Single-family zoning contributes to housing shortage, says UBC professor
There may be no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation, but that’s not stopping sociologist Nathan Lauster.
The associate professor at the University of B.C. recently examined how Metro Vancouverites use their bedrooms in order to find solutions to the local housing crisis.
Using Statistics Canada data, Lauster counted 459,994 extra bedrooms in homes across Metro, estimating that about one-fifth of all bedrooms aren’t occupied. (For his study, he allotted one bedroom to each member of the household.)
Lauster also discovered that the region’s spare bedrooms are overwhelmingly found in what he calls “super-sized dwellings,” meaning those with five bedrooms or more. Metro has more five-bedroom-plus homes than both the Toronto and Montreal metropolitan areas.
“We’ve got way more mansions than any other metropolitan area in Canada,” Lauster said in an interview Friday. “The reason for that is a lot of our land is set aside for single-family houses.”
About 80 per cent of Metro’s residential land is zoned single-family. That hampers the construction of two- to four-bedroom homes, such as low-rise apartments and townhouses, which are ideal for housing families.
“We should be filling up that missing middle between apartments and mansions,” said Lauster. “Why are we keeping townhouses out of any neighbourhood?”
The City of Vancouver is working to address the issue. In mid-September, city council referred several rezoning proposals to public hearing. A city-owned site on Main Street is slated for a nine-storey building with 145 social-housing units, while a proposal to rezone two single-family lots on Oak Street would create 50 new homes, including 27 two- and three-bedroom units, in an eight-storey building. More rezoned single-family lots on West 45th Avenue would add dozens of family sized units to the city’s housing stock.
In the meantime, people looking for housing in Metro have had to become creative.
While researching his book, The Death and Life of the Single-Family House, Lauster interviewed a single mother who rented a mansion in a wealthy Vancouver neighbourhood. To afford it, she shared the rent with another single mom and both took boarders.
“There seems to be a lot of unique living situations in Vancouver,” said the sociologist.
The census data shows that over 40 per cent of residents in fivebedroom homes are living in what Lauster calls “creative households,” meaning anything other than living alone, as a couple or as a couple with kids. In the rest of the country that number is 30 per cent.
For a time, UBC Prof. Julian Dierkes found a creative solution to his housing needs. About a decade ago he bought a house in Kitsilano with an acquaintance. The single-family home had been separated by a previous owner and the upstairs and downstairs had separate entrances. The co-owners, both with young families, shook hands on the deal and secured a mortgage together.
Dierkes said the agreement worked well, but after five years and more children, both agreed it was time to part ways. They sold, just as the market was beginning to heat up. Wanting to stay on the west side, Dierkes began renting.
“There aren’t a lot of options for a faculty member who wants to live close to campus,” he said. “One of the huge disadvantages of UBC’s location is that it’s in the most expensive part of town.”
Dierkes still wonders if things would have been different if UBC had approved a faculty co-housing proposal for the east side of campus, instead of pushing ahead with development.
“With one stroke of a pen, they could have settled 25 families,” he said. “But it was all about price maximization for them.”
Housing expert Tom Davidoff said the “market should have its way” in places where higher density makes sense.
“In North Vancouver, for example, I think people would build more than the zoning allows if they could,” he said.
But the director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate said zoning is only one part of the affordability crisis.
“Adding supply will have an impact on prices, but we need to address demand as well,” he said, referencing foreign investment and property speculation.