rfmcdonald | [URBAN NOTE] "Can families still afford Vancouver?" (Reply)

Ken MacQueen of MacLean's explores, perhaps as an alarmist, the question of whether or not real estate prices in the city of Vancouver have risen so much as it make it impossible for people--including workers--to actually live there. Vancouverites, please chime in.

The city of Vancouver, with a population of about 610,000, is hemmed in by ocean, inlet, river and surrounding suburban cities of Metro Vancouver (which the rest of Canada usually assumes, incorrectly, are part of the municipality of Vancouver). The path to affordability, he said, is densifying Vancouver, dumping the “sacred single-family zoning.” He knows he’ll be accused of self-interest, “a ruse to get more condos.” But with 60 towers in the pipeline to market, he has plenty of business, he says. He knows his idea would see mayor and council impaled upon the white picket fence of the Canadian dream. But while Rennie is a political player, he is not a politician.

There are just more than 47,000 single homes hogging 56 per cent of Vancouver’s footprint. Their values have climbed past reason en route to insanity. “I think there should be a really healthy conversation about alternative forms of housing,” says the condo guy between phone calls and bites of his sandwich. “I say rezone the whole city to townhouse more as an instigator for conversation, but it’s not that stupid an idea.”

Nor is it heresy to say Vancouver may not be the place to raise your kids. Urban flight is already the logical consequence of resisting density, he says. “Nobody is talking about the consequences of our actions. ‘Not in my backyard’— fine,” he says. “ ‘[If ]I want to live in the dying commodity of a single family home . . . I have to acknowledge I am preventing my children and grandchildren from living [nearby].’ ”

[. . .]

Stoking the debate is a new study by Vancity credit union Vancity. It warns that Metro Vancouver faces a looming labour shortage as Millennials, the next generation of highly educated workers, are driven away by unaffordable housing. Between 2001 and 2014 the average wage rose by 36.2 per cent in Metro Vancouver while the average home resale value climbed by almost 63 per cent. In Vancouver city, house values jumped 211 per cent in that same period. Within five years, the Vancity report said, workers in 82 of 88 “in-demand jobs” (including industrial electricians, civil engineers and general practitioners) won’t be able to afford a single family home in the region. In 10 years only senior managers will have sufficient employment income to buy a house. “At this point, lawyers, electrical engineers and specialist physicians fall off the list.” Vancity also has its roots in east Vancouver, formed in 1946 by 14 families denied mortgages from the big banks. Today clients are shut out of the market by house values accelerating far beyond wage increase, says Vancity’s Andy Broderick, vice-president of community investment.

Children increasingly are a luxury item in a city heavy with apartments and cramped condos. Granite countertops and high-end appliances are essential selling points, but accommodating children and the square footage of second bedrooms, or exceedingly rare third bedrooms, is often seen by developers as a liability. Vancouver joins the ranks of so-called “childless” American cities like San Francisco and Seattle, where households with children have fallen below 20 per cent. Comparable data in Vancouver is hard to find but there are key indicators. Between 2007 and 2014, Vancouver public school enrolment dropped to 52,466 from 56,095, despite overall population growth. Vancouver census data between 2006 and 2011 shows 71,350 children age 14 and under, down 3.5 per cent from five years earlier. Paradoxically, schools in the wealthier west side are bursting while 33 east side schools are at less than three-quarters capacity. Clearly affordability isn’t an issue for some young families, while those buying into the east-side boom aren’t producing the legions of children of generations past.