Towards an Affordable Future

(originally written and published in 2016)

Our city and region are experiencing a condition shared by many cities around the globe. Constrained land combined with urban immigration combined with low-interest rates combined with an influx of global capital has increased land values exponentially. This has resulted in single-family home prices moving out of reach of most Vancouverites. Neighbourhoods across Vancouver are starting to see the physical changes associated with this evolution and it is only a matter of time before this condition affects everyone.?

While I recognize that for many, housing is a matter and life and death, I want to focus the beginning of this on the folks who do not have to worry about where they are going to stay tonight, next week, or next month. Even with having the privilege of taking their housing for granted, they still have a growing sense of insecurity. Things are changing and they are not happy about it.?

Kids have grown up and left and new families are not moving in to replace them. Retired couples are wondering how to manage large houses but have few downsized options to remain in their neighbourhoods. Populations are dropping, schools are closing, and independent retailers are struggling. Heritage houses are being lost as large homes more in line with the cost of land is replacing them. Many homes that are left standing are being left vacant as foreign investment continues to grow and local investment diminishes.

At the same time that neighbourhoods across Metro Vancouver witness this slow erosion of the soul from their communities, they worry about the other monster looming in the distance. The unstoppable force is called “density”. There are fears that somehow this density will ruin their neighbourhoods and communities. They use words like “character”“scale” and “view”. Phrases like, “not in keeping with” or “out of proportion with”. These are all terms used to protect what is current. The difficulty is that they are actually fighting hard to maintain a romantic notion of what was, not what is. And certainly, not what will be.

Turns out, they are fighting to maintain a broken system that is slowly destroying all that they hold dear. By maintaining single-family zoning and saying no to new density, they are in fact saying no to the thing that makes communities great. People. Character is not about buildings or scale or view. It is about people.

Now they might not witness these changes I speak about in the next year. The change they are seeing is a more gradual one. Compared to the addition of a new building, a change that is full of destruction and construction, almost instantaneous in its physicality, the slow erosion of the soul of communities is almost invisible.?But in five years, or ten or twenty, the impact of this kind of short-sightedness will be felt by generations to come. Schools and parks and corner stores only survive with people and the only way that we are bringing people into these neighbourhoods is through added density.?

So, what to do? Well, first things first. We need to recognize that ownership of a house in Vancouver is going to be almost impossible for the majority, and if we want to create a city that cares about all of its citizens, we need to make some changes. Second, we need to have some real conversations about what this change looks like. We need a citywide plan that identifies the big picture and inserts each individual project into a larger vision for the future.?

The other big problem is that when it comes to housing, we are a city of extremes. When we consider the private market, we are offered houses, condos and SROs. There is almost no other option out there in any significant amount. When we look at the subsidized market, the options are even less obvious and even harder to consistently define. We have terms like social housing, non-profit housing, non-market housing, social purpose real estate and the big one, Affordable Housing. All that most people really know of these is that they offer to house below market value. How much below changes depending on the location and partners involved as does the quality of the housing. One thing is pretty clear though, most people harbour a pretty strong stigma about any housing option that is subsidized.?

Rather than trying to shift these extremes, we need to focus on the space between them. The “missing middle”. We need options between government-subsided housing and market housing. We need options between condos and SROs and between houses and condos. This is the space for innovation. And I am confident in saying that it needs to take place on the hallowed grounds currently zoned for single-family houses. There is just no other option.

If we can alleviate some of the pressure in the market by bringing people into these areas of Vancouver, we may be able to slow the downward pressure on those who are most in need of housing. As we have seen time and time again, as the need grows across the housing continuum, it is always the lower end of the spectrum that takes it on the chin. So, rather than sprinkling market condos through Chinatown and the DTES as the only options for Vancouverites to own, we need to look at methods of opening up the West side. This starts with zoning.?

See, cities are incredibly flexible systems. They can absorb an immense amount of change. 1500 laneway houses have been put into Vancouver in the last 5 years, and at the end of the day, they are almost invisible. Sure someone has lost sunshine on their tomato plants, but if you consider the larger picture, that is 1500 homes that pretty much slipped in unnoticed.?

As a whole, Vancouver needs to not only welcome these new forms of housing, it needs to celebrate them. We need to recognize that another tower in Poco ain’t going to move the needle no matter what the ad says. We need to become the region known globally for accepting the challenging housing condition we find ourselves in and innovating our way through it. Rather than looking at below-market options as less than, we need to shift our frame and look at what is possible when the market is not a constraint. When you don’t need to pander to the pre-defined commodity that is market housing, what can be done??

At the same time, let’s stop depending entirely on the old government subsidies because I really don’t think they are coming any time soon. Instead, let’s welcome a new level of entrepreneurship to non-market housing. Maybe we crowdfund. Maybe we consolidate. Maybe we share. There are endless methods to improve things and we are only starting to crack the surface.?

This process will take time and will require everyone. All levels of government, the development industry, the non-profit housing sector, funders and financiers, academia, media, community groups and most importantly citizens. It requires a level of collaboration that everyone talks about and nobody actually manages.?

It is now time to mend fences and talk about the kind of city we want to live in for the next 100 years. It is time to stop thinking about ourselves as individuals and start thinking about ourselves as a city and a region. It is time to understand that while we care deeply about our neighbourhoods, we as citizens, might not actually know what is best for their future. It is time to stop looking for whom to blame and start looking for whom to work with.?

We are all in this thing together.?

It is time to start acting like it.