fully repayable loans to encourage new rental construction. The Burnaby Housing Authority is contributing $3.9 million, while the City of Burnaby and TransLink are providing development cost charge credits of $833,000 and $511,525 respectively. Metro Vancouver has waived its development cost charges for the project.
What separates this project from a typical development deal is who holds the keys once it's built. The homes will be owned by the Burnaby Housing Authority on land leased long-term from the City of Burnaby, a structure meant to keep the housing in public hands for generations rather than exposing it to future resale or conversion. It's one of the first developments led by the Burnaby Housing Authority, a newly formed municipal corporation, and John McEown, the Authority's CEO, said the project is a marker of what that structure can deliver, working alongside the federal government, the City, and Mosaic Homes.
Minister of Housing and Infrastructure Gregor Robertson framed the funding as part of a broader push to increase supply and affordability in growing communities, while Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley called it a milestone that fills a gap in the local housing market by prioritizing family-sized rental stock specifically.
Burnaby is BC's third-largest city, and 6203 Marine Drive is one of the largest new purpose-built rental townhome projects in the province. The federal Apartment Construction Loan Program has now committed $30.82 billion toward more than 78,200 rental homes nationally as of March 2026, on its way to a target of 131,000 by 2031-2032. Most of those homes, like most rental construction generally, will skew small. At 6203 Marine Drive, the math runs the other way — nearly seven in ten units built for a family to actually stay in.
