Government and opposition members debated Vancouver housing policy yesterday (Dec. 20) at the Vancouver Debate Academy’s first Deliberative Dialogue event. The four teams had just 30 minutes to research the announced motion, calling for Vancouver to prioritize Public Housing over Private Development.
After the round, judges and students further discussed Vancouver housing policy and why Vancouver housing is so expensive. This housing history post is helpful: A BRIEF HISTORY OF VANCOUVER PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT REGIMES. Housing policy, like transportation and energy policies, involves trade-offs. As Vancouver population and housing demand increases, property owners and developers look to both expand housing around cities, and to increase housing density.
Vancouver housing regulations shifted in 1972 when a new council came to power and “downzoned the multifamily apartment districts once more, and ushered in a new regime characterized by much tighter controls on development and more direct negotiation with City Hall.”
Lessons from Jane Jacobs’ classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities also apply to Vancouver’s urban development. Economist Sandy Ikeda discusses Jacobs in this Market Urbanism podcast. And in his College of Charleston presentation.
City development is an example of spontaneous order, and interventions from urban planning and housing regulations alter the order of that development. Early Vancouver was developed around the streetcar, as this post and video explains:
One of the great shapers of Metro Vancouver was Robert Horne-Payne, President of the BC Electric Streetcar Company, which he incorporated on Threadneedle Street in London. London was the inspiration, an unplanned city whose order arose incrementally from human actions not human design.
From his home and wheelchair in Brentwood, England he personally made all major streetcar decisions, harnessing market forces to build the transportation and hydroelectric infrastructure of the region.
Access to electricity in the 1880s drastically transformed Vancouver:
The 1880s changed world cities. First electric streetlights, then electric streetcars. In one week, Vancouver got both, an instant modern city.
The Marchetti Constant says a city area is limited by an average one half hour commute. Even great ancient cities only had a 2.5 kilometer walkable radius. Streetcars tripled this to 7.5 km. The increase in area became the streetcar suburb requiring a new form of housing.
Automobiles futher transformed Vancouver and other cities. Still with the same one-half-hour commute, families could live further away and still drive downtown in an average of 25 minutes in 2021.
For Vancouver Debate Academy students, just look out the window. You see mixed-use buildings with shops on the bottom floor and two or three levels of apartments above. Why two or three, and not four or five? And why don’t these mixed-use higher-density building extend down the side streets a block or two? With all the shops along West 41st Avenue. There are many who would like to live within walking distance. But if you look down from Google Maps you see block after block of single family homes to the north and west. Developers would be eager to build and increase density.
Perhaps the future of housing should look more like the past. This recent New York Times article, The Old New Way to Provide Cheap Housing, looks at a new/old innovation:
Homelessness is an American tragedy, but it’s not hopeless. In a recent column, I explored how Houston has become a national model by reducing homelessness by more than 60 percent.
One takeaway is that homelessness, above all, reflects a shortage of cheap housing. So I’m intrigued by an approach to providing such housing that’s gaining ground around the country. It’s an idea so old, it seems new: converting single-family houses to rooming houses.
Rooming houses, boardinghouses or single room occupancy (S.R.O.) hotels used to be ubiquitous. President Thomas Jefferson stayed in a boardinghouse for several months before moving into the White House. At the seedier end, S.R.O.s largely disappeared over the past half-century, partly because of zoning and economic development projects.
In Houston I dropped in on a home operated by PadSplit, a company that offers furnished bedrooms for working-class Americans. PadSplit, which is something like a long-term Airbnb for rooming houses, has housed 22,000 people so far and is growing fast.
Earlier this fall, the NSDA Public Forum debate topic called for a “right to housing.” Recovering the rights of property owners to build housing would be a step in the right direction. One example:
ICON 3D-printed homes…have the potential to transform the future of affordable housing in America.…houses built in eight days that are 350% stronger, more environmentally friendly, and cost a fraction of what a traditional build would cost.
