BC Business
If Metro Vancouver wants to tackle housing affordability and climate change, building more detached homes and doubling down on condo towers isn't the answer, a new report argues.
If Metro Vancouver wants to tackle housing affordability and climate change, building more detached homes and doubling down on condo towers isn’t the answer.
That’s the message from a new report by the B.C. office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives(CCPA), which calls for the region to increase density by boosting its supply of “missing middle” housing.
Getting there will require a regulatory shift, argues the report’s author, CCPA senior economist Marc Lee. To that end, Lee suggests:
Opening up detached housing zones across the region to double or triple current densities.
Focusing on the missing middle, including a range of housing types from row housing and multiplexes to small apartments and alternative tenure arrangements like co-ops, community land trusts and co-housing. The emphasis would be on small-lot development with minimal land assembly and parking requirements.
Requiring all new market development contribute to greater affordability by keeping land prices in check so that gains from upzoning would not disproportionately go to existing landowners.
Supporting nonmarket development by nonprofit housing developers, whose mission is to create more affordable housing. A stronger public sector presence in developing new affordable housing is recommended, with waived fees and expedited approval processes.
Developing a robust system of renter protections to protect existing affordable rental suites and include rights of first refusal, temporary accommodation and buyouts.
The provincial government could play a key role in these changes, Lee maintains—for example, by using its rezoning powers and letting developers build nonprofit housing on public land.
“Our region’s population will continue to increase in the coming decades, and it’s time to build the housing we need for the future,” Lee said in a release. “The decisions we make now will have an impact for decades down the road, and we must address the critical issues of affordable housing shortfalls and the climate emergency.”
As the report points out, higher-density housing is better for the environment. The idea: if people live closer to workplaces, public services, shopping and other amenities, and in more energy-efficient, multi-unit buildings, their environmental and carbon footprint will be smaller. At the same time, reducing the need for car ownership can lower the cost of building new housing and monthly costs for households, the report states.
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Landowners might not like the CCPA’s proposed upzoning, but according to Lee, it comes down to fairness. “At the heart of this conversation is the unequal distribution of urban land enforced by zoning, the rules that specify what type of buildings can be built where.”