Vancouver's Plan to die and what we can do to save it—#6 Make more affordable Homes

CC #205—Building affordable housing only takes leadership

This is the fourth in my “Vancouver’s plan to die” series of posts around the 22 issues degrading Vancouver. I started writing about housing affordability more than four years ago. It was #6 on my original list of Vancouver’s 22 poor choices.

Turning a high-rise on its side is a technique that was actually used in Toronto more than 50 years ago!¹ This Vancouver wish photo was taken by Brian Palmquist

This is a tough subject—and yet not.

Housing affordability— All levels of government have bought into the simplistic idea “just build more and it will be more affordable.” Zero scientific and economic studies in many countries² link more construction with cheaper accommodation costs. There are several studies noting that with land as a limiting factor, building more supply simply inflates the value of the land that homes are sitting on without reducing sale or rental costs. Scant attention is being paid to ways to control land and other costs, despite many historical and current models.

The most common argument in favour of the YIMBY³ “build build build!” assertion is “Why not? It works for consumer goods like televisions—it’s called supply and demand, stupid!” But this simplistic approach ignores one key element that blows up the entire argument—it’a all about the land!

The supply of developable land is almost always limited, especially here in Vancouver where we have mountains and/or water on three sides, and our border with Burnaby on the fourth. Yet Vancouver has built more housing supply percentage wise in the past 20 years than any other North American city of similar size. So our housing would be cheaper if supply and demand was the determinant—but it’s not.

Useful history

When I arrived in Vancouver as a young architect 50 years ago, housing affordability was working. Vancouver had always been more expensive than most Canadian cities, but we and many other young folks made rent for (in our case) five years until we could afford a downpayment on a “junker.”

Before you tune out based on “he’s just an old white guy professional from a privileged background,” let’s focus for a moment on the hundreds of homes I was able to design as a junior architect:

• Hundreds of affordable co-operative homes in a variety of forms;

• Hundreds of affordable rentals, also in a variety of forms;

• And yes, hundreds of affordable strata homes, again in a variety of forms.

Although I was too inexperienced to notice at the time, the many affordable projects I worked on almost always sat on free or cheap land.

Several projects I worked on were developed by the Housing Corporation of BC (HCBC), a creation of the Dave Barrett NDP government. Dave and co. bought a private development corporation (Dunhill), keeping its management as part of the deal. HCBC was tasked to “act like a private developer” with two key exceptions: they developed on land owned by the province, which was leased for nominal rates to the eventual occupants; and they did not make a profit. Eliminating or drastically reducing land costs automatically made projects more affordable than those largely strata and rental projects developed on private land—the private sector almost completely ignored co-operatives⁴.

Concurrent with the HCBC projects, I worked on projects in Champlain Heights and False Creek South, again on land leased from the the city at rates deliberately targeted to creating affordable housing. And the general formula of 1/3 subsidized rental, 1/3 middle income co-operative and 1/3 more expensive strata worked.

From a municipal or provincial perspective, these projects made fiscal sense because, being on leased land, the city retained ownership as part of its Property Endowment Fund (PEF). Ongoing ownership by the city allowed the city to borrow money at more than competitive rates for whatever it needed: parks; community centres; infrastructure, etc.—like a mortgage but at the best rates because backed by the best collateral—land.

Today’s unaffordability

These are some specific contributors to today’s unaffordability that are controllable:

• Vancouver today is gradually selling off its PEF property for private, speculative development,, thereby reducing its attractiveness for loans;

• Vancouver is becoming a developer, but so far only of market rental housing, without even the 30% below market rental homes required of private developers⁵. To be clear, Vancouver is acting like private landlords such as Wall Financial, Cressey and various REITs⁶

• Vancouver’s Real Estate Department appears to be looking at land lease renewals as an opportunity to force out longterm residents in favour of … speculative redevelopment at the highest rate of return;

• The above actions are accelerating because almost half of the city’s operating budget now comes from developer contributions⁷—this is not money to fix dilapidated park buildings, it’s to pay salaries at a city hall that has taken on an annual $100 million+ of programs that are provincial or federal responsibilities, such as climate change (federal). We don’t have to be against climate change (Im certainly not) to want the feds to step up.

• The provincial and federal governments have both terminated their successful affordability programs, such as MURB⁸, ARP⁹ and BCHMC (early days).¹⁰

Of course there are other contributors to affordability issues—COVID, the banking collapse in 2008-09, but these are largely outside of local control. The bullet points above are items capable of local control.

How to move forward

Philosophically, The “build build build and it will be affordable” erroneous mindset must be officially set aside in favour of a more nuanced approach founded in affordability/economic principles.

That affordable approach will take work by finer minds than mine to flesh out, but might include among other elements:

• An end to the outright sale or transfer of city, or provincial, or federal lands, with or without pre-zoning;

• A commitment to using those lands for affordable rental, co-op and strata homes;

• A return to longer term leases on city-owned property redeveloped for affordable housing;

• In the case of existing end-of-lease developments such as Champlain Heights and False Creek South, a firm commitment to work with the existing communities, who are neither NIMBY nor intransigent, to replan for the next generations and increasing numbers of residents of all types¹¹;

• A request to senior levels of government to use the lease approach on their developable properties within city limits—where they decline to participate, the city can impose severe restrictions via zoning and infrastructure agreements on what they can develop¹² for sale in the marketplace of unaffordable housing;

• An end to the use of the sale value of city-owned property to pay for city operations.

Today’s Clear question for candidates for public office

“If elected, will you commit to using the city’s land bank and encouraging senior levels of government who have lands in Vancouver to lease these lands on an urgent basis for clearly affordable housing?”

Coda

In the few days since we published CC#202, Stephen Bohus has continued his modeling of what the future holds if we remain passive.

Stephen Bohus’s image in CC#202

Stephen’s image updated with the proposals for 2611 Victoria Drive and 1926-1978 East Broadway. Little by little we lose the mountains for unaffordable high-rise housing because city staff won’t give us the full picture or access to the 3D modelling that is freely available from other cities like Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto¹³.

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This post is just over 1300 words including footnotes but not this ending. It’s quite a bit more than the 3-5 minutes citizens are allowed when they speak to the current Vancouver City Council, in their efforts to suppress democracy. If you appreciated this post, please share to your social media and consider becoming a free subscriber to City Conversations at

Brian Palmquist writes in the ancestral lands of the Musqueam people. He is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired, still teaching, writing and consulting a bit, but not beholden to any client or city hall. City Conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 50-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 and AIBC Construction Administration course text, “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” A glutton for punishment, he is threatening to write a book about how we can Embrace, Enhance and Evolve the places where we love to live. Some of its content may appear above.

1. The project was called Sherbourne Lane and was developed with significant input from the late Jane Jacobs.

2. At least Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, what’s collectively called the “anglosphere.”

3. YIMBY stands for Yes In My Back Yard. It’s a movement started by tech billionaires in California looking for ways to invest their money. In Vancouver it is Abundant Housing Vancouver. In Victoria and Nanaimo it’s Strong Towns.

4. Although I designed a market co-op in Kerrisdale which functions to this day.

5. I’m referring specifically to their proposed market rental towers at the north end of the Granville Bridge. There may be others.

6. REIT = Real Estate Investment Trust, the acronym for a private company seeking to maximize profit from its rental land holdings. No value judgment, that’s just what they do.

7. This approach of using developer dollars to pay salaries started with Vision Vancouver/ Gregor Robertson/ Penny Ballem in about 2010, has been accelerating ever since.

8. MURB = Multiple Unit Residential Buildings, a federal program used largely for strata until closed down in 1980.

9. ARP = Assisted Rental Program, a federal program used largely for rentals until closed down in 1980.

10. BCHMC = BC Housing Management Commission, which has been gradually starved of land and funds starting about 1980.

11. Replanning for more people must involve firstly, realistic population growth projections rather than “aspirational” made up numbers, and secondly, realistic allocations of additional future housing amongst Vancouver’s 22 neighbourhoods.

12. Any housing and land economist (I’m not one) can identify what head-in-the-ground zoning and infrastructure supply agreements might be sufficient to deter senior government from undertaking stupid development—an example of stupid development would be single family homes in an area that would support higher density rental, co-operative and/or strata development.

13. In answer to questions by CHW Editor Randy Helton and myself, City staff advised at a “Teams” meeting today that “there’s a bit of a gap” with their ability to create and share a 3D model, but they’re “looking into it.”