Metro market’s options are no fit for families: report
Metro needs medium-density housing, Greater Vancouver Board of Trade says
More than single-family detached homes and highrise condominiums are needed if the region’s affordability crisis is to be brought under control, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade says.
The report was to be released at a board housing forum on Tuesday after nearly a year of research, board president Iain Black said.
Black said his group’s last economic scorecard in May rated Vancouver’s affordability at 15th out of 17 cities surveyed, with only Shanghai and Hong Kong rated more unaffordable.
“Out of that report came a number of priorities, including our inability to attract and retain 25- to 35-year-olds, and that is directly tied to affordable housing and public transit,” Black said. “These middle-income earners either have young families or want young families, and they want to choose communities that are desirable to live in, but also physically located close to where they work. We have a great disadvantage in attracting that demographic right now.”
The housing report makes seven recommendations. The main proposal would see medium-density projects such as duplexes, courtyard apartments, townhouses, laneway houses and secondary suites given higher priority, to better attract young families that can’t fit comfortably in a small highrise apartment but cannot afford a single-detached home.
The recommendations call for a more developer-friendly environment to promote these options, dubbed “missing middle” housing, by creating clear deadlines for project approval, allowing previously accredited developers to get fast-track approvals, and changing the community amenity contribution rules from time-consuming case-by-case negotiations to a set price per unit or per square foot.
Black said some projects in Metro Vancouver are taking five to seven years to get from conception to construction.
“You cannot legislate or bylaw your way out of this problem. You need to do it with partnerships with the people who actually build these things, who are actually putting capital and shovels into the ground,” Black said.
A number of the report recommendations are taking shape in some cities. The City of North Vancouver, for example, processes development permit application and building permit applications at the same time, instead of requiring applicants to get one permit approval before seeking the next. Black said such changes are still the exception rather than the rule, and a “cultural change” is needed at the municipal level.
“This is not an indictment of the status quo,” he said. “It is, however, an honest assessment that things need to change. And they must change immediately … and the municipalities’ responses have been positive. They all realize that we need to change, and the current response is not working. This is the start of this conversation.”