We heard it again at last week’s Business in Vancouver editorial board meeting: “Companies get a great out-of-town candidate in their sights,” said one of the participants, “then that person clicks through to the real estate listings and calls back to turn down the job. They can’t afford to move here.”
That’s the business downside to Vancouver’s freakishly strong real estate market. As that boom continues, first-time local homebuyers are left gasping on the sidelines, making painful plans to move to Winnipeg or Prince George or wherever they can get a job and buy a home. The real estate economy is eating away at all the other economic sectors, silently killing the greater economy and breaking up extended families.
Internationally renowned housing expert Avi Friedman, in town recently for a Housing Now: Local Solutions Through Local Collaboration (www.sfu.ca/housing) workshop, was adamant that homeowning young people are the future of any city, especially in a service-driven economy.
They provide the creative juice and energy for new enterprises. They volunteer at schools and on soccer pitches. They look after their aging parents. They fill the nursing jobs. They desperately want to be in this city, but housing prices are driving them away.
Do we care? Whistler does. Whistler Housing Authority general manager Marla Zucht reported to her council last month that for the first time in 14 years of surveys, lack of accommodation was not cited as a reason for staff shortages.
Although Whistler’s most burning issue was a rental shortage, it also found a way to build housing that young local families could afford to buy – and did.
Zucht was one of six presenters at the workshop, which was hosted by SFU’s Centre for Dialogue, in partnership with the Urban Development Institute, Social Planning and Research Council, the City of Vancouver and the BC Non-profit Housing Association. (Full disclosure: I helped organize it.)
The idea behind the developer-inspired workshop was to replicate local successes in providing home ownership or rental for households whose income was in the $35,000 to $80,000 bracket, without waiting for provincial or federal gravy trains to show up.
All six projects highlighted at the workshop involved some mix of partnerships, subsidies, flexibility, municipal political leadership, innovation and expedited approvals.
Among the common features:
•Reduced land costs through leases, discounts or land trusts.
•Limits on speculation. Architect Gregory Enriquez said his project at 60 West Cordova had a one-year hold requirement, but he’s convinced it would have sold out with a five-year hold. Some projects have income limits for ownership or restrict ownership to local residents, as Whistler does. Some cap resales at the cost price plus the rate of inflation.
•Reduced fees for permits, development cost charges or property taxes.
•Modest finishings (forget the marble counter tops) and no-frills marketing.
•Zoning incentives. Cities have limited land, but lots of airspace available to create density.
•Innovative construction materials or processes.
•Flexible regulations. Take away unnecessary parking requirements and the price per unit goes down $30,000.
The market is not delivering the housing we need to create jobs and prosperity outside the real estate sector, not to mention socially bonding mixed-income communities. But as this workshop showed, that can be overcome with determination, ingenuity and compromise – even in Metro Vancouver. Your business may depend on it.
Keep that in mind when you vote on November 19. •
