City’s housing plan getting a refresh
HOMELESSNESS STRATEGY: Two-day summit an opportunity to look at what has and hasn’t worked
It became clear by the halfway point of Vancouver’s 10-year housing and homelessness strategy that the plan wasn’t about to resolve the city’s growing affordability crisis.
Next week the city is hosting experts from around the world at a housing summit intended to help fuel a rethink of the plan.
While staff say the midway review wasn’t spurred on by the crisis but simply good public policy practice, change can’t come soon enough.
The strategy was built in 2011, before the cost and availability of housing in all forms became an all-consuming concern for city staff and residents alike. At the time, Vancouver’s housing woes remained — in the minds of most — a problem restricted to street homelessness.
Five years on, that enduring problem is now joined by others that include a near-zero rental vacancy rate and a hot real estate market that collectively squeeze residents of most income brackets and — if you take city manager Sadhu Johnston’s word for it — threaten to reduce the province’s single-biggest economic powerhouse to a place of leisure.
“Are we going to be a resort/retirement community?” Johnston said in a recent interview. “Are we going to be a vibrant, dynamic place that people — young people — can afford and want to be in? We have an opportunity to shape that still. This is a unique point in time for us to catch a lot of this before it’s too late.”
Johnston said Vancouver isn’t alone in struggling with affordability problems and the upcoming Re: Address summit is an opportunity to learn from experts from other cities that have hit their crisis points long before this one did.
It’s also an opportunity to look at what has and hasn’t worked here.
Johnston listed a few successes: the delivery of protected rental housing and single-room occupancy stock (not enough on both counts, he noted). And while the strategy didn’t prevent the housing crisis that continues to grip the city, he praised it for being forward-thinking at the time.
“When we launched that strategy five years ago, housing was not the conversation it is now … And our mayor and council were in some ways out in front of this, identifying it as a priority and having a strategy that kind of for the first time talked about a continuum (of housing needs).”
Anne McMullin, president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute, had a more critical take when asked for a sense of how things were going.
“We aren’t increasing the supply of affordable housing to the degree that is needed, we aren’t building rental to the degree that is needed, nor do I think we are providing strong leadership,” she said.
McMullin described the city as predominately zoned for single-family homes with most of its population jammed into the remaining areas. And while people may say they want to see more affordable housing, she said recent attempts to densify have been held up by opposition from residents that ground council to a halt. She raised the four years it took for the city to pass its Grandview-Woodland community plan as one example.
“I’m not saying that those people don’t have valid concerns, but I don’t think that we can talk about increasing the supply of affordable housing while limiting the ability to increase supply,” she said.
While the city’s ability to boost housing is in some ways reliant on federal and provincial interest and action, some levers are pulled at the municipal level, and zoning is one of them. Johnston also spoke of the resistance staff and councillors face in pushing for density and affordability.
But his words were hardly those of capitulation.
“If we’re going to really tackle this there are people that probably won’t like some of the steps that we need to take,” he said.
Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, the city’s general manager of community services, said the biggest concern for staff as they rethink Vancouver’s housing strategy is: “How do we ensure that families that want to rent or own can stay in the city? There’s a risk that families will leave because they can’t afford both child care and rent or a mortgage.”
The city’s refreshed housing strategy is slated to reach council early next year. In the meantime, the two-day Re: Address summit kicks off Oct. 26. It’s invite-only, but there are public events through the week.