Much as I abhor any kind of political and bureaucrat social engineering, I think the right approach to the question isn’t so much what the home buyer needs but what the city needs. City affordable housing policy shouldn’t be determined solely by appeasing unhappy consumers no matter how tempting that is politically. As has been said before, the original False Creek approach I think has proved this principle. Individuals benefited and that’s great, but much more importantly the city benefited.

A tricky question, but families today and of generations past have survived in 1000 sqft or less. Families can “expect” more square footage if they sacrifice disposable income, their time (ie taking on renters), or location.

The difference these days is that with real rates so low it is next to impossible to save to purchase property without financing. That is a marked difference for the “professional” incomes of the past.

“the solidly middle-class, middle-income young couple” equates to “$95,000- $120,000-a-year”?

We are not in Toronto, let alone San Francisco, where even this income range is still above media family incomes there…for all families of all ages, and not even “young couples.” The median family income in Vancouver as of 2013 was $73,390 (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/famil107a-eng.htm). This is median, and thus solidly and definitionally “middle income.”

Again, this figure takes into account ALL families. Younger couples, depending on how exactly you define “younger,” had median census gross incomes in the $42,000 – $48,000 range. If they have children and one partner is working part time or not at all, this number plummets. Yes, this more reasonable and empirically-determined income figure is less than half of that of your assumed “middle-income young couple.”

Please start with both accurate and truthful income figures before twisting definition of “middle” and “young” as horrendously as our city officials redefine “affordability” as “Something somebody can afford” and “homelessness” as “street homelessness.” And then, finally, please stop judging the amount of square footage–inside and outside–that a growing young family needs in relation to what you and partner have.

I wish to concur with TheSidewalkBallet that south False Creek represents exactly the kind of successful and truly affordable housing program that Vancouver needs to replicate today, and every few years after that. It cannot be said that it cannot be done, for the REAL median family of Vancouver…let alone for the truly needy.

Vancouver has not been zoning, requiring, or building units greater than 700-800 sf for decades, except of the few odd luxury penthouses in the multi-million-dollar range. There is a hint now that this might be changing, but I am personally acquainted with families of four living in less than 500 square feet of space, because that is all that is available or affordable. I don’t want to call that squalor, but young couples and their children are fleeing Vancouver in droves. 500+ students a year (net) leave the Vancouver system each year. This is a crisis and one that is toppling the Vancouver economy, and the scars may become permanent.

Could not agree with you more! There are some big IFs there. There are lots of insiders here who have a significant interest in keeping rents high, and pay lots to our politicians in campaign contributions to make sure that the city and region stay out of the affordable housing market. Competition is not good for oligopolistic rent-seekers, and especially competition from the city itself.

Unfortunately we have true market failure here, caused perhaps by international finance and mobility, and it is a failure in a basic human need, and also perhaps a right: shelter. It is high time the city steps in, leverages its $15 billion of real estate holdings, builds housing at $150 psf, and rents it to qualifying low-income residents at cost. With no public subsidy necessary, such rents would be $1 to $1.25 per square foot per month. A 1BR should thus not cost more than $500-600, or a 2BR at $800, and working families would stay and save us millions in transit subsidies and protect our schools from closing.

Yes, exactly, something along these lines would help tremendously. My worry right now is that the current freakout over real estate costs is actually making a solution along these lines *less* likely, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Really there are 1800 square foot duplexes in your area for $850K, what part of Kelowna do you live in ?

I know a number of young professional couples with 1-2 kids. I think they would all be content with a 1200 sq townhouse in the $600k range.

This type of housing needs to have:

– its own front door
– 3-4 bedrooms
– a large deck or small green space
– 2 levels

That would certainly keep some families in town. Although I doubt the talented doctors I know who left would put up with that. After all, why compete with dirty money from kleptocrats when more exciting cities are more affordable?

Alright, I’ll bite.

As a person with a household income that is literally the median (plus or minus a very small amount depending on year), I agree one hundred percent that we should be talking about the median.

But Frances was very clear about why she wasn’t, and in fact, you could say she was exaggerating for effect.

The median income family of four (using the 73k mark) has a huge difficulty owning, in the city of Vancouver, a space that can house their family.

As Frances said, even a family on a household income of 100k finds it hugely difficult.

So what kind of housing, and how many square feet, in south False Creek can a family of four, living off of the median household mark of 73k purchase?

The other thing that has happened along Cambie is the odd 4-plex that looks like a largish single family home.
Unfortunatley, a relatively new interesting looking one is soon coming down—part of a land banking deal for yet another ‘row’ of architecturally dull townhomes. Sigh.

I think that the kind of ‘missing middle’ mix above, with the visual ‘relief’ of a few sing fam homes sprinkled around (and a tax break to those wonderful souls who would restore/reno the older ‘character homes among them) would make our single family neighbourhood quite a bit more interesting. To coin a word from the community initaives lingo: ‘vibrant’, even. 🙂

Cooler still: Little parklet ‘squares’ (hello, developers, CAC’s–City Hall) that would be sprinkled throughout each neighbourhood as it builds out. Some courtyard housing with their great gardens and those would help ‘keep it green’— again, something distressingly missing on the developing Oak Street side.

I disagree that renting is clearly more expensive. It’s not enough to just compare interest to rent payments. Also consider:

– Strata fees
– Maintenance costs
– Mortgage insurance
– Realtor fees
– Property taxes
– Property transfer tax
– Sales tax on new properties

That’s just off the top of my head. In addition, there are other extremely important, but often overlooked factors, especially in the current environment:

– Opportunity cost of the money. The money used to cover all of the above could be going towards a diversified savings portfolio.
– Risk. This includes risk of having to renew at higher interest rates, risk of not seeing the appreciation in value that you expect.

Once you consider all of these extra immediate and potential costs, the balance is not so clear any more, and often swings firmly towards renting being cheaper.

Well I hope you’re right — getting neighbourhoods on board with this kind of density would be great.

I may be overly pessimistic though. I remember a lot of opposition to lanyway housing when that was passed city-wide (https://lanewayhousing.wordpress.com/ “density on steroids”), and that’s just the far left side of Toderian’s diagram.

I’d love a pollster to ask homeowners in single-family neighbourhoods whether they’d prefer A) a 20 story building on the nearest arterial, or B) a townhouse complex next-door.

Sounds like a good plan. The City has already demonstrated their expertise in developing real estate by managing to lose $300 million on the Olympic village development in one of the most desirable locations in one of the hottest real estate markets. What could possibly go wrong with your idea.

TOWNE II

Presentation centre: #11-5808
Tisdall, Vancouver
Web: towneliving.com
Developer: Mosaic Homes
Architect: Hollifield Architect, Inc.
Interior design: BYU Design Ltd.
Project size: 15 townhouses
Residence size: 1,420 – 1,677 sq. ft.
Residence price: $568,800 – $798,800

I believe this is what you speak of:

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=e2d53265-345a-404e-ba6e-84c69d350bac

There are hundreds of those being built up and down Surrey and Langley and they are selling.

Vision Vancouver wants high-rises although the majority of Vancouver is single family bungalows. Vancouver will never know the middle ground.

Meh. Eons ago, say, in the 50s. Govt encouraged its citizens to have tons of kids. It was good for growing the economy. More people, more workers, more taxes, bigger economy. Growth, growth, growth.

But, then people started having less kids. Govt turned to immigration instead to grow the economy. Then they realized they can grow without even having to pay to raise and train anyone. It’s like a lightbulb went off, and now Canada has the one of the highest immigration rates per capita in the western world. We’re basically double the rate in the USA.

So, anyway, students in their 20s are obviously an excellent source of service workforce, especially international students like Australians and Japanese. They pay the full cost of their tuition. Then they leave. No surprise the govt is trying its hardest to attract more.

And, sorry, I should’ve included couples too when I wrote about “singles” earlier. I basically just meant any people without kids.

So, you’re welcome to stay as long as you don’t have kids.

Or, if you’re rich enough that you put your kids in private school, which saves the govt half-price, you can stay too. Your kids, statistically speaking, won’t use much govt services throughout their lives anyway.

Everyone else should get the hint that they’re not welcome.

I draw parallels to Burnaby’s homeless shelter strategy: don’t build it, and they won’t come. Does any govt really want to encourage working class families? Christy Clark said families first. Do you think she really meant it? All the industries getting pushed around here, LNG, Fort St. John, construction… all heavily young, single men industries. Do you think she wants to grow the Eastside public school family voter base?

According to the Hong Kong Housing Authority the average living space per person in public housing is 13 square meters or about 140 square feet. So for a family of four that would be 560 square feet. This is probably quite doable here financially but we will have to rethink the gourmet kitchen with granite counter tops and Sub Zero refrigerators as it might be a tight fit.

I think the numbers Frances is throwing out there are pretty reasonable. The family in this scenario should be able to find appropriate space in Vancouver and we need to change our policies to create that outcome. The answer to this problem that people simply move further into the valley is a weak and lazy one.

I work downtown with a young (ie. 20s) family man who has two kids. He lives in a townhouse out in Willoughby, Langley. From looking around on Realtor.ca I found that in Willoughby you can find for $250-$300k a townhouse that is 1200sqft+, has 2 bedrooms, garage, deck, and a back yard. I know that my coworker has something vaguely similar. It’s a 1 hour drive to downtown and 1h 30 by our beleaguered transit system (2 buses and skytrain). Our region’s poor design choices have resulted in him burning 3 hours a day away from his family. As well there’s added inflexibility to his life, as that transit schedule ends pretty early. No after work drinks for him.

Right now we’re telling young families that if they want affordable housing, that they have to go way out into the valley. I think it’s a lot more reasonable to go to Vancouverites with massive houses and yards and tell them that if they want to have that big house lifestyle that they’re the ones that should have to go out to the Valley.

Essentially we need to start phasing out detached homes in Vancouver or at least start dramatically shrinking their size.

Condo valuations have been pretty flat and prices have been stable. Single people have benefited from a constant influx of new condos, but young families haven’t been so lucky. I applaud the fact that the City is going to work to get more two and three bedrooms in condos, but we need to do more. The problem is that the condo housing type doesn’t fit all lifestyles. Condos are terrible at a lot of things, and partially for this reason I think we see so much interest in detached homes. You can’t be noisy in a condo, you have limited ability to change your environment, and you have to deal with obnoxious strata councils.

We can’t build more detached houses as they currently exist in Vancouver, but we can build new housing that has many of the features of detached houses. Features such as:

* A garage.

* Outdoor space.

* Larger square footage.

* Ability to change environment.

* Ability to be noisy.

It’s townhouses, row houses, and I don’t know some made in Vancouver small house solution that we need to be building. We have ultra low density detached houses on one side of the scale, and shoebox condos for singles on the other. In the middle is the missing housing type that Vancouver isn’t building. Housing that has a reasonably compact density, but which has many of the features of a house that a family needs.

I think the City needs to announce that the detached housing form is dead in Vancouver, and put together some sort of very long term plan for how that housing form will be eventually phased out through most of the city. This is an inevitable change that Vancouver simply must make at some point. It would have tough political consequences, but given that we’re at the start of a four year term, and the affordable housing crisis gives good reasoning, I think now is the time to move Vancouver forward to the next stage of its evolution as a city.

This can happen independently of the neighbourhood planning process. The city made the mistake with earlier neighbourhood plans in not really setting any ground rules for how a neighbourhood must inevitably change. With the Flats planning that has barely started the City made the great choice of already setting unmodifiable rules. For the Flats they stated that new residential is completely off the table. We need that sort of guidance for future neighbourhood planning.

With a significant influx of compact family housing in Vancouver, young families would have more options and the ground floor housing market would look more similar to the condo market, with more reasonable valuations. I think in this scenario the family Frances contrived could at least get a townhouse/rowhouse somewhere in the city.

Shaugnessy is an ideal candidate for rezoning. Super low density, so one couldn’t lose that many votes. Campaign contributions might be another matter.

You’d like to see the architectural heritage just bulldozed?

Anyone with a REAL sense of history knows that the 19th and early 20th centuries saw the greatest urban densities in human history in the developed world, and many of the largest First World cities have been thinning out ever since. See the two enclosed population graphics of Paris and Vienna.

Why? Human populations at such high densities are fragile, unresilient, and unsustainable. The high food miles and other logistical challenges associated with supplying large cities cannot be maintained indefinitely. High densities create a huge pollution load on the land, atmosphere and adjacent waters, depleting and eventually destroying the many ecological services the city requires, the most important being water. Pestilence and communicable disease pandemics are inevitable and more intractable in more dense cities. The challenges of supplying government services rise in highly-dense areas, as much of the developing world is now quickly learning.

Access to nature is the reason the most livable cities have large and growing park spaces, rules to protect and programs to plant trees, and immediately adjacent greenbelts or ALRs to protect important ecological services, ensure local access to food, and provide valuable local recreation.

A green city is a city full of trees, wild, and semi-wild spaces. An analysis of the most livable cities as defined by the Economist magazine shows that the top ten cities average a density of 39 people per hectare, and the bottom ten averaged 96. Vancouver is at 53, and quickly climbing. A regression analysis shows a clear inverse relationship between density and livability, and a “sweet spot” between 35 and 55 people per hectare.

High-density concrete and glass towers with densities over 100 per hectare are the antithesis of green, allowing no trees, no air filtration, no soil permeability for water storage and cleansing, no local recreation, and no community connections, the antithesis of being human and decidedly unliveable at scale. Only large adjacent parks and oceans–Central Park in NYC and Stanley Park in Vancouver, and the water completely surrounding both Manhattan and the West End–allow some higher density pockets to survive and flourish. However, both are dependent on extensive green spaces in the area for recreation, and both are significant point loads of pollution with serious long-term consequences.

It is time to bring more nature back into our cities, shrink them, and start living on this planet as if other species mattered.

I have no problem with your remarks (not sure if you are saying I’m wrong or expanding on my point). I interpret your comments to indicate that overshooting the ‘sweet spot’ is problematic. No doubt. But what does the ideal make-up of a green city look like? Doesn’t the need for green, wild spaces where we live, coupled with a desire for affordable housing demand a housing-type and land use pattern incompatible with suburbia?

We can trace the necessary innovations for powered flight back to Otto Lilienthal, whose technical training was done in Potsdam and Berlin (both relatively large cities). The Wright Bros (like Jobs) were applicators and refiners more than innovators/inventors.

The computer was invented by Charles Babbage, who was born and died in London, also home to the Royal Society, of which he was a member. But if you prefer to date the computer from the invention of ENIAC, that took place at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).

Automobiles – clearly we look to iconic marques such as Ford and Benz for the key developments in that industry. Detroit and Mannheim respectively

Of course adoption of the telephone requires a ‘network effect’ to take place. Without the density of population to support telephone exchanges it’s hard to see how the industry could have been profitable enough to support its growth. Incidentally, Bell’s education included stints at the University of Edinburgh and University of London.

Without the educational and networking opportunities provided by cities, innovations are few and far between, and as we see with your three chosen examples, its the education, colleagues, and opportunities that can be accessed where people gather to which we can attribute those examples of ‘progress’.

Personally, if I were you I would have chosen the yoke and harness, or theory of evolution as example of major advances in knowledge and technology that occurred outside cities.

Let’s see, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, population 88,000, and then moved to Munich, population then under 200,000. Neither of these were big cities in their day (Berlin, Paris, and London each over a million), and by today’s standards they would be considered big towns or very small cities. Lysenko’s Nemesis is correct that you cannot equate high density living with the rate of innovation, historically or today. The most important advances in technology that allow the modern city even to exist are agricultural, and were invented and applied in rural areas. And they still are.

Other great inventions: the cotton gin was created by Eli Whitney while working on a rural Georgia plantation; Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in tiny Farnborough, south England. Paypal was envisioned by Elon Musk during a trans-America road trip, and first demonstrated in his suburban home outside San Jose.

Believe it or not, but people in the suburbs and in the country do meet and exchange ideas, and in fact seemingly a lot more than they do in Vancouver, which is the singularly least inventive and commercially productive city in Canada…despite sporting the most dense urban developments since over 20 years.

No surprise that farm implements are sometimes invented in a rural setting. Unfortunately the agricultural and food storage and mechanization advances that made feeding the modern city possible were also largely invented in urban settings — from the Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug went to the University of Minnesota, where he received the education that made his achievements possible), to Massey-Ferguson, once a major employer in Toronto. Elon Musk’s education and career is largely a product of an urban setting as well.

One can find questionable examples all day long, but the reality is that urban settings are hotbeds of ideas and creators, far more so than suburbs. We haven’t even touched on the arts or sports — which need cities to be anywhere near profitable.