Bob Ransford
Sun
A number of forces are converging right now to create a crossroads for housing in the B.C. Lower Mainland. On the horizon is a critical shift that could result in a realignment between the type of housing buyers want and what the market is offering.
The baby boom generation is making way for Generation X in the housing market and generation Y isn’t far behind. The values, desires and needs of people in each of these distinct generational groups are very different, yet the range of housing available in the marketplace is pretty narrow.
The only major shift we’ve experienced in the type of housing in the B.C. Lower Mainland is one that occurred over the last two decades as new multi-family housing became the product of choice for buyers from every segment, replacing the single-family home as the home of choice.
Constraints on the supply of developable land and their impact on new home prices caused this shift. As the old saying goes, “beggars can’t be choosers”.
As we shifted from one type of detached housing to a more compact form of attached housing, little changed in terms of the design of the home itself and how it meets the needs of different demographic groups. In fact, choice has become even more limited. Different forms of ground-oriented housing, where you can walk out of your own home to a street or yard, have become more difficult to find.
With the majority of new homes today, you are basically limited to living in a four-storey wood-frame apartment building where you enter your home from a corridor, a concrete highrise building with the same access or a townhouse with your entry at-grade and the living floors primarily above.
I wrote about laneway infill cottages last column. This form of housing is very limited in supply. From the response from readers, the demand is there for small cottages at the rear of existing larger lots, especially on Vancouver’s west side where mature homeowners have a lot of equity tied up in larger homes that no longer meet their needs.
In some parts of the Lower Mainland market, we know of entire neighbourhoods and sometimes entire distinct communities where the current housing stock is mismatched for the needs of the population.
Take for example, Tsawwassen, which compared with other Greater Vancouver communities, has the highest proportion of single-family detached homes as a component of their overall housing stock at 71 per cent.
Most of those single-family homes are large homes on large lots. Yet, the area also has one of the oldest mean ages in the Greater Vancouver area. Older empty nesters looking to downsize to a type of housing in Tsawwassen that is more compatible with their needs have little housing choice.
The housing affordability crisis facing middle-income earner who are struggling to service ever-growing debt to provide shelter has many people looking for different forms of housing tenure as well.
Today, you have basically three or four ways of owning a home and one way of renting.
Ownership today means owning a detached fee-simple home, an attached or semi-detached strata-titled home, an interest in a co-op home development or a pre-paid lease for a home on leased land. Renting means paying a landlord rent for a monthly tenure.
Affordable housing advocates point to other forms of tenure, such as what I call limited-gain ownership where a covenant on title requires that the gain in real estate value be limited.
We are awaiting the approval of Vancouver’s first fee-simple townhouse project, to provide yet another form of housing tenure popular in other places.
Vancouver has tried the live-work concept in the past. Where it seems to have failed is in areas of the city typically occupied by industrial users.
The idea of live-work has morphed more into live without the work component, causing conflicts between people who expect peace and quiet in their dwelling in an area of the city known for its industrial activity.
What about live-in-work where the primary use is commercial or industrial and a secondary use is residential?
Why is housing diversity important? People have different needs at different stages of their lives. These needs are often shaped by social forces, like trends and social customs.
More often they are shaped by real needs, such as mobility constraints, income constraints, family make-up, the need for education, etc.
As the largest cohort of the population — the baby boom generation –moves from occupying the largest portion of the stock of housing today and looks for new forms of housing more suited to their needs and constraints, the next generations will follow with different needs and different attitudes. The housing market will need to shift to meet those needs.
That shift appears to be on the horizon.
Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues.
Email: [email protected]
© The Vancouver Sun 2006