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Vancouver’s community amenity contributions: Making density livable? Or making housing unaffordable?

April 24th, 2012 · 108 Comments

Nothing like talking about how to make housing more affordable to get people going on everything they think is wrong with the world.

One target in the talks: Vancouver’s community-amenity contributions — that money the city asks developers to give back to the city when their land is rezoned to allow them to build more on it than the previous zoning. For about the last year, developers have been grumbling about this practice in Vancouver, even as other municipalities are starting to extract it as well to pay for community services.

Architect/development consultant Michael Geller took a run at this in a Vancouver Sun news story here.

Former city planner Brent Toderian swings back at one of Geller’s main arguments in this message, which he’s sent out to various people:

The main thing to be refuted, is the notion that municipal costs “just
get added onto the price”. Do private sector costs get added on?
Marketing fees? Design fees? No, they get factored into land price
(bringing land price down, as it should be), get dealt with thru
contingencies in the budget it they are higher than expected, or they
dip into profits (usually beyond the 15%). By definition they can’t
just be added to the price, as people will only pay what supply and
demand will determine the value to be. Costs affect profit (especially
if they’ve overpaid for land) and land cost (if they’ve paid a
reasonable price), and viability in weaker markets, NOT price.

This notion, I believe, is a campaign to have ordinary people turn
against public benefits by suggesting they are contributing to
unaffordability. And its working to some degree – amazingly I’m
hearing some ordinary people saying that public benefits should be
waived. Not private sector costs, like high marketing fees in this
city. Only public costs going to the commonwealth. When i remind them
such fees pay for rental and social housing, heritage, parks, daycare,
culture, etc – many of the things that make density livable and
diverse, they usually change their mind, or say something like
“perhaps taxes should be raised instead.” The whole debate is based on
the premise that CAC’s get passed on to buyers. They don’t. This
campaign should be refuted.

As an aside, not sure where they got CAC’s at 85%. Range is typically 70-80%.

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  • Lewis N. Villegas

    “The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has estimated $123 billion infrastructure deficit going up at $5 billion per year (2007). Municipalities cannot afford replace existing infrastructure, on which any new development relies, let alone maintain it to its full life cycle. So what does this mean for housing affordability? Significant property tax increases (main source of revenue for municipalities), significant fee increases (what you have been experiencing and debating) to go with reduced services…”

    Kim Fowler 91 [emphasis mine]

    If we move from SFR (12 units/gross acre) to urban houses (75 units/gross acre), I wonder what the bump would be in municipal infrastructure (sewer, water, power, telecom)? If we can grow without having to install new infrastructure to support the tower point loads, maybe incremental growth has strategical advantages that we would overlook at a significant loss.

    We have calculated that we could double the 2005 population in the city with just such a switch of house type on the arterials.

    The other important factor is that the 6.25x bump in density would provide that other kind of municipal revenue that doesn’t get enough attention:

    New taxes, or a tax increment.

    Since this intensification is on the arterials, and the arterials are likely the right place to implement transportation, some of the road up grade can be charged to the new residential, and another part can be charged to transit implementation.

    Thus, ultimately, the urban form that we chose for residential intensification has very much to do with how sustainability pencil’s out into the future.

    The reason it makes sense to build residential hi-rise downtown is that it makes no sense to have a downtown tower zone that is fully serviced, but empty 50% of the time. Make it live/work and piggy back on the previous urbanism’s investments (or excesses, depending on your point of view).

    What we have yet to come to terms with in our city is that we have been cycling through into a new phase in building city & region. All the more disappointing, since this process is happening throughout North America, and with important qualifications, the rest of the western world.

    We settled (expanded) to the west in the 1860s – 1880s. That phase more or less played itself out with the introduction of the automobile as the backbone of mass transportation (1930-1950).

    From the 1940’s to the 1980’s we built the parallel cities: the downtown that emptied at night and on weekends; the suburbs that emptied during the work day.

    We are now suffering in a kind of free for all with residential towers building in the downtowns; transit implementation stepping up to replace the automobile as the primary form of going to work; and walking returning as a primary means of getting around.

    For all of these reasons, the incremental intensification of our suburban lands—Vancouver consolidated its suburbs during the expansion of 1929—stands as the most balanced and reasonable approach for our next phase of urban development.

  • jolson

    The reason why we have CAC’s is that they are politically expedient compared to raising taxes for capital funding. Consequently developers take the heat from neighbourhoods and Council reaps the benefits. CAC’s effect affordability when they are too high and land deals can not be made. As to the future………….there are many issues, operating and replacement costs among them, but it is unlikely that ever increasing density is the end game for this merry-go-round.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    The reason why we have CAC’s is that they are politically expedient compared to raising taxes for capital funding.

    A more expedient process would simply collect fees on intensification dictated by local plans.

    The problem of the Rize is that we are seeing a downtown process foisted on a local neighbourhood. A famous urbanist once said:

    “If it don’t fit, you must acquit!”

    There are better ways of building density.

  • jolson

    Re 103
    I recommend a reading of Cameron Grey’s most excellent history of CAC’s for a good understanding of this subject. See 14 above.
    Re 98
    Urbanism is not a “product”. It is a process. It has nothing to do with “communal bonding”. Urbanism is not good or bad. “The third stage of urbanism”………… don’t you mean urban design? ……”urbanism must provide a better bargain.” …….”giving up personal freedoms in order to live in great numbers.” What be they?
    The trouble with these various urban-“isms” is that they are mental prisons, solitary confinements disconnected from the world that we live in. The historical significance of Mesopotamia lies in the invention of plant and animal domestication leading to the first agrarian societies. Not every society choose this path, some have remained hunters and gatherers to this very day while great civilizations have risen and fallen time and time again. As history teaches us there is no such thing as sustainable urbanism.

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Join Robert McNutt and myself for a walking tour of Mount Pleasant, tomorrow starting at 1 pm at the Quebec Manor apartments. More details here:

    http://wp.me/p1mj4z-CP

    PS

    Jolson @ 104—join us, you may be (Mount) pleasantly surprised to discover a whole new way of seeing and understanding urbanism as a human product—“la chose humaine par excellence” according to Claude Lévi-Strauss (No connection to the denim industry).

  • MB

    On urbanism, here’s a source that espouses a practical perspective (i.e. non-theroretical, actually built projects):

    http://www.calthorpe.com/publications

  • jolson

    Calthorpe has a theoretical perspective based on the notion of perpetual growth. If shaping growth is really the issue it should have been solved long ago given the rate of graduation in schools of planning and architecture. The trouble is that growth itself is the issue as in no more capacity for this little old planet.

  • Jassie

    Thanks for this sharing .
    I was not aware of this “Vancouver’s community-amenity contributions — that money the city asks developers to give back to the city when their land is rezoned to allow them to build more on it than the previous zoning”
    This should be done like this only this is the only solution for the builders and developers

    jassie
    “http://www.thevancouverrealestate.ca/”

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