A Plague on ALL Their Owned or Rented Houses

City Conversations No One Else is Having

January 28, 2022—Thoughts after City Council’s adoption of both ‘Streamlining Rental’ and ‘Making Home.’ Paraphrasing Mercutio’s dying curse in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ seems an appropriate summary.

Does Juliet’s balcony conform to the Zoning Bylaw?

“So Dad,” asked my son, eager to debate current politics with me (not, but it makes a good introduction), “how do you square the just-approved Making Home initiative with the Streamlining Rental initiative that was approved a short while ago? Looks like the Mayor has responded to both renters and owners concerned about affordability.”

“Looks like is the operant phrase,” I responded. “If there was ever a use case for the phrase the devil is in the details, this is it!”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he threw out there. “What could possibly go wrong?” he asked with a smile as he matched me cliché for cliché.

“Lat’s start with Making Home.” He shrugged agreement. “So far I seem to be the only person who’s run the numbers on the Mayor’s scheme, and they don’t work!”

“How do you mean?” he answered.

“If you remember my estimates,” I started. He looked blank so I continued with a parent’s sigh. “The Mayor’s eagerness to capture land lift—goodness I hate that phrase, it sounds so innocuously positive, is anything but—anyway, the land lift capture piece is part of the justification for permitting up to six homes on a 33-foot (10m) wide lot. There are thousands of these throughout the city, although he’s just ‘piloting’ 2,000 lots to start, for a potential gain of 10,000 new homes.” I paused. Noticing his face remained blank, I continued.

“By the time we add a charge for land lift, which the city usually calls Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) when it extracts them from conventional developers, the so-called affordable homes are worth an average of $900,000 each—and let’s remember that probably two of these six homes are micro suites, studios smaller than yours underneath duplex homes with a couple laneway homes thrown in for good measure. That $900k is about midway between a one-bed condo and a townhouse at today’s steep market prices. So affordable it ain’t!” I finished with a flourish.

“Maybe the CACs could be eliminated,” he suggested. “I think forgiven is the phrase politicians like to use when they decide to waive a fee so a project sorta maybe works.” I smiled at his sad understanding of politics.

“That might work on paper,” I responded, “but citizens and other politicians would then point out that there would be no financial advantage in that. While the city gets some CAC money from developers, if it got none from homeowners who develop their own lots, while the city was on the hook for community amenities like more schools and libraries, well,” I paused for emphasis, “that wouldn’t fly, would it?” He nodded, then asked, “So then Streamlining Rental is a better way to go?”

“Too early to say,” I answered. “As proposed by city staff, it’s estimated it might result in 4,700 new rental homes over a decade, which is about the same as are forecast for rental laneway homes.”

“But that’s less than half the number of new strata homes Making Home says it can produce, and in less than a decade. Am I missing something?” my son asked innocently.

“Well,” I answered, “the cheeky answer would be that Mayor and Council care only half as much about renters as they do about homeowners—for all I know, that may be the case.”

“So what’s an answer that has a hope of working?” came his response.

“Well, in our last discussion I tabled the idea of a mixed approach—permitting five or six homes on a small lot, but incenting some of them to be rentals rather than strata homes.”

“Doesn’t Making Home contemplate that?” he asked.

“‘Contemplate’ is the right word—it’s there to think long and hard about, but ultimately, it doesn’t work so long as the city wants to extract significant CACs from the homeowner. As I mentioned in our last discussion, my friend had told me, ‘But why would anyone go through the risk, expense and incredible hassle (including being out of your own house for god knows how long) of taking up the mayor's offer? He's guaranteeing that he will take away an undefined amount of your land  lift, i.e., profit for going through this in the first place. You'd end up in a smaller house, with no guarantee of compatible fellow-owners, no big financial payoff, and you would have lost your space and privacy. Why would you do it?’ I still don’t have an answer to that concern.”

I continued on. “But being the altruist I am,” he raised one eyebrow at that, “I did suggest two scenarios that could work, either: keep an existing home and associated secured rental secondary suite and add up to two secured rental laneway homes, with little or no CACs to keep it affordable while creating new rental housing; or tear everything down, create a strata duplex with the balance of secondary suites and laneway homes being strata or secured rental—if all strata, charge hefty CACs because the homeowner will be making much more than the all-added-rental case. It shouldn’t be that difficult for city staff to create a sliding CAC scale that incents creation of rental housing while permitting strata.”

“What do you think is going to happen while city staff study Making Home and come back with recommendations later this year?”

“Yes,” I answered, “things don’t stand still, do they.” I continued. “Here are a few nightmare scenarios: I forgot to mention Council directed staff to consider downzoning the areas where Making Home might be considered, so that anyone wanting to just build a new home on a lot could build somewhat less than currently allowed. I predict that will cause a rush of permit applications to capture the old zoning with its larger allowed floor area; some of that rush will require that existing tenants be displaced from secondary suites and homes so that they are vacant when permission to demolish and rebuild is requested. So tenants will be displaced.”

“Second, the city has on many occasions allowed a developer to add substantially more density to a project with rental housing, ostensibly because the finances don’t otherwise work.” He nodded, having heard my tales of that. “How long before Making Home proponents start lobbying that the projects don’t ‘pencil out,’ so they need more units or less CACs?”

“Thirdly, Making Home says the initial 2,000 projects will all be rezonings. How much staff time will that take away from the already-backlogged applications for conventional additions and renovations as well as higher density projects that completely conform to existing zoning? They’re already being left behind in the rush to major rezonings like the Jericho Lands, the Broadway Plan, etc. What will the priorities be? Historically, projects that conform to zoning, usually attracting lower fees to the city, are at the bottom. Well, with Making Home and Streamlining Rental, the bottom just got a lot deeper!”

He paused for a moment, then said with some hesitancy, “So instead of these two programs helping renters and homeowners in the city to create affordable housing in modest chunks distributed around the city, it feels like they will simply create revenue for the city while doing nothing for the city’s residents.”

“Sadly,” I continued, “I agree. But this City Council and city management and staff have never been about modest, distributed, affordable housing. They’ve produced very little of that and it’s been largely funded by senior government—the impacts throughout the city’s neighbourhoods have been very uneven. Meanwhile we’ll be creating decades worth of high priced homes, both strata and rental, that few Vancouverites can afford.”

I concluded, “As for Making Home and Streamlining Rental, I come back to the image of Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. As he lay dying, because of two duelling families, in our case because of two duelling, imperfect housing concepts, he said, ‘A plague on both your houses.’ These pandemic times have already produced the plague. Hopefully we can make a better job of the housing.”

Brian Palmquist is a fully vaccinated Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired for the moment, still teaching and writing, so not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 40+ year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” He is also a member of team for a livable Vancouver, a new political party dedicated to restoring a livable Vancouver starting with the 2022 civic election.