A New View of Affordable Vancouver Housing

Vancouver's new affordable housing initiative may be full of holes, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Nice to see that Vancouver city council is trying to do something about the city’s worst – and little acknowledged – economic problem.

Vancouver affordable housing | BCBusiness

Vancouver’s new affordable housing initiative may be full of holes, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Nice to see that Vancouver city council is trying to do something about the city’s worst – and little acknowledged – economic problem.

I’m speaking, of course, of its strategic housing plan that proposes to provide $42 million in land and capital grants over 10 years to create 38,000 new affordable homes. Presumably, some of those homes will be used by actual families who do much of the work that keeps this city running.

Of course, there’s an election coming up and this smells considerably of an election platform in which the ruling Vision group can take the high moral ground. And, I have no doubt that developers and real estate investors – which is half the city – will scream at the idea of profit limits on land speculation.

But mainly, the plan will have to contend with the ridiculous and rampant belief in this city that if you can’t afford to buy a house in Vancouver, then tough luck – go somewhere else.

As long as anyone can remember, Vancouver has featured this kind of thinking.

This city was built on greed and growth: the idea has always been to get yours and make big bucks by eventually selling to new arrivals desperate for places to live. That kind of pirating has been continuing in some form or other since the city began. It’s almost become an institutionalized belief that everyone should own a home, preferably on Vancouver’s west side, no matter the cost. After all, investment in Vancouver real estate is the only way to make money.

But we’re no longer a raw place carved out of the wilderness, depending on newcomers for our livelihood; we’re a largish city, and we need people here that do more than just buy real estate and ride it to riches they can then spend somewhere else.

Some people actually have to do the real work. And they have to be able to afford to live reasonably close to where they do it.

Apparently – if recent news stories are any indication – we’re losing those people because of this ridiculous concept. Statistics now provide some proof to anecdotal understanding that people are fleeing the city because they can’t afford to live here.

So, yes, the city’s plan may be airy and conceptual; it may be overloaded with do-gooder thinking for the most down and out and at the expense of working families; it may be simple election rhetoric.

But at least it’s put front and centre a problem that no one wanted to talk about.