In the gee-no-kidding-Sherlock category of revelations, we know the following:
We need a more diverse supply of housing in Vancouver. Yesterday.
We need the data upon which to measure and monitor development processes. Last year.
We need a city plan to get us on the same page, particularly to make it easier to gain community consent for greater density. Last decade.
The housing crisis has Vancouver at a critical stage of decision-making in the next phases of community development – almost, but not quite, a point of no return or salvage, certainly with time running down. It has thus been heartening in the last few weeks to see some strong, thoughtful contributions from industry and business leaders to the process of addressing what ails us. They realize the situation is untenable, that the community is hollowing out as young people flee elsewhere as economic refugees and that we run the risk of a moribund city if we do not gang-tackle the problems.
The Real Estate Board of British Columbia, the Co-Operative Housing Federation of British Columbia and the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade have taken matters into their own hands by illuminating our conditions with reports and recommendations.
I am reminded of the Yogi Berra saying: when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
These leaders recognize it is time to take that fork, time to take back the role of guiding the conversation because the elected officials have lost the plot.
Taken as a whole, they have produced a prescription that is long on medicine and short on sugar to help it go down.
The composite diagnosis is that the “missing middle” of housing in Vancouver – basically everything between a detached single-family home and a highrise, attainable by the middle class – is a precarious threat to the city’s viability.
The redemptive path these reports see, though, isn’t reckless. It has orderliness to it, a system amid the rush and a level of trust in responsible development.
The board of trade’s Unlocking Supply is the biggest possible game-changer in the conversation. Most certainly the report is a friend of development, and some might be queasy at that notion, but the trade board argues well that builders are either in the dark or in limbo far too often on how the city operates and plans. It wants to end the dance of the seven veils.
Moreover, there is ample public interest in its objectives: a focus on diversity of supply, pre-zoning in transit corridors, density-bonus zoning to achieve social goals like more rental units and a swifter process to get shovels in the ground for certain housing types. These are pretty inarguable positions of common sense amid the madness.
It was most redeeming to see the board of trade take on the elephant often in the room when the city and developers meet: community amenity contributions (CACs). These are the nudge-nudge, wink-wink of the business, forbidden as a requirement and thus “voluntary” – rather like the “voluntary” repayment to a loan shark – to gain rezoning for a development. The funds don’t have any particular function.
The board of trade’s report notes that the project-by-project negotiation on CACs slows the development, costs the builder (and the buyer) an uncertain sum and often yields the most nebulous of benefits to the immediate district.
One has to wonder, probably even worry, how dependent the community is on the amenities for basic operation instead of the true improvements to a district. The board of trade is calling for the stable to be mucked out. It wants a consistent, swift and transparent system so we know what was paid and what it gets.
Now that the seeing-eye effort has been made to create the policy that the city seems to lack, the next question is what the administration will do with this emerging agreement on goals and methods to achieve them.
It is clear the city hasn’t found a credible process to convince residents that the character of their districts need not be sacrificed as density is increased. What these reports assert is that it has to produce through consultation a clearer long-range plan for neighbourhoods, demonstrate how we can get there and try something, anything, to get us to Yes.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
