[URBAN NOTE] "Vancouver-area renters being pushed away from transit corridors"

[rfmcdonald]

In The Globe and Mail, Kerry Gold reports on the pressures that are pushing renters away from the rapid transit networks that they use so regularly. At this rate, who will be able to afford to live in Vancouver but the rich?

Since the majority of transit users are renters and low-income earners, building low-cost housing around transit would seem obvious.

But overwhelmingly, dense, free-market condo developments have been the priority around transit stations. The result is an increase of property values that have displaced the renters that need transit the most. In the Metrotown area of Burnaby, and near the Evergreen Line in Burquitlam, old rental buildings are being torn down to make way for pricier condos.

It’s a state of affairs that has exasperated housing advocates like Kishone Roy, chief executive officer of the BC Non-Profit Housing Association. Mr. Roy, like a growing number of others who’ve studied the issue, says that no transit plan should go forward without a plan for affordable housing. The housing crisis simply can’t be fixed without the transit piece.

“It is extremely backward public policy that the only people that can afford to live along transit lines in Metro Vancouver are people who can afford a car – and the people who need transit can’t afford to live along those transit lines,” says Mr. Roy. “It’s happened for an array of reasons, including lack of government participation in the affordable housing market. There’s been an abdication of the government’s role in housing that’s created mass homelessness, a rental housing crisis, and this weird development problem we have in Vancouver, where we have transit investments, but no housing investments at the same time.”

That means building dense, affordable housing around transit lines that are already in the works.

“It’s a game of diminishing returns, because when you lose that housing along the transit line, then you have to build somewhere else, and then they will need more transit out there. You can spend less and get more, if you plan these things together.