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For the last 20 years Vancouver has been adding housing stock, mostly in the form of multi-family dwellings, at one of the highest rates in North America. We'r

For the last 20 years Vancouver has been adding housing stock, mostly in the form of multi-family dwellings, at one of the highest rates in North America. We're adding as much as we can as fast as we can. The situation now is worse than ever, so "build more housing" is clearly not a solution, and in fact may be making things worse by adding a lot of investment vehicles that attract foreign capital.

xt00 8y ago
Build more housing only works if you actually build enough to satisfy the demand — so it would be cool if we knew a number of houses built vs people trying to buy houses type of thing. Maybe you are right just I don’t know the data on the subject for Vancouver. I heard similar arguments while living in Bay Area that “we’ve tried to build our way out of this problem and it hasn’t worked for 20 years” but actually they were building one house for every 10 people moving there so, in that case it was a case that they under built for a long time because after people would move to their little corner of SF they would say ok no more people.. it’s good as is.. ultimately if you look at places like Dayton (good frontline episode on this recently), you see what happens when you build a ton of housing during a boom then factories leave and the houses then sell for basically $0.. often people are buying houses there for $5k, and buying 5 at a time then remodeling them. So overbuilding is bad as well as underbuilding.. my take is that the most sustainable building approach is to build in places that people still want to live in even when the economy is down. Like surprise surprise living 40 miles outside of Las Vegas next to a strip mall likely will drop in value when you can afford to buy a place that is more desirable closer to services and jobs and friends.
- 40acres 8y ago
  We need to be smart about where we want to invest housing in. People are living in cities now and Columbus has been bigger than Dayton for quite some time. Columbus will hit 1M people soon. Columbus has a diverse set of industry and is more of a service industry city, Dayton was always a one industry town.
jseliger 8y ago
We're adding as much as we can as fast as we can This is not even remotely true. Much of the city is still zoned exclusively for single-family housing, although that may be (very slowly—too slowly) changing: https://www.sightline.org/2018/08/14/vancouver-housing-of-all-shapes-and-sizes https://www.sightline.org/2018/08/14/vancouver-housing-of-al.... About two-thirds of Seattle is also single-family only: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seattles-rapid-growth-most-new-housing-restricted-to-a-few-areas https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seatt.... Those factors alone likely explain much of the housing shortage. Make it legal to build the housing that people want to live in, and the housing will be built.
- fatbird 8y ago
  The construction industry is unable to staff itself to keep up with current demand. People I know working construction have been turning down excessive overtime for decades. It's not a zoning issue. The capacity to build more than we are now simply doesn't exist.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  Changing zoning of course doesn't magically create houses and there's not much evidence that Vancouver is constrained by lack of zoned land. The parent is right. CoV and Metro Vancouver have been constantly rezoning and adding supply and massively adding multi-unit housing. The fact that there still remains low density land is not relevant. The numbers of multi-unit under development in Metro Van at the moment is unprecedented.

xt00 8y ago

Build more housing only works if you actually build enough to satisfy the demand — so it would be cool if we knew a number of houses built vs people trying to buy houses type of thing. Maybe you are right just I don’t know the data on the subject for Vancouver. I heard similar arguments while living in Bay Area that “we’ve tried to build our way out of this problem and it hasn’t worked for 20 years” but actually they were building one house for every 10 people moving there so, in that case it was a case that they under built for a long time because after people would move to their little corner of SF they would say ok no more people.. it’s good as is.. ultimately if you look at places like Dayton (good frontline episode on this recently), you see what happens when you build a ton of housing during a boom then factories leave and the houses then sell for basically $0.. often people are buying houses there for $5k, and buying 5 at a time then remodeling them. So overbuilding is bad as well as underbuilding.. my take is that the most sustainable building approach is to build in places that people still want to live in even when the economy is down. Like surprise surprise living 40 miles outside of Las Vegas next to a strip mall likely will drop in value when you can afford to buy a place that is more desirable closer to services and jobs and friends.

40acres 8y ago
We need to be smart about where we want to invest housing in. People are living in cities now and Columbus has been bigger than Dayton for quite some time. Columbus will hit 1M people soon. Columbus has a diverse set of industry and is more of a service industry city, Dayton was always a one industry town.

jseliger 8y ago

We're adding as much as we can as fast as we can This is not even remotely true. Much of the city is still zoned exclusively for single-family housing, although that may be (very slowly—too slowly) changing: https://www.sightline.org/2018/08/14/vancouver-housing-of-all-shapes-and-sizes https://www.sightline.org/2018/08/14/vancouver-housing-of-al.... About two-thirds of Seattle is also single-family only: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seattles-rapid-growth-most-new-housing-restricted-to-a-few-areas https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seatt.... Those factors alone likely explain much of the housing shortage. Make it legal to build the housing that people want to live in, and the housing will be built.

fatbird 8y ago
The construction industry is unable to staff itself to keep up with current demand. People I know working construction have been turning down excessive overtime for decades. It's not a zoning issue. The capacity to build more than we are now simply doesn't exist.
Tiktaalik 8y ago
Changing zoning of course doesn't magically create houses and there's not much evidence that Vancouver is constrained by lack of zoned land. The parent is right. CoV and Metro Vancouver have been constantly rezoning and adding supply and massively adding multi-unit housing. The fact that there still remains low density land is not relevant. The numbers of multi-unit under development in Metro Van at the moment is unprecedented.