Missing middle
“There’s a lot of research that shows that as you create more housing, it slows property price appreciation.”
But it takes years for housing stock to be developed, Menendian said, which means prices won’t ease off immediately. “These are generational problems.”
He also said B.C.’s policy to allow four units on a single-family lot isn’t enough to dramatically shift the landscape. “You need to have between six to 10 units. You’re not going to be able to do it in four units, quads, duplexes, triplexes. That’s not going to get you to housing affordability.”
Upzoning policies, Andersen said, only address one of two problems related to the housing crisis: the lack of abundance — or housing supply.
“The abundance problem is there aren’t enough homes for everybody and that’s going to drive the prices up into a spiral and we all get stuck in this cruel game of musical chairs,” he said.
The other problem, Andersen said, is distribution, which means some people have way more resources and housing than they need, while others have nothing at all. That can be addressed through social housing programs such as co-ops and below-market housing.
“So from my perspective, you should be doing both of those things simultaneously and you should not be pretending that one is going to solve the other.”
Eby has promised to lay out a new vision later this year for social housing in B.C. through the NDP’s B.C. Builds program.
During a recent public meeting in Greater Victoria, Eby said progress is being made and the government has compiled an inventory of available public or First Nations lands where it can partner with private developers to build below-market housing and units with rent-to-own schemes.
Eby has also pressed for more federal dollars to fund below-market housing, slamming Ottawa in March for a federal budget that delivered no new money for social housing and gave no commitments that federal land would be freed up.
Asked about the impacts of upzoning policies in cities already forging ahead with the experiment and what he hopes to see in B.C., Eby said: “We are not California, and we don’t want to be California.
“We’re British Columbia. And we have British Columbian challenges and we’re gonna address them with British Columbian solutions informed by approaches taken in other jurisdictions to make sure that they work for us right here at home.”