New Westminster’s Heritage Homes Deserve Public Support

For the first time in 25 years, the City of New Westminster has denied a grant to the New Westminster Heritage Foundation (NWHF) – a non-profit organization that offers financial assistance to the owners of  designated heritage properties in the City of New Westminster.   

Until now, the Foundation has received and administered grant funding from the City and Heritage New West to help these homeowners repair, replace or restore exterior character-defining elements such as masonry, porches, windows and siding. 

Program Eligibility 

To be clear, a heritage home must be formally and voluntarily designated to be eligible for a grant, and the financial amount awarded cannot exceed 50 per cent of total project costs. 

How Funding Works

In 2025 the Foundation requested $10,000 from the City but only received $8,000. Heritage New West stepped up and provided $10,000.  

Our 2026 grant application to the City asked for $15,000. We received nothing.   

Why Heritage Designation Matters

The requirement for formal designation is important. Designation is a form of long-term legal protection that is registered on the property title. It is one of the few tools left to protect privately-owned historic architecture from demolition. 

Across British Columbia, cities use grant programs to incentivize owners to formally designate their heritage homes. In New Westminster, there are currently 44 voluntarily designated homes. Nearly half of them are located outside the Queen’s Park neighbourhood. We should point out that these – and all designated homes – are subject to a special city bylaw that requires specific standards of maintenance “to ensure that important heritage properties are not lost due to neglect or lack of  maintenance.”  

No Grant for You!

The decision by the City’s Grants Advisory Committee – a body made up of community members appointed by Council – to deny funding to the Foundation comes as quite a shock to us, the small group of volunteers who make up the NWHF. The grant committee stated that its decision was based on its “concern that exterior home maintenance grants are more appropriately the responsibility of homeowners themselves.” 

How Other Cities Support Heritage

Let’s look at how that “concern” stands in contrast to the approach taken by many other communities across the Lower Mainland and throughout the province. Vancouver, North Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, Richmond, Langley Township and Delta all offer annual grants to private homeowners for the exterior maintenance and restoration of their designated or registered heritage properties. Surrey and Port Moody offer property tax exemptions. These municipalities all recognize that incentivizing homeowners to designate or register their properties is key to protecting their built heritage for the collective benefit of their communities.  

We also note that most of these cities don’t expect a small volunteer organization to administer a grant program that helps preserve an important civic legacy. They take on that responsibility directly. 

City staff also commented that “the proposed use of funds appears to be an ineligible expense: bursary or award for third party”. The NWHF has never given an award or bursary. Perhaps they had us confused with Heritage New West? 

The City claims it supports our Built Heritage:    

“There are social, financial and environmental benefits to retaining heritage buildings in a community. First, heritage sites are a connection to the past and provide a sense of history and continuity. Heritage sites also tell the stories of who we are and what we have experienced as a community, in addition to  functioning as landmarks and having significant aesthetic value. Second, heritage buildings often retain their value with more resiliency as property markets shift through time and support tourism. Third, the retention of a heritage building is the more sustainable choice over demolition and  replacement when the costs of the embodied energy in the building, accumulation of material in the landfill and the cost of new construction is  balanced against potential energy savings. Heritage conservation just makes sense.”  Source: City of New Westminster website

We agree conserving our built heritage makes sense. The majority of New Westminster residents agree that it makes sense. 

We All Benefit from Heritage 

The fact is, the bulk of New Westminster’s historic architecture – and much of its most iconic – is held by private property owners. It is heritage homes and streetscapes that bring tourists to our city. It is heritage homes and streetscapes that draw the film industry and generate a significant permit revenue stream that flows directly to City Hall. 

So when the Grants Advisory Committee states that “benefits are limited to a small, specific group of residents, and the broader community impact is indirect,” we are left shaking our heads. 

Yes, our grant program targets a relatively small, specific group of residents: those who have voluntarily designated their heritage homes. It exists because these homeowners have chosen to accept legal protections and ongoing maintenance obligations that benefit the wider community. We want more owners to voluntarily designate their homes because that’s one of the few legal  protections historic homes have against demolition, either by the next owner or provincial housing mandate. 

The committee also said that “questions remain about scope, equity, and funding justification.” We can’t help but infer that the real message here is is that privileged owners of heritage homes don’t deserve public support.  

What Heritage Homeowners Give Back

These days home ownership is indeed a privilege. But let’s look at the way New Westminster heritage homeowners give back to their community. Many spend countless hours preparing to put their homes on public tour – essentially opening their homes to strangers – for no personal gain beyond sharing a love of old houses. 

And they do it year after year. New Westminster has the longest-running Heritage Homes tour in Western Canada. Last May’s tour was highly successful, and just this past December, heritage homeowners again opened their doors to the public in support of the Homes for the Holidays Tour, raising much-needed funds for residents at Queen’s Park Care Centre and William Rudd House. In fact, the amount raised in the single night of the tour was significantly more than the City grant we had received last year.  

This tells you three things about heritage in New Westminster: 

• People enjoy seeing heritage homes. 

• They pay money to see them. 

• And that money is returned to the community. 

Now, back to the small role that the New Westminster Heritage Foundation has played in all this. We mentioned earlier that last year, the City awarded the NWHF an $8,000 grant and Heritage New West contributed $10,000, raised through the Heritage Homes Tour revenue, enabling the Foundation to distribute $18,000 to five successful applicants, supporting five exterior maintenance projects on five designated heritage homes across three different New West neighbourhoods.  

Not a large sum. But money that  made a difference to homeowners tasked with fixing a sagging front porch, replacing worn out windows, or crumbling foundations on an 1890s home. 

This year none of that will happen. 

Owners of heritage homes will again, no doubt, open their doors to the public in support of a good cause. But what a shame that the City of New Westminster has slammed the door on providing support to those who have so generously opened theirs. 

by Graeme Davy, Director                                          New Westminster Heritage Foundation newwestheritagefoundation@gmail.com