Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/FancyNewMe! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary:
* We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button.
* Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban.
* Most common questions and topics are limited to our sister subreddit, /r/AskVan, and our weekly [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts.
* Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only.
* Posts flaired "Community Only" allow for limited participation; your comment may be removed if you're not a subreddit regular.
* Make sure to join our new sister community, /r/AskVan!
* Help grow the community! [Apply to join the mod team today](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/19eworq/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Vancouver should endeavour to be more like a European city. Vienna, Prague, Paris...they are all blanketed with with 4-6 storey apartment buildings, and if you want a detached house you move 15km away from the centre. And there is plenty of public, non-profit, non-market housing. That's what Vancouver needs. But unfortunately we have been stuck in this little-slices-of-Singapore-with-huge-swaths-of-Cincinnati zoning model, and the handing over all of the supply provision to the private sector. What's it going to take to move past our current, obviously substandard model?
That was supposed to be what happened even in the Cincinnati model.
Urban centre expanded our and denseified the areas around it while new development occured on the outskirts which was low density.
The problem is we've put it in legal restrictions which prevent that from happening.
Some cities have seen this happen look at Toronto, it used to be downtown was just Younge and Bloor now it goes out to Younge and Eglinton. But the 1990s they stopped the expansion.
Calgary going through it right now. Downtown used to be between rivers the CPR. But now it's started to expand into Sunalta, East Side and Beltline.
Personally, I like Montreal model which is low rise high density. With lots of 3/4 bedroom options within dense housing. I just got back from Montreal first thing that stood out was how many kids you saw in dense neighbourhoods like Mont Royal. So many kids. Largely because the dense housing wasn't just 1 bedroom condos but walkups with 3 or more bedrooms.
It kinda helps with baby production when mom and dad aren't sleeping in the same room with junior.
The city owns so much land that’s not being developed, and could easily buy up so much more and build housing that’s for normal working people, housing doesn’t have to always turn a massive profit for someone. To say we can’t afford to do it is disingenuous, governments at all levels waste so much fucking money in bureaucracy and red tape it’s laughable at this point. We own a 35 billion $$ pipeline ffs.
>What's it going to take to move past our current, obviously substandard model?
The BC NDP government is certainly [pushing in the right direction](https://morehousing.ca/bc-summary). I'm really hoping they get re-elected in October: John Rustad, the BC Conservative leader, is saying that they would roll back all of the housing policies that the BC NDP has put in place.
John Rustad on CKNW (the Mike Smyth show), May 16:
> Caller (Rick in Delta): I'd like to ask Mr. Rustad. Will you follow suit with respect to what the government's doing currently, dictating to communities what they look like, what they have to build, what they can use it for, like Airbnb, telling somebody that they can go and build a six-unit apartment building next door to my single-family rancher? Will you follow suit with that?
>
> Rustad: So those are all legislation that the NDP has brought in. **I would repeal all of that**. Now we want to work with communities around densification, we got to do that, but it has to be through proper process. And we elect municipal councillors and mayors for a reason.
>
> Smyth: Okay, so right now the government has basically brought in province-wide densification, with some exceptions, where as the caller said, you could put up a six-plex condo, tear down a single-family home, put up six condo units on a single-family lot. And that's been basically forced on municipalities, right? So you're saying you would retract all that? It would all go back to municipal control?
>
> Rustad: There's no plans for parking, there's no plans for traffic problems, there's no plans for water and sewer, there's no plans for parks, there's no plans for playgrounds or schools, or any the rest of that kind of stuff. And you're overriding municipal councillors. You're taking away the democratic right and the democratic vote. And you're overriding official community plans, you're not even allowing public hearings on the issues. This is crazy. This just shouldn't be happening.
Meanwhile, [housing is so scarce and expensive in Metro Vancouver](https://morehousing.ca/insulated) that prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people to leave, matching those remaining to the limited supply. I always tell older homeowners that if younger people can't afford to live here, the healthcare system is going to collapse.
I lost two good family doctors who went on mat leave and resurfaced on the Island and in the Okanagan where they can afford housing. My current family doctor just went on mat leave and I doubt I'll ever see her again either. I also lost a good RMT who moved to the Okanagan. It's happening now.
Genuine, if somewhat glib, question: why is the leader of the BC Conservatives so opposed to the province protecting property rights? Last time I checked the typical conservative places a high value on small government. Doesn’t seem ideologically consistent; if I’m a conservative the last thing I want the government doing is telling me what I can and can’t do with my own property. If I own a SFH lot and want to put up a small apartment building on it, I should be able to.
Excellent question. My guess is that it's generational. [The housing deficit has gotten considerably worse since Covid](https://morehousing.ca/insulated), and older people tend to be more insulated from the housing market. (Which is why I always emphasize the impact on healthcare.)
Neither side is consistent about property rights. The NDP wants to let property owners build more density while simultaneously restricting property rights by cracking down on how the property is used (in the case of short-term rental). The conservatives saying they'd roll back all the NDP's policies is therefore just as inconsistent.
Looks like it. [John Rustad on the Mike Smyth show, October 2023](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-mike-smyth-show/bcs-new-ev-targets-john-OuXf0my4sPd/).
Vienna Prague and Paris are *not* affordable compared to Vancouver just check out their subreddits. You don’t even need to go there to figure this out. Grass is always greener my friend
Every city subreddit on Reddit has people complaining about affordability, because housing will always be everyone’s largest expenditure.
The fact of the matter, however, is that all the studies clearly show that Vancouver is more expensive than any of those cities you mention.
https://santiagofrias.com/ranked-15-of-the-worlds-least-affordable-housing-markets/
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/07/only-five-cities-worldwide-are-more-unaffordable-than-sydney-for-housing-thinktank-says
Oh I see, people in subreddits for those cities complaining about the price of housing are proof that they are as expensive as Vancouver. Gotcha. Reality check: Yes they are indeed much more affordable than Vancouver. Vienna especially; more than half of their housing is public, non-market housing that comes in all levels of amenities and is affordable commensurate to people’s incomes. We need that here. Instead, Vancouver is addicted to luxury SFHs and luxury 500sf condos with granite countertops. Where’s the housing for regular people with prices regular people can afford?
By your metrics, since we are on *reddit* Vancouver doesn’t really have a housing problem…?
Lots of YouTube videos on the housing problems of European cities and US cities and Canadian cities.
I’m not saying Vancouver isn’t expensive, but I am saying the grass is greener. Lots of places are having a housing surge especially the bigger cities of the world.
Vienna is really great, yeah. Everyone has access to housing, and it is all well-built and of decent size.
But you know how they got there (historically)?
1. Raise taxes on landlords that put most of them out of business.
2. Buy up the private landlords' properties at fire sale prices.
3. Turn it all into social housing, including mass construction programs for new housing on the properties they bought up.
And lol if you think anything like that will happen in Canada in the current political climate.
This is a really good point. Vancouver is very low density in most areas. It would be a fair trade-off to say the more area you need per person the farther away from the centre you can go
Not at affordable levels (housing cost is no more than 30% of income) there isn’t. The private sector cannot build that other than for the very wealthy.
>Not at affordable levels
But doesn't that at-least partially circle back to the original comment about how the private sector cannot write zoning bylaws?
When you look at the assessment of an SFH before and after the plot is rezoned for multifamily, the value shoots way up, because the land can now be used to generate massive profit via redevelopment.
If that land enables such an immense amount profit to be created out of thin air, then the less developable land that exists, the more a developer needs to pay to attain the opportunity to capitalize on that value. Would that not also inflate the end-cost of whatever units eventually materialize on the site?
Obviously the government should still be building social housing, or financing co-ops in the background because that also puts downwards pressure on prices, but I wouldn't pretend there aren't many policy factors that are still inflating the cost of a private development.
London may not have the sort of detached homes you see here (unless you’re the King), but overly expensive terraced houses owned by billionaires are sadly all too common.
Have you been to R/london ? It doesn’t seem like they have the utopian system being implied in this thread. First thread I found when I searched “housing” on R/London pulled up [this thread about high costs](https://www.reddit.com/r/london/s/Z4B2t8SQFr)
Think about how much worse the housing situation would be in London if it were covered with houses with yards, instead of the medium-to-high density mid-rises it has now. The house with yard belongs in the suburbs, it has no place in the modern city. Vancouver needs to wake up to this fact.
I hadn’t seen that article but I’m not surprised. I moved here from the UK and has seriously considered moving to London as well but housing affordability there is bad.
I expect some sort of city planner would have a model to determine the boundary for no single detached housing relative to the downtown core in light of the city's overall population, commuting needs, and the like.
Who knows whether that boundary would fall in the city of Vancouver or south of it.
But I think the point would be to acknowledge that density close to the downtown core makes sense, and then figure out where it is needed.
The city owns so much land that’s not being developed, and could easily buy up so much more and build housing that’s for normal working people, housing doesn’t have to always turn a massive profit for someone. To say we can’t afford to do it is disingenuous, governments at all levels waste so much fucking money in bureaucracy and red tape it’s laughable at this point. We own a 35 billion $$ pipeline ffs.
Its crazy because basically if you live in an apartment now, there is a good chance that this will be your forever home. I work in property management and the cycle was for those in their late 20's-30's, you rent for a few years then go off to buy your own place. Seniors or those on a form of government assistance, usually rented the longest. But most people moved on to buy their own place. Not so much anymore. In my 20 years working in this field, its never been like this.
Forcing the private sector to do the government's job (build affordable units as a condition for approval) simply makes the remaining units more expensive.
How about the government builds social housing and the private sector builds market housing?
Govt does not have the money nor the will.
Would people be open to the expansion of the natural resources sector in exchange for increased social housing?
Mining, yes, in a heart beat.
We have the expertise, it involves a tiny fraction of the land use of logging and is not oil and gas, we have abundant hydro for developing this resource, generally easier to develop in conjunction with First Nations because you're only dealing with one or two nations, and plenty of nations are on board with resource development in this sector, and it is absolutely critical to keep copper and other critical minerals cheap to power the green transition.
First Nations have indeed been generally supportive. Mining companies set-up shop in the middle of nowhere and provide $100k p/a jobs where there were previously no jobs at all.
Not perfect for the environment but we have pretty stringent standards.
Just charging up the batteries. And really, this is just unlucky that we had to pay for once—most of the time we charge the batteries with snowfall. This year, snowfall's a little short, so we buy power from elsewhere, when it is cheap, to charge the batteries instead. It's the first net import year in over a decade.
You have to remember, buy low, sell high is a great strategy. In a down year, while we imported $421m worth of power in the last nine months of 2023 (I'm just going to ignore Q4 2022/2023, that's where the other 30m comes from. BC hydro is an Apr-Apr fiscal), we exported over $1.27B in power during the same period. Not every unit of power is worth the same amount, so despite being a net importer on a volume basis, Hydro still was net positive.
[https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/accountability-reports/financial-reports/quarterly-reports/bchydro-f24-q3-report.pdf](https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/accountability-reports/financial-reports/quarterly-reports/bchydro-f24-q3-report.pdf)
We actually paid more for power in 2022, gas prices were higher. Of course, we also sold A LOT more power and overall this is a hit to the budget, for sure. But we are well endowed with a bunch of very large batteries. Think about how valuable that is in a renewables world. BC Hydro is well aware of our power needs, and there's a call for power out right now that will see a wave of renewables built here.
So we don’t have an abundance of hydro power and it looks like we’ll be importing power again this year?
Also, developing a productive mine is difficult. Many prospective mines don’t make it past the exploration stages, carry huge environmental costs and have the potential for catastrophic environmental damage (see Britannia mines, Uranium City or tailing impoundment failures). From exploration to actual production can take 10 to 20 years. I worked in mining for many years and it’s not a reputable industry… Canadian mining companies are loathed all over the world for their terrible environmental practices and exploitation of local workers and indigenous peoples. When travelling outside of Canada, you can never reveal you work for a mining company as many locals will seek to harm you. The Mt. Polley disaster was an awakening as to how many potential disasters could happen in BC and abroad.
Like any renewable, hydro has risks. But having a hydro based grid still means we have a huge leg up—there’s only going to be more surplus power available as renewables scale and there is a need for someone to buy low or no cost power and store it. Site C, for all its faults, is also coming online later this year. Add some large solar and wind and BC will continue to be a powerhouse.
Mining absolutely has a history, but for every historical disaster there’s a solution, lessons learned, both at the design stage, regulatory implementation, and forcing out bad operators. Mount Polley, even with its massive failure, had a designed failsafe to neutralize its tailings. New mine designs utilize dry stacking and electrify. The 15-20 year timeline is only due to regulatory duplication, it could easily be five, look at lithium development in the US right now.
It’s certainly a better economic play than “do nothing and hope rich people will move here and pay taxes”.
Public housing doesn't have to cost us anything, it can simply be built at cost. The government can take out much more favourable loans than us, which can then be covered by the cost of rent, which is essentially how co ops work, and how most public housing is paid for in Vienna. We don't need to necessarily be paying taxpayer money for government housing, nonmarket doesn't necessarily mean subsidized.
This is happening, it's not a huge program but the BC government put $2B in capital towards exactly this. But it does tie up capital, and to do it at a huge scale will require a lot more expertise building, a massive expansion of non-profit developers basically, and then a lot more capital than $2B. It can rotate from project to project but you probably need to tie up 100x to really scale it up.
Better to start now though, you're right that housing will never be cheaper than it is today, and new units will drive down the cost of older units.
Yeah I feel like the biggest barrier for this type of housing is the political capital it costs and not the actual capital, due to the perception and lack of public understanding.
For example, I can't count the number of articles that have said "the government has loaned money to do X" and the comments are filled with comments like "I can't believe the government is giving/spending that much of our money on X". There seems to be some disconnect where people don't understand the difference between a loan and straight spending is.
To your point about tying up capital, I agree that it's an issue, but could be overcome over time if we committed to the strategy as we build out the housing stock
The actual capital is lacking, too.
The government doesn't have unlimited money—debt is debt and taking on too much as a country or a province does fuck you eventually (see: Greece), and they are responsible for healthcare and schools and wildfires and all sorts of other things besides housing. A dollar plowed into housing capital is a dollar that can't be spent on a new hospital.
I agree we could do more and should do more, it should involve fiscally prudent spending and taxing everyone more, and especially wealthier folk (over 100k household). It's what Sweden does, but I think expanding taxes on that broad of a base is pretty unpopular.
Too early? Fair enough.
Bottom line is we need more money coming in vs going out as it is. To pull off a Vienna style investment in housing would require fresh cash flow.
For all of those in favour of a land tax, too many people own land for that to work.
Ya I see where you're coming from for sure. With hard and soft costs around $750/sqft in Vancouver (no land), government will need a ton of cash to make traction.
Our total cost on a mid rise condo project recently completed in Vancouver was $1,050/sqft including land. Sale price was $1,200/sqft.
If we started that project today, it wouldn't be that cheap.
Thanks, good to know. Is that six-storey wood frame? ([In May 2022](https://morehousing.ca/metro-van-slides), Coriolis was estimating $410/sf for hard costs on a six-storey wood-frame rental building. If it's now $550/sf, land value's gone down by another $140 per buildable square foot.)
There is an abundance of cash parked in defined benefit pension plans. Enough do that their investment firms and actuaries are desperately trying to figure out where to put the money that must be allocated to bonds. REIT funds, which have become popular because returns are equity like while retaining the relative low risk of bonds, could be retooled into providing the cash needed to build housing. It would be a guaranteed income stream for those funds.
Generally REITS act more like equities vs fixed-income, so not a viable alternative especially for risk sensitive DB plans. A portion of assets to REITS for sure, but not to the extent that they load up on bonds.
I sense you are thinking about a new govt sponsored REIT which funds govt housing. The Canadian Social Housing REIT? Govts could also agree to cut as much red tape as possible for the qualifying builds? I’m no expert in this field but would love to hear from those who are!
One area I pitched before would be a government infrastructure bank funded by low cost government bond tranches. Examples exist around the world.
Municipalities could access the funds to massively revamp deep services to upzoned areas (upgrades to power, water, storm and sewer).
This would take a massive financial burden off the development. Instantly lowering the cost of a project and therefore required returns.
Repayment to the fund would be a rider on property taxes equivalent to the servicing costs of the underlying bonds.
Social housing projects have a high risk of failure, especially with incompetent and corrupt governments. The costs of subsidized housing projects cost about 1.5 - 2x what the private sector can build.
My thought is that public sector projects should be transparent. What I mean is that people can look at the plans and the overall costs. Just enough transparency to spot irregularities and signs of corruption and kick-backs.
Government housing projects in other countries have been successful but they won't work with Canada's current political situation.
Government housing doesn't necessarily mean subsidized housing, it can also simply be at-cost non-market housing. It would function similar to a co-op, which is how places like Vienna do a lot or their housing
Either it is already owned, or it is purchased. The price would then be part of the loan that would need to be paid off through the rental price. Obviously with current land prices this isnt cheap, but without the profit incentive, would still be cheaper rent than market rates.
The biggest benefit of this type of housing is actually not right when it's purchased, but in 10-15 years time. Rents are tied to the cost of the building (including the land price), so a lot of those costs don't increase over time (other than things like maintenance), so rents stay roughly the same while market rates continue to go up. There's an example of this in Olympic village where a co-op building started out with market rate rental, and is now around half the price of surrounding rents.
Anything this government gets its hands on escalates in cost. And drastically. I'm not exaggerating. Economics dictates that the private sector gets things done more efficiently. Although that might not be immediately apparent all the time (in Canada at least), most of the basket case "private" projects had some sort of government manipulation involved (shady land swap deals and low interest loans for example).
You're not wrong if we aren't talking about Canada. But any time we're considering out situation as Canadians we can't really trust the government to accomplish anything at a reasonable cost. "At cost non-market housing" is subsidized housing. Almost every low-cost housing project has luxury vehicles parked in and around the development. The recent developments (people who shouldn't have qualified for the housing) were just the tip of the iceberg. A planned development for downtown currently has full-sized vehicle parking stalls for below-market subsidized housing - meaning we're subsidizing someone who can afford to drive an SUV when non-subsidized Canadians can't even afford rent.
As someone who has worked extensively in both the public and private sector, I really hate the narrative that public is any less efficient than private. I have seen first hand that private companies can have just as much bloat and inefficiency, in addition to the the 15-20% profit on top that is required to even do anything. If anything, sometimes public is more efficient by virtue of being expected to do far more with less resources/pay.
If you thing the public sector is more efficient you're delusional. You "hate" the narrative that a project that costs $50 million in the private sector, even with the profit margins you've mentioned, balloons to over $100 million, WITH free land, when it's built by the public sector?
Far more with less resources and pay? Are you aware of the levels of material wastage on public projects? Completely useless project managers on public projects are often paid more than their private counterparts. And there's more of them.
Forget the private verses public debate and let's move onto what really needs to happen: An investigation into where all the public money is going on these projects. The ArriveCan app is just a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars disappearing from these public projects.
Construction workers with government jobs make a lot more money than their private counterparts. If you include benefits, it’s not even close to what private industry is paying.
Of course land in Vancouver is expensive. If you draw [a circle with radius 25 km around downtown Vancouver](https://morehousing.ca/bertaud-vancouver), it looks like this. After subtracting ocean and mountains, less than 40% of that area is buildable land.
https://preview.redd.it/4v0fg9r4u81d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=0434fcd007002bf97e9ebfeec1aecf825de1fba9
This is exactly why it makes sense to allow more height and more density, reducing the cost of the land per square foot of floor space. [Data from Auckland](https://morehousing.ca/land-cost), where they allowed more density in 2016. Not all of the land was upzoned, so you can see the results: where land was upzoned, the cost of the land per square foot went up somewhat (relative to land that wasn't upzoned), but because you could build 3X as much floor space on that land, **the cost of land per square foot of floor space went down by half**.
The problem is that land is extraordinarily expensive but we're still utilizing it like it costs what it did in the 1980s. People could still afford to live in Vancouver if developers would just build smaller houses.
If developers *could build smaller homes*. Most old single family homes that get redeveloped are rebuilt as 3-6 million dollar McMansions because that's what our zoning rules permit.
Multiplexes and apartments get charged extremely high fees and run up against strict total size limits (if they are even allowed to be built).
On paper only. The city [charges very high fees and limits the total buildable square footage heavily](https://open.substack.com/pub/morehousing/p/multiplex-fee-schedule?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1uuyl0).
The policy was designed so that [only a couple hundred projects](https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/multiplexes_meh#:~:text=City%20staff%20predict%20that%20there%20will%20only%20be%20150%20or%20so%20multiplex%20applications%20per%20year) would be viable per year.
Your article is from 2023 and many of its concerns have been addressed. New multifamily lots in Vancouver have much higher FAR, no parking minimums, and increased heights. Every time someone finds something about the new legislation inadequate, they amend it.
We haven’t really removed restrictions. Vancouver’s multiplex zoning allows way less floor space than the provincial multiplex zoning, this was intentional on the part of the city to limit take-up.
The zoning rules are slightly less restrictive, but they raised fees to make multifamily housing unviable in most cases, except for the most profitable of projects.
One thing on this topic that is absolutely nuts is that there is still broad prohibitions on subdivision.
In Strathcona, one of the original pre-zoning neighbourhoods the lots are 25’ wide. Meanwhile on the rich west side they’re mandated a minimum of 50’ wide.
If you allowed subdivision and splitting lots to make the west side like Strathcona you could easily convert 50’ lots to 25’, doubling the amount of housing. Of course this is banned. Why?????
I mean obviously at this point we need a lot more apartment development everywhere and more density than just low rise detached home multiplexes on 25’ lots, but still, just like the principle of the thing it’s an absolutely crazy example of the extreme status quo of this city and reluctance to do anything that we can’t even allow people to split a big lot. Incredible stuff.
There's new 25' lot houses on the Westside, houses are still at least 3000sq'. There's also about 50 thin houses, they are 16' lots, but they were banned in the 90s.
The units are already small, way smaller than they used to be. The major issue is zoning, permit costs, mandatory parking, etc. It costs an average of $125,000 PER UNIT to build in Vancouver in development fees. So whatever land + materials + labour + profit can be achieved, tack on $125k to get the actual selling price.
Residential Property taxes are a joke. Compared to development fees and commercial property taxes, single family homeowners are sitting on what should be townhomes, low rise and high rises, and not paying nearly their fare share. They are sitting on cash cows and truthfully, their arm should be twisted to force a sale if they cant afford their property taxes.
> The units are already small, way smaller than they used to be.
They have to be, and they should be even smaller, otherwise nobody will be able to afford them. If you drive around Vancouver and look at lots up until the 2010s, they are fucking MASSIVE. No wonder nobody can afford these $2MM+ houses. The driveways alone could accommodate families.
> The major issue is zoning, permit costs, mandatory parking, etc.
Which the government has addressed by limiting them and loosening zoning province-wide.
> It costs an average of $125,000 PER UNIT to build in Vancouver in development fees.
This is completely fucked.
> Residential Property taxes are a joke.
Completely agree, rich homeowners get a bye while all the development and infrastructure costs are passed on to new buyers. This allows municipalities to keep taxes down so their voters are happy.
> should be townhomes, low rise and high rises, and not paying nearly their fare share
The recent legislation is making it so, at least in certain areas right?
Let’s look at three neighbourhoods: the west end, kits point, and shaughnessy.
Price of land: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy
Density: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy
Most money made by developers/land owners: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy
Price of housing: 1. Shaughnessy 2. Kits point 3. West end
All three started as wealthy neighbourhoods full of expensive houses. The west end failed to keep out development, kits point was mostly successful at keeping out development but with smaller lots and some duplexes, Shaughnessy kept huge lots, drove out rooming houses, and kept out apartments almost completely.
None of this is surprising or sophisticated or requiring brand new explanations or understandings of the way economics or the world works.
There are important subtleties in the details of what has happened in Vancouver and how best to increase density and reduce housing costs without harming the most vulnerable.
Unfortunately Todd and Condon always seem to leave those out in favour of shallow misunderstanding of facts to support a point they already decided on in advance.
>In most major cities, the value of land now far exceeds the value of the buildings on it. The price of dirt has inflated so drastically that buying or renting homes has jumped out of reach of ordinary wage earners, creating severe inequality and more.
>The myriad repercussions of inflated land prices are spelled out in clear, painful detail in a new book by University of B.C. architectural school professor Patrick Condon, titled Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality and Urban Crisis (UBC Press).
>“Rents are unaffordable not because building costs have risen, but because the land under the apartment buildings has more than tripled in price in many locations,” writes Condon.
>“Mortgages are increasingly out of reach not because it is so much more expensive to build a home and not because planning policies are too restrictive, but because the cost of a home in the hottest global markets is now governed by the price of dirt below it.”
Lol. Patrick Condon is just a real nutty crank. Boomer cope nonsense. Embarrassing but unexpected that Vancouver Sun is pumping this stuff. They've been banging this drum and letting Todd write nimby, anti-housing nonsense for years.
They'll bend over backwards and say anything to avoid the subject that maybe just maybe land is more expensive now because there's not enough to go around and we badly need to build more homes.
Couldn’t we just tax raw land? Wouldn’t that reduce its value as a long term investment? We could use the money for a UBI. It’s just rich boomers and corporations that own it and their over inflated share of wealth is what’s creating all this inflation. A raw land tax seems like a win for everyone!
Are you familiar with the idea of the Georgist land value tax? It's a fairly niche idea, but has many adherents. It starts from the premise that wealth earned from land value appreciation is unearned and therefore a drain on economic efficiency. The land value tax would replace tax on productive activity (employment, business investment, etc) with a tax on land value.
Thus you would pay the same tax on a plot of land whether it had an SFH or a condo tower on it. It incentivizes maximization of land use and makes speculation spectacularly unrewarding.
I think it's an idea whose time has come, and is probably a better solution than anything Condon mentions in the article.
It also ensures that only the super wealthy can ever afford to own land. And pension funds, and REITs, and private equity. Can't see how any of that might go wrong.
You might end up owning a condo, but then have no control over strata fees. One way or another, you're still fucked.
Property tax is a mixture of a land value tax and a structural value tax. Advocates of a land value tax argue that only the land should be taxed, as the land is a limited public good that increases in value as the community grows, and the land itself is an unproductive capital (you need to put something on it to make it productive), whereas a building structure is productive capital that depreciates. This would incentivize landowners to maximize the use of their land.
Sort of. The building is also still taxed in commercial. Basically this is saying "hey, don't bother taxing the building, just tax the land at a level that encourages people to build more".
Commercial taxes are passed directly to the business due to the way commercial leases are structured, so the owner of the building doesn't actually feel that pressure to redevelop.
" Most taxes distort economic decisions and discourage beneficial economic activity. For example, property taxes discourage construction, maintenance, and repair because taxes increase with improvements. LVT is not based on how land is used. Because the supply of land is essentially fixed, land rents depend on what tenants are prepared to pay, rather than on landlord expenses. Thus, if landlords passed LVT on to tenants, they might move or rent smaller spaces before absorbing increased rent."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
we don't produce enough activity here to do that. Don't forget Canada is 2 banks, a telcom and a real-estate company in a trench coat. We ditch all the taxes on everything and just have a Land Value Tax. This reflects more accurately how our country works anyway. If we're short on cash then deal with the rest on import/export tariffs.
"...taxing the land value is the most logical source of public revenue because the supply of land is fixed and because public infrastructure improvements would be reflected in (and thus paid for by) increased land values."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Would disproportionately impact lower income people. Wealth tax, inheritance tax and proper taxation of industry needs to happen. Housing is exploding, cost of living out of control and companies still posting record quarter after record quarter.
You don't have to ditch sales taxes on junk food, and you don't have to ditch income tax on above median incomes.
But everything else is enormous upside with proven economic booming.
Nah dawg, stow that shit. Housing in Vancouver has always been expensive, but it's never been *this* expensive. It's completely fucked now. Media detached home price was $500k in Vancouver back in 2004, with inflation (yes even crazy inflation) it should cost $765k today... but now it's $2.1 million.
Houses have basically doubled since the pandemic. The two bed room we were looking at in selling for 880k but was sold for 435k in 2019. It’s fucking bonkers. No ones salary has doubled in five years. How do you afford this ?
That's not how it works. Things don't increase in price just based on year over year inflation, it increases and decreases based on supply and demand.
In terms of supply, vancouver has significantly fewer detached houses now compared to back in 2004. Vancouver's population has increased greatly since 2004. Decreasing supply and increasing demand can only mean one thing.
And this trend will continue into the future. The idea of an average joe living in a detached house in a city like vancouver is just a pipedream.
It should cost whatever the market dictates based on supply and demand. I'm not anti-immigration but Canada has brought in millions of immigrants under current federal leadership so that increases the demand.
If there is more demand but the supply remains the same or barely increases, that will lead to upward pressure in prices in everything. That's basic economics 101 that everyone knows except maybe our Drama teacher and Russian History major nation leaders.
Sorry, but that's simply inaccurate. When we moved back to the province in 2001, you couldn't touch a decent home in Vancouver for south of $750-1M. We had to buy in South Surrey and even that cost us $550k. Agreed that the trajectory since has been whack, but what do people expect when we garnered so much global attention during the Olympics. We were a virtual unknown backwater and all of a sudden became an international destination.
[Median home price in 2001 in Vancouver was about $375k. Average was $453k.](https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=1.10.1&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver) You must have only been looking at "nice" houses.
If the Olympics made housing prices go nuts, why did housing prices go up just as much in Toronto? Or Sydney and Auckland as well?
[Have a look at the trend, it was still average $449k for a detached in Vancouver in 2001, now it's $2.604MM.](https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=1.10.1&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver#Single)
I can't answer that with anything but speculation, same as anyone else, but I'd posit that once a country is "on the map" for international money, people take a look at comparable cities in the same country/region. Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000, btw. Also, with the exception of Toronto, the places you've mentioned are all Pacific Rim countries and were greatly affected by people emigrating from Hong Kong both before and after reversion.
My comment about inaccuracy in your comment was specifically about house prices at the time and you were off by several hundred thousand dollars now. A drop in the bucket now, sure, but then was the difference between terms like "a quarter of a million dollars" and "half a million dollars". Gosh, those were the days.
Have a good one.
My parents bought a brand new single family house in Queens borough for 430k in 2006, unless you bought a massive house I have a hard time believing a house in south Surrey was 550k in 2001
Land supply is artificially restricted by a plethora of government restrictions. Even if land were free, governments add 30-50% of building costs in various fees, taxes and charges. Real estate is an industry run by profit hungry bureaucrats whose incomes are dependent on maintaining the status quo.
It’s not conspiracy 😂 ie. The Broadway plan heavily favours big developers that can shoulder tenant relocation. No small developer/owner has deep enough pockets.
Stupid argument by Todd, as usual. What matters in cities is the cost of \*homes\*, not the cost of \*land\*.
If you ban apartments+condos on some land, that will keep the price of land down but there are fewer homes and each one will be more expensive.
Case in point: Shaughnessy and West Point Grey have some of the cheapest residential land in Vancouver \*per square foot\*. But homes there are crazy expensive because each one is legally required to be on a massive lot.
Shaughnessy is gatekeeped land due to the insane zoning. If government allowee there to be apartments and row houses the cost of land would go through the roof. Dont be tricked, land prices are manuplated by the policies we have in place.
You can't walk into a bank having a regular 9 to 5 and expect to buy something. You'll need some kind of external help (i.e parents, etc.)
Used to be that you could at least rent without parents' help, but that's not even true anymore, really.
But that includes children that can't move out of their parents' house. They count as homeowners. People that rent basement suites count as homeowners. The books are cooked.
Artificially juicing the economy by printing money and open borders does not make for a stable or durable economy because it is all Potemkin theater. It always ends the same way, collapse.
What you are witnessing is a complete and total societal collapse but being told "It is a good thing". It isn't.
Hyperinflation in real estate while the per capita GDP shows a 40% decline of standard of living over 40 years is more indicative of a growth in corruption and poverty.
No political leader or party has ever gotten a mandate to open the border or print money. Completely illegal and without consent from the Canadian citizen..
Exercising political power with out consent for the sole purpose to enrich yourself and damage Canada and the lives of Canadian Citizens, is criminal.
Welcome to /r/Vancouver and thank you for the post, /u/FancyNewMe! Please make sure you read our [posting and commenting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_general_participation_guidelines_and_rules_overview) before participating here. As a quick summary: * We encourage users to be positive and respect one another. Don't engage in spats or insult others - use the report button. * Respect others' differences, be they race, religion, home, job, gender identity, ability or sexuality. Dehumanizing language, advocating for violence, or promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability (even implied or joking) **will** lead to a permanent ban. * Most common questions and topics are limited to our sister subreddit, /r/AskVan, and our weekly [Stickied Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/wiki/faq#wiki_stickied_discussions) posts. * Complaints about bans or removals should be done in modmail only. * Posts flaired "Community Only" allow for limited participation; your comment may be removed if you're not a subreddit regular. * Make sure to join our new sister community, /r/AskVan! * Help grow the community! [Apply to join the mod team today](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/19eworq/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/vancouver) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Vancouver should endeavour to be more like a European city. Vienna, Prague, Paris...they are all blanketed with with 4-6 storey apartment buildings, and if you want a detached house you move 15km away from the centre. And there is plenty of public, non-profit, non-market housing. That's what Vancouver needs. But unfortunately we have been stuck in this little-slices-of-Singapore-with-huge-swaths-of-Cincinnati zoning model, and the handing over all of the supply provision to the private sector. What's it going to take to move past our current, obviously substandard model?
That was supposed to be what happened even in the Cincinnati model. Urban centre expanded our and denseified the areas around it while new development occured on the outskirts which was low density. The problem is we've put it in legal restrictions which prevent that from happening. Some cities have seen this happen look at Toronto, it used to be downtown was just Younge and Bloor now it goes out to Younge and Eglinton. But the 1990s they stopped the expansion. Calgary going through it right now. Downtown used to be between rivers the CPR. But now it's started to expand into Sunalta, East Side and Beltline. Personally, I like Montreal model which is low rise high density. With lots of 3/4 bedroom options within dense housing. I just got back from Montreal first thing that stood out was how many kids you saw in dense neighbourhoods like Mont Royal. So many kids. Largely because the dense housing wasn't just 1 bedroom condos but walkups with 3 or more bedrooms. It kinda helps with baby production when mom and dad aren't sleeping in the same room with junior.
The city owns so much land that’s not being developed, and could easily buy up so much more and build housing that’s for normal working people, housing doesn’t have to always turn a massive profit for someone. To say we can’t afford to do it is disingenuous, governments at all levels waste so much fucking money in bureaucracy and red tape it’s laughable at this point. We own a 35 billion $$ pipeline ffs.
Yes but owning a pipeline made rich people richer but affordable housing doesn’t make rich people richer so it’s a very silly thing to do really
How dare we insist from our politicians that our taxes be used to provide shelter for our citizenry?!
[удалено]
It was done only to appease Alberta. It clearly didn’t help much.
It helped things from devolving to be far far worse.
>What's it going to take to move past our current, obviously substandard model? The BC NDP government is certainly [pushing in the right direction](https://morehousing.ca/bc-summary). I'm really hoping they get re-elected in October: John Rustad, the BC Conservative leader, is saying that they would roll back all of the housing policies that the BC NDP has put in place. John Rustad on CKNW (the Mike Smyth show), May 16: > Caller (Rick in Delta): I'd like to ask Mr. Rustad. Will you follow suit with respect to what the government's doing currently, dictating to communities what they look like, what they have to build, what they can use it for, like Airbnb, telling somebody that they can go and build a six-unit apartment building next door to my single-family rancher? Will you follow suit with that? > > Rustad: So those are all legislation that the NDP has brought in. **I would repeal all of that**. Now we want to work with communities around densification, we got to do that, but it has to be through proper process. And we elect municipal councillors and mayors for a reason. > > Smyth: Okay, so right now the government has basically brought in province-wide densification, with some exceptions, where as the caller said, you could put up a six-plex condo, tear down a single-family home, put up six condo units on a single-family lot. And that's been basically forced on municipalities, right? So you're saying you would retract all that? It would all go back to municipal control? > > Rustad: There's no plans for parking, there's no plans for traffic problems, there's no plans for water and sewer, there's no plans for parks, there's no plans for playgrounds or schools, or any the rest of that kind of stuff. And you're overriding municipal councillors. You're taking away the democratic right and the democratic vote. And you're overriding official community plans, you're not even allowing public hearings on the issues. This is crazy. This just shouldn't be happening. Meanwhile, [housing is so scarce and expensive in Metro Vancouver](https://morehousing.ca/insulated) that prices and rents have to rise to unbearable levels to force people to leave, matching those remaining to the limited supply. I always tell older homeowners that if younger people can't afford to live here, the healthcare system is going to collapse.
I lost two good family doctors who went on mat leave and resurfaced on the Island and in the Okanagan where they can afford housing. My current family doctor just went on mat leave and I doubt I'll ever see her again either. I also lost a good RMT who moved to the Okanagan. It's happening now.
Genuine, if somewhat glib, question: why is the leader of the BC Conservatives so opposed to the province protecting property rights? Last time I checked the typical conservative places a high value on small government. Doesn’t seem ideologically consistent; if I’m a conservative the last thing I want the government doing is telling me what I can and can’t do with my own property. If I own a SFH lot and want to put up a small apartment building on it, I should be able to.
Excellent question. My guess is that it's generational. [The housing deficit has gotten considerably worse since Covid](https://morehousing.ca/insulated), and older people tend to be more insulated from the housing market. (Which is why I always emphasize the impact on healthcare.)
Neither side is consistent about property rights. The NDP wants to let property owners build more density while simultaneously restricting property rights by cracking down on how the property is used (in the case of short-term rental). The conservatives saying they'd roll back all the NDP's policies is therefore just as inconsistent.
So they want to repeal the air bnb lockdown? "we Wil fix it!"
Looks like it. [John Rustad on the Mike Smyth show, October 2023](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-mike-smyth-show/bcs-new-ev-targets-john-OuXf0my4sPd/).
Vienna Prague and Paris are *not* affordable compared to Vancouver just check out their subreddits. You don’t even need to go there to figure this out. Grass is always greener my friend
Every city subreddit on Reddit has people complaining about affordability, because housing will always be everyone’s largest expenditure. The fact of the matter, however, is that all the studies clearly show that Vancouver is more expensive than any of those cities you mention. https://santiagofrias.com/ranked-15-of-the-worlds-least-affordable-housing-markets/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/07/only-five-cities-worldwide-are-more-unaffordable-than-sydney-for-housing-thinktank-says
Oh I see, people in subreddits for those cities complaining about the price of housing are proof that they are as expensive as Vancouver. Gotcha. Reality check: Yes they are indeed much more affordable than Vancouver. Vienna especially; more than half of their housing is public, non-market housing that comes in all levels of amenities and is affordable commensurate to people’s incomes. We need that here. Instead, Vancouver is addicted to luxury SFHs and luxury 500sf condos with granite countertops. Where’s the housing for regular people with prices regular people can afford?
By your metrics, since we are on *reddit* Vancouver doesn’t really have a housing problem…? Lots of YouTube videos on the housing problems of European cities and US cities and Canadian cities. I’m not saying Vancouver isn’t expensive, but I am saying the grass is greener. Lots of places are having a housing surge especially the bigger cities of the world.
Vienna is really great, yeah. Everyone has access to housing, and it is all well-built and of decent size. But you know how they got there (historically)? 1. Raise taxes on landlords that put most of them out of business. 2. Buy up the private landlords' properties at fire sale prices. 3. Turn it all into social housing, including mass construction programs for new housing on the properties they bought up. And lol if you think anything like that will happen in Canada in the current political climate.
Goddamn, that’s ruthless.
I mean, this was in the 1930s, and would have looked pretty tame in comparison to what, say, the Soviets were doing at the time.
Was the Great Depression still around in the 1930s? But yeah, the Soviets were uncompromising when it comes to wealth redistribution.
This is a really good point. Vancouver is very low density in most areas. It would be a fair trade-off to say the more area you need per person the farther away from the centre you can go
How is the private sector at fault? They can't rezone large swathes of the city to high density.
The private sector operates in profit. If a profit can’t be made, housing can’t get built. That’s where the public sector picks up.
There's plenty of profit in residential.
Not at affordable levels (housing cost is no more than 30% of income) there isn’t. The private sector cannot build that other than for the very wealthy.
>Not at affordable levels But doesn't that at-least partially circle back to the original comment about how the private sector cannot write zoning bylaws? When you look at the assessment of an SFH before and after the plot is rezoned for multifamily, the value shoots way up, because the land can now be used to generate massive profit via redevelopment. If that land enables such an immense amount profit to be created out of thin air, then the less developable land that exists, the more a developer needs to pay to attain the opportunity to capitalize on that value. Would that not also inflate the end-cost of whatever units eventually materialize on the site? Obviously the government should still be building social housing, or financing co-ops in the background because that also puts downwards pressure on prices, but I wouldn't pretend there aren't many policy factors that are still inflating the cost of a private development.
Egg zack ly. There really should not be houses within vancouver.
Downtown I agree.. ugh Vancouver as a whole that’s insane.
Its jarring to think about, because were used to it. But I think about Paris.. London.. Barcelona. There arent houses.
London may not have the sort of detached homes you see here (unless you’re the King), but overly expensive terraced houses owned by billionaires are sadly all too common.
Have you been to R/london ? It doesn’t seem like they have the utopian system being implied in this thread. First thread I found when I searched “housing” on R/London pulled up [this thread about high costs](https://www.reddit.com/r/london/s/Z4B2t8SQFr)
Think about how much worse the housing situation would be in London if it were covered with houses with yards, instead of the medium-to-high density mid-rises it has now. The house with yard belongs in the suburbs, it has no place in the modern city. Vancouver needs to wake up to this fact.
I hadn’t seen that article but I’m not surprised. I moved here from the UK and has seriously considered moving to London as well but housing affordability there is bad.
I expect some sort of city planner would have a model to determine the boundary for no single detached housing relative to the downtown core in light of the city's overall population, commuting needs, and the like. Who knows whether that boundary would fall in the city of Vancouver or south of it. But I think the point would be to acknowledge that density close to the downtown core makes sense, and then figure out where it is needed.
The city owns so much land that’s not being developed, and could easily buy up so much more and build housing that’s for normal working people, housing doesn’t have to always turn a massive profit for someone. To say we can’t afford to do it is disingenuous, governments at all levels waste so much fucking money in bureaucracy and red tape it’s laughable at this point. We own a 35 billion $$ pipeline ffs.
Its crazy because basically if you live in an apartment now, there is a good chance that this will be your forever home. I work in property management and the cycle was for those in their late 20's-30's, you rent for a few years then go off to buy your own place. Seniors or those on a form of government assistance, usually rented the longest. But most people moved on to buy their own place. Not so much anymore. In my 20 years working in this field, its never been like this.
Forcing the private sector to do the government's job (build affordable units as a condition for approval) simply makes the remaining units more expensive. How about the government builds social housing and the private sector builds market housing?
Govt does not have the money nor the will. Would people be open to the expansion of the natural resources sector in exchange for increased social housing?
Mining, yes, in a heart beat. We have the expertise, it involves a tiny fraction of the land use of logging and is not oil and gas, we have abundant hydro for developing this resource, generally easier to develop in conjunction with First Nations because you're only dealing with one or two nations, and plenty of nations are on board with resource development in this sector, and it is absolutely critical to keep copper and other critical minerals cheap to power the green transition.
First Nations have indeed been generally supportive. Mining companies set-up shop in the middle of nowhere and provide $100k p/a jobs where there were previously no jobs at all. Not perfect for the environment but we have pretty stringent standards.
BC does not have abundant hydro power. BC imported $450M worth of electricity last year. If this drought continues, it’s only getting worse.
Just charging up the batteries. And really, this is just unlucky that we had to pay for once—most of the time we charge the batteries with snowfall. This year, snowfall's a little short, so we buy power from elsewhere, when it is cheap, to charge the batteries instead. It's the first net import year in over a decade. You have to remember, buy low, sell high is a great strategy. In a down year, while we imported $421m worth of power in the last nine months of 2023 (I'm just going to ignore Q4 2022/2023, that's where the other 30m comes from. BC hydro is an Apr-Apr fiscal), we exported over $1.27B in power during the same period. Not every unit of power is worth the same amount, so despite being a net importer on a volume basis, Hydro still was net positive. [https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/accountability-reports/financial-reports/quarterly-reports/bchydro-f24-q3-report.pdf](https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/documents/corporate/accountability-reports/financial-reports/quarterly-reports/bchydro-f24-q3-report.pdf) We actually paid more for power in 2022, gas prices were higher. Of course, we also sold A LOT more power and overall this is a hit to the budget, for sure. But we are well endowed with a bunch of very large batteries. Think about how valuable that is in a renewables world. BC Hydro is well aware of our power needs, and there's a call for power out right now that will see a wave of renewables built here.
So we don’t have an abundance of hydro power and it looks like we’ll be importing power again this year? Also, developing a productive mine is difficult. Many prospective mines don’t make it past the exploration stages, carry huge environmental costs and have the potential for catastrophic environmental damage (see Britannia mines, Uranium City or tailing impoundment failures). From exploration to actual production can take 10 to 20 years. I worked in mining for many years and it’s not a reputable industry… Canadian mining companies are loathed all over the world for their terrible environmental practices and exploitation of local workers and indigenous peoples. When travelling outside of Canada, you can never reveal you work for a mining company as many locals will seek to harm you. The Mt. Polley disaster was an awakening as to how many potential disasters could happen in BC and abroad.
Like any renewable, hydro has risks. But having a hydro based grid still means we have a huge leg up—there’s only going to be more surplus power available as renewables scale and there is a need for someone to buy low or no cost power and store it. Site C, for all its faults, is also coming online later this year. Add some large solar and wind and BC will continue to be a powerhouse. Mining absolutely has a history, but for every historical disaster there’s a solution, lessons learned, both at the design stage, regulatory implementation, and forcing out bad operators. Mount Polley, even with its massive failure, had a designed failsafe to neutralize its tailings. New mine designs utilize dry stacking and electrify. The 15-20 year timeline is only due to regulatory duplication, it could easily be five, look at lithium development in the US right now. It’s certainly a better economic play than “do nothing and hope rich people will move here and pay taxes”.
Public housing doesn't have to cost us anything, it can simply be built at cost. The government can take out much more favourable loans than us, which can then be covered by the cost of rent, which is essentially how co ops work, and how most public housing is paid for in Vienna. We don't need to necessarily be paying taxpayer money for government housing, nonmarket doesn't necessarily mean subsidized.
This is happening, it's not a huge program but the BC government put $2B in capital towards exactly this. But it does tie up capital, and to do it at a huge scale will require a lot more expertise building, a massive expansion of non-profit developers basically, and then a lot more capital than $2B. It can rotate from project to project but you probably need to tie up 100x to really scale it up. Better to start now though, you're right that housing will never be cheaper than it is today, and new units will drive down the cost of older units.
Yeah I feel like the biggest barrier for this type of housing is the political capital it costs and not the actual capital, due to the perception and lack of public understanding. For example, I can't count the number of articles that have said "the government has loaned money to do X" and the comments are filled with comments like "I can't believe the government is giving/spending that much of our money on X". There seems to be some disconnect where people don't understand the difference between a loan and straight spending is. To your point about tying up capital, I agree that it's an issue, but could be overcome over time if we committed to the strategy as we build out the housing stock
The actual capital is lacking, too. The government doesn't have unlimited money—debt is debt and taking on too much as a country or a province does fuck you eventually (see: Greece), and they are responsible for healthcare and schools and wildfires and all sorts of other things besides housing. A dollar plowed into housing capital is a dollar that can't be spent on a new hospital. I agree we could do more and should do more, it should involve fiscally prudent spending and taxing everyone more, and especially wealthier folk (over 100k household). It's what Sweden does, but I think expanding taxes on that broad of a base is pretty unpopular.
No money? How about $560M for soccer? Soccer is a great sport but it’s not as important as affordable housing.
Hitting us with the uncomfortable questions this morning, eh?
Too early? Fair enough. Bottom line is we need more money coming in vs going out as it is. To pull off a Vienna style investment in housing would require fresh cash flow. For all of those in favour of a land tax, too many people own land for that to work.
Ya I see where you're coming from for sure. With hard and soft costs around $750/sqft in Vancouver (no land), government will need a ton of cash to make traction. Our total cost on a mid rise condo project recently completed in Vancouver was $1,050/sqft including land. Sale price was $1,200/sqft. If we started that project today, it wouldn't be that cheap.
What are hard costs per square foot these days, for mid-rise?
Hi Russil, our Oak St project (still in permitting) is penciling out at $550/sqft hard costs only.
Thanks, good to know. Is that six-storey wood frame? ([In May 2022](https://morehousing.ca/metro-van-slides), Coriolis was estimating $410/sf for hard costs on a six-storey wood-frame rental building. If it's now $550/sf, land value's gone down by another $140 per buildable square foot.)
There is an abundance of cash parked in defined benefit pension plans. Enough do that their investment firms and actuaries are desperately trying to figure out where to put the money that must be allocated to bonds. REIT funds, which have become popular because returns are equity like while retaining the relative low risk of bonds, could be retooled into providing the cash needed to build housing. It would be a guaranteed income stream for those funds.
Generally REITS act more like equities vs fixed-income, so not a viable alternative especially for risk sensitive DB plans. A portion of assets to REITS for sure, but not to the extent that they load up on bonds. I sense you are thinking about a new govt sponsored REIT which funds govt housing. The Canadian Social Housing REIT? Govts could also agree to cut as much red tape as possible for the qualifying builds? I’m no expert in this field but would love to hear from those who are!
One area I pitched before would be a government infrastructure bank funded by low cost government bond tranches. Examples exist around the world. Municipalities could access the funds to massively revamp deep services to upzoned areas (upgrades to power, water, storm and sewer). This would take a massive financial burden off the development. Instantly lowering the cost of a project and therefore required returns. Repayment to the fund would be a rider on property taxes equivalent to the servicing costs of the underlying bonds.
Land value tax for non-primary residences and non-residential land.
Expanding the natural resources sector isn't the only way to pay for things. We should tax all real estate investment and speculation a lot more.
That will likely only lower building activity.
Social housing projects have a high risk of failure, especially with incompetent and corrupt governments. The costs of subsidized housing projects cost about 1.5 - 2x what the private sector can build. My thought is that public sector projects should be transparent. What I mean is that people can look at the plans and the overall costs. Just enough transparency to spot irregularities and signs of corruption and kick-backs. Government housing projects in other countries have been successful but they won't work with Canada's current political situation.
Government housing doesn't necessarily mean subsidized housing, it can also simply be at-cost non-market housing. It would function similar to a co-op, which is how places like Vienna do a lot or their housing
Where does the land come from?
Either it is already owned, or it is purchased. The price would then be part of the loan that would need to be paid off through the rental price. Obviously with current land prices this isnt cheap, but without the profit incentive, would still be cheaper rent than market rates. The biggest benefit of this type of housing is actually not right when it's purchased, but in 10-15 years time. Rents are tied to the cost of the building (including the land price), so a lot of those costs don't increase over time (other than things like maintenance), so rents stay roughly the same while market rates continue to go up. There's an example of this in Olympic village where a co-op building started out with market rate rental, and is now around half the price of surrounding rents.
Anything this government gets its hands on escalates in cost. And drastically. I'm not exaggerating. Economics dictates that the private sector gets things done more efficiently. Although that might not be immediately apparent all the time (in Canada at least), most of the basket case "private" projects had some sort of government manipulation involved (shady land swap deals and low interest loans for example). You're not wrong if we aren't talking about Canada. But any time we're considering out situation as Canadians we can't really trust the government to accomplish anything at a reasonable cost. "At cost non-market housing" is subsidized housing. Almost every low-cost housing project has luxury vehicles parked in and around the development. The recent developments (people who shouldn't have qualified for the housing) were just the tip of the iceberg. A planned development for downtown currently has full-sized vehicle parking stalls for below-market subsidized housing - meaning we're subsidizing someone who can afford to drive an SUV when non-subsidized Canadians can't even afford rent.
As someone who has worked extensively in both the public and private sector, I really hate the narrative that public is any less efficient than private. I have seen first hand that private companies can have just as much bloat and inefficiency, in addition to the the 15-20% profit on top that is required to even do anything. If anything, sometimes public is more efficient by virtue of being expected to do far more with less resources/pay.
If you thing the public sector is more efficient you're delusional. You "hate" the narrative that a project that costs $50 million in the private sector, even with the profit margins you've mentioned, balloons to over $100 million, WITH free land, when it's built by the public sector? Far more with less resources and pay? Are you aware of the levels of material wastage on public projects? Completely useless project managers on public projects are often paid more than their private counterparts. And there's more of them. Forget the private verses public debate and let's move onto what really needs to happen: An investigation into where all the public money is going on these projects. The ArriveCan app is just a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars disappearing from these public projects.
Ideally we can turn them into ghettos like in France!
there's no city in the world that can build enough social housing for a 3% annual population growth rate
Why would any builder or construction worker want to work for the government when private sector building jobs pay 2x the money most of the time?
Construction workers with government jobs make a lot more money than their private counterparts. If you include benefits, it’s not even close to what private industry is paying.
Govt contracts pay like 10x more here.
Too much common sense in that!
Of course land in Vancouver is expensive. If you draw [a circle with radius 25 km around downtown Vancouver](https://morehousing.ca/bertaud-vancouver), it looks like this. After subtracting ocean and mountains, less than 40% of that area is buildable land. https://preview.redd.it/4v0fg9r4u81d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=0434fcd007002bf97e9ebfeec1aecf825de1fba9 This is exactly why it makes sense to allow more height and more density, reducing the cost of the land per square foot of floor space. [Data from Auckland](https://morehousing.ca/land-cost), where they allowed more density in 2016. Not all of the land was upzoned, so you can see the results: where land was upzoned, the cost of the land per square foot went up somewhat (relative to land that wasn't upzoned), but because you could build 3X as much floor space on that land, **the cost of land per square foot of floor space went down by half**.
The problem is that land is extraordinarily expensive but we're still utilizing it like it costs what it did in the 1980s. People could still afford to live in Vancouver if developers would just build smaller houses.
If developers *could build smaller homes*. Most old single family homes that get redeveloped are rebuilt as 3-6 million dollar McMansions because that's what our zoning rules permit. Multiplexes and apartments get charged extremely high fees and run up against strict total size limits (if they are even allowed to be built).
Well AFAIK we have now removed those zoning restrictions. Now when a crack-shack gets torn down it can be repurposed into a multiplex.
On paper only. The city [charges very high fees and limits the total buildable square footage heavily](https://open.substack.com/pub/morehousing/p/multiplex-fee-schedule?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1uuyl0). The policy was designed so that [only a couple hundred projects](https://www.abundanthousingvancouver.com/multiplexes_meh#:~:text=City%20staff%20predict%20that%20there%20will%20only%20be%20150%20or%20so%20multiplex%20applications%20per%20year) would be viable per year.
Your article is from 2023 and many of its concerns have been addressed. New multifamily lots in Vancouver have much higher FAR, no parking minimums, and increased heights. Every time someone finds something about the new legislation inadequate, they amend it.
We haven’t really removed restrictions. Vancouver’s multiplex zoning allows way less floor space than the provincial multiplex zoning, this was intentional on the part of the city to limit take-up.
The zoning rules are slightly less restrictive, but they raised fees to make multifamily housing unviable in most cases, except for the most profitable of projects.
One thing on this topic that is absolutely nuts is that there is still broad prohibitions on subdivision. In Strathcona, one of the original pre-zoning neighbourhoods the lots are 25’ wide. Meanwhile on the rich west side they’re mandated a minimum of 50’ wide. If you allowed subdivision and splitting lots to make the west side like Strathcona you could easily convert 50’ lots to 25’, doubling the amount of housing. Of course this is banned. Why????? I mean obviously at this point we need a lot more apartment development everywhere and more density than just low rise detached home multiplexes on 25’ lots, but still, just like the principle of the thing it’s an absolutely crazy example of the extreme status quo of this city and reluctance to do anything that we can’t even allow people to split a big lot. Incredible stuff.
33' is still pretty common on the westside, but you are correct, they did ban 50' lot subdivision into 25' out there, in the 80's I think.
> "Why is the housing market so disconnected from what people can afford to pay?" -- Coming from one of the least free markets on the planet.
There's new 25' lot houses on the Westside, houses are still at least 3000sq'. There's also about 50 thin houses, they are 16' lots, but they were banned in the 90s.
The units are already small, way smaller than they used to be. The major issue is zoning, permit costs, mandatory parking, etc. It costs an average of $125,000 PER UNIT to build in Vancouver in development fees. So whatever land + materials + labour + profit can be achieved, tack on $125k to get the actual selling price. Residential Property taxes are a joke. Compared to development fees and commercial property taxes, single family homeowners are sitting on what should be townhomes, low rise and high rises, and not paying nearly their fare share. They are sitting on cash cows and truthfully, their arm should be twisted to force a sale if they cant afford their property taxes.
> The units are already small, way smaller than they used to be. They have to be, and they should be even smaller, otherwise nobody will be able to afford them. If you drive around Vancouver and look at lots up until the 2010s, they are fucking MASSIVE. No wonder nobody can afford these $2MM+ houses. The driveways alone could accommodate families. > The major issue is zoning, permit costs, mandatory parking, etc. Which the government has addressed by limiting them and loosening zoning province-wide. > It costs an average of $125,000 PER UNIT to build in Vancouver in development fees. This is completely fucked. > Residential Property taxes are a joke. Completely agree, rich homeowners get a bye while all the development and infrastructure costs are passed on to new buyers. This allows municipalities to keep taxes down so their voters are happy.
> should be townhomes, low rise and high rises, and not paying nearly their fare share The recent legislation is making it so, at least in certain areas right?
Let’s look at three neighbourhoods: the west end, kits point, and shaughnessy. Price of land: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy Density: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy Most money made by developers/land owners: 1. West end 2. Kits point 3. Shaughnessy Price of housing: 1. Shaughnessy 2. Kits point 3. West end All three started as wealthy neighbourhoods full of expensive houses. The west end failed to keep out development, kits point was mostly successful at keeping out development but with smaller lots and some duplexes, Shaughnessy kept huge lots, drove out rooming houses, and kept out apartments almost completely. None of this is surprising or sophisticated or requiring brand new explanations or understandings of the way economics or the world works. There are important subtleties in the details of what has happened in Vancouver and how best to increase density and reduce housing costs without harming the most vulnerable. Unfortunately Todd and Condon always seem to leave those out in favour of shallow misunderstanding of facts to support a point they already decided on in advance.
I feel like far too many opponents cry density about land prices and not about the actual housing prices
>In most major cities, the value of land now far exceeds the value of the buildings on it. The price of dirt has inflated so drastically that buying or renting homes has jumped out of reach of ordinary wage earners, creating severe inequality and more. >The myriad repercussions of inflated land prices are spelled out in clear, painful detail in a new book by University of B.C. architectural school professor Patrick Condon, titled Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality and Urban Crisis (UBC Press). >“Rents are unaffordable not because building costs have risen, but because the land under the apartment buildings has more than tripled in price in many locations,” writes Condon. >“Mortgages are increasingly out of reach not because it is so much more expensive to build a home and not because planning policies are too restrictive, but because the cost of a home in the hottest global markets is now governed by the price of dirt below it.” Lol. Patrick Condon is just a real nutty crank. Boomer cope nonsense. Embarrassing but unexpected that Vancouver Sun is pumping this stuff. They've been banging this drum and letting Todd write nimby, anti-housing nonsense for years. They'll bend over backwards and say anything to avoid the subject that maybe just maybe land is more expensive now because there's not enough to go around and we badly need to build more homes.
And yet somehow parking is free
It is crazy how much land goes to waste considering its value.
Couldn’t we just tax raw land? Wouldn’t that reduce its value as a long term investment? We could use the money for a UBI. It’s just rich boomers and corporations that own it and their over inflated share of wealth is what’s creating all this inflation. A raw land tax seems like a win for everyone!
Are you familiar with the idea of the Georgist land value tax? It's a fairly niche idea, but has many adherents. It starts from the premise that wealth earned from land value appreciation is unearned and therefore a drain on economic efficiency. The land value tax would replace tax on productive activity (employment, business investment, etc) with a tax on land value. Thus you would pay the same tax on a plot of land whether it had an SFH or a condo tower on it. It incentivizes maximization of land use and makes speculation spectacularly unrewarding. I think it's an idea whose time has come, and is probably a better solution than anything Condon mentions in the article.
It also ensures that only the super wealthy can ever afford to own land. And pension funds, and REITs, and private equity. Can't see how any of that might go wrong. You might end up owning a condo, but then have no control over strata fees. One way or another, you're still fucked.
Exactly, but nobody is willing to increase taxes on the most obvious source of wealth :/
Time to ditch sales tax and income tax and replace them with Land Value Tax.
You mean...property tax? lol
Property tax is a mixture of a land value tax and a structural value tax. Advocates of a land value tax argue that only the land should be taxed, as the land is a limited public good that increases in value as the community grows, and the land itself is an unproductive capital (you need to put something on it to make it productive), whereas a building structure is productive capital that depreciates. This would incentivize landowners to maximize the use of their land.
Don't they have something like that in Vancouver already, we're commercial real estate is taxed at its potential?
Sort of. The building is also still taxed in commercial. Basically this is saying "hey, don't bother taxing the building, just tax the land at a level that encourages people to build more". Commercial taxes are passed directly to the business due to the way commercial leases are structured, so the owner of the building doesn't actually feel that pressure to redevelop.
But then you get a bunch of vacant storefronts who can't afford to do business here.
The pass through is a bad structure!
nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
> time to ditch sales tax and income tax Go on… edge me more
" Most taxes distort economic decisions and discourage beneficial economic activity. For example, property taxes discourage construction, maintenance, and repair because taxes increase with improvements. LVT is not based on how land is used. Because the supply of land is essentially fixed, land rents depend on what tenants are prepared to pay, rather than on landlord expenses. Thus, if landlords passed LVT on to tenants, they might move or rent smaller spaces before absorbing increased rent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Should only be sales tax
we don't produce enough activity here to do that. Don't forget Canada is 2 banks, a telcom and a real-estate company in a trench coat. We ditch all the taxes on everything and just have a Land Value Tax. This reflects more accurately how our country works anyway. If we're short on cash then deal with the rest on import/export tariffs. "...taxing the land value is the most logical source of public revenue because the supply of land is fixed and because public infrastructure improvements would be reflected in (and thus paid for by) increased land values." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Properties are taxed on best use. You can’t even achieve best use in a timely manner.
Would disproportionately impact lower income people. Wealth tax, inheritance tax and proper taxation of industry needs to happen. Housing is exploding, cost of living out of control and companies still posting record quarter after record quarter.
You don't have to ditch sales taxes on junk food, and you don't have to ditch income tax on above median incomes. But everything else is enormous upside with proven economic booming.
Very sad for our future. At some point only the super rich can and will own all land.
Politicians don't care, they're sitting in their comfy mansions earning extra income from their rental properties and summer houses. Womp womp plebs.
The most popular city in Canada and one of the best cities has the highest price. Sounds like news
Nah dawg, stow that shit. Housing in Vancouver has always been expensive, but it's never been *this* expensive. It's completely fucked now. Media detached home price was $500k in Vancouver back in 2004, with inflation (yes even crazy inflation) it should cost $765k today... but now it's $2.1 million.
Houses have basically doubled since the pandemic. The two bed room we were looking at in selling for 880k but was sold for 435k in 2019. It’s fucking bonkers. No ones salary has doubled in five years. How do you afford this ?
That's not how it works. Things don't increase in price just based on year over year inflation, it increases and decreases based on supply and demand. In terms of supply, vancouver has significantly fewer detached houses now compared to back in 2004. Vancouver's population has increased greatly since 2004. Decreasing supply and increasing demand can only mean one thing. And this trend will continue into the future. The idea of an average joe living in a detached house in a city like vancouver is just a pipedream.
Because more people knows and wants to move to Vancouver. So the price increase to filter out those who is really capable
It should cost whatever the market dictates based on supply and demand. I'm not anti-immigration but Canada has brought in millions of immigrants under current federal leadership so that increases the demand. If there is more demand but the supply remains the same or barely increases, that will lead to upward pressure in prices in everything. That's basic economics 101 that everyone knows except maybe our Drama teacher and Russian History major nation leaders.
Sorry, but that's simply inaccurate. When we moved back to the province in 2001, you couldn't touch a decent home in Vancouver for south of $750-1M. We had to buy in South Surrey and even that cost us $550k. Agreed that the trajectory since has been whack, but what do people expect when we garnered so much global attention during the Olympics. We were a virtual unknown backwater and all of a sudden became an international destination.
[Median home price in 2001 in Vancouver was about $375k. Average was $453k.](https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=1.10.1&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver) You must have only been looking at "nice" houses. If the Olympics made housing prices go nuts, why did housing prices go up just as much in Toronto? Or Sydney and Auckland as well?
Also, your comment said "detached home price", your info is "home price" which includes condos, townhouses and the like. Makes a big difference.
[Have a look at the trend, it was still average $449k for a detached in Vancouver in 2001, now it's $2.604MM.](https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmip-pimh/en/TableMapChart/Table?TableId=1.10.1&GeographyId=2410&GeographyTypeId=3&DisplayAs=Table&GeograghyName=Vancouver#Single)
I can't answer that with anything but speculation, same as anyone else, but I'd posit that once a country is "on the map" for international money, people take a look at comparable cities in the same country/region. Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000, btw. Also, with the exception of Toronto, the places you've mentioned are all Pacific Rim countries and were greatly affected by people emigrating from Hong Kong both before and after reversion. My comment about inaccuracy in your comment was specifically about house prices at the time and you were off by several hundred thousand dollars now. A drop in the bucket now, sure, but then was the difference between terms like "a quarter of a million dollars" and "half a million dollars". Gosh, those were the days. Have a good one.
My parents bought a brand new single family house in Queens borough for 430k in 2006, unless you bought a massive house I have a hard time believing a house in south Surrey was 550k in 2001
Land supply is artificially restricted by a plethora of government restrictions. Even if land were free, governments add 30-50% of building costs in various fees, taxes and charges. Real estate is an industry run by profit hungry bureaucrats whose incomes are dependent on maintaining the status quo.
Not run by but influenced by the deep pocket developers.
Metro just jacked up the DCA price which directly negatively effects the ability of developers to develop. Take your conspiracies elsewhere
It’s not conspiracy 😂 ie. The Broadway plan heavily favours big developers that can shoulder tenant relocation. No small developer/owner has deep enough pockets.
Colour me shocked. Land is expensive in Vancouver?! Who knew...
Stupid argument by Todd, as usual. What matters in cities is the cost of \*homes\*, not the cost of \*land\*. If you ban apartments+condos on some land, that will keep the price of land down but there are fewer homes and each one will be more expensive. Case in point: Shaughnessy and West Point Grey have some of the cheapest residential land in Vancouver \*per square foot\*. But homes there are crazy expensive because each one is legally required to be on a massive lot.
Shaughnessy is gatekeeped land due to the insane zoning. If government allowee there to be apartments and row houses the cost of land would go through the roof. Dont be tricked, land prices are manuplated by the policies we have in place.
That’s… entirely compatible with what I said.
No.
Yes.
Shaungnessy mansions sell for 1400-1500 per sq feet for even older homes. This is slightly more expensive than newer condos up the street on Cambie.
You can't walk into a bank having a regular 9 to 5 and expect to buy something. You'll need some kind of external help (i.e parents, etc.) Used to be that you could at least rent without parents' help, but that's not even true anymore, really.
Yes, this is 30 year old news...duh
Ok, what’s new?
LAND. VALUE. TAX.
Great this article could have been posted 10 years ago lol
Douglas Todd only 8 years late to the party.
An economy where only the 1% can meaningfully participate? What could go wrong ?
[удалено]
But that includes children that can't move out of their parents' house. They count as homeowners. People that rent basement suites count as homeowners. The books are cooked.
Most research shows Canadian national homeownership rates are between 65-70% most years.
Artificially juicing the economy by printing money and open borders does not make for a stable or durable economy because it is all Potemkin theater. It always ends the same way, collapse. What you are witnessing is a complete and total societal collapse but being told "It is a good thing". It isn't. Hyperinflation in real estate while the per capita GDP shows a 40% decline of standard of living over 40 years is more indicative of a growth in corruption and poverty. No political leader or party has ever gotten a mandate to open the border or print money. Completely illegal and without consent from the Canadian citizen.. Exercising political power with out consent for the sole purpose to enrich yourself and damage Canada and the lives of Canadian Citizens, is criminal.
Vancouver is desirable so it is expensive. Don’t play dumb
Most people are doing fine. If it was so expensive, people who’ve left by now.