Opportunities to advance affordable-housing initiatives in other parts of the city are being missed
Bob Ransford
Sun
Among the many messages broadcast by the return of the revolving W above Hastings and Abbott, Bob Ransford argues, is the urgent need for the return of oversight by the elected leadership at Vancouver’s city hall of the appointed leadership. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG, Special to the Sun
Does Vancouver city hall have a myopic focus on planning and development in the downtown peninsula that is diverting attention from some of the larger planning challenges that loom in neighbourhoods across the city?
So much of city hall’s talk about housing and development initiatives just in the last month or two focuses on what is a relatively small part of a much larger city.
Meanwhile, Vancouver’s once red-hot real residential real estate market has quickly heated up again. It won’t be long before the main topic of conversation on the street is once again about whether or not the working class can afford to live in Vancouver.
As I have said many times, there is no magic bullet that will bring an end to the housing affordability struggle. However, increased housing supply will help balance supply and demand and somewhat slow the upward climb in prices.
Vancouver‘s downtown can’t supply all that housing or even most of it. The 21 communities outside the downtown peninsula will need to accommodate future growth if there will be any prospect of keeping housing prices within reach of the middle class.
But accommodating that growth in existing neighbourhoods won’t be easy. It requires lots of citizen engagement in designing the future of their neighbourhoods. It requires innovation in development and construction to provide a diverse range of housing types and the kind of density that supports sustainable growth. It requires careful and thoughtful planning to ensure that which makes Vancouver’s neighbourhoods special is not threatened.
Most important, it requires a new vision for what Vancouver’s neighbourhoods can be -as complete communities where existing residents feel comfortable aging in place and where new residents are provided with the same level of local services and amenities that have long made those neighbourhoods great places to live.
There can’t be any vision without leadership and there isn’t going to be any leadership if city hall continues to focus primarily on the downtown and the area immediately around it.
This is not a criticism of this or any other city council because it is not really a political problem. The lack of leadership on planning issues comes from a system in Vancouver that, unlike many other cities, delegates almost all power to the planning department. Maybe it is time to question whether this system still works well for Vancouver at this point in its evolution as a city.
I was hoping 2010 might bring a new focus in planning, but the last few months seem to be proving otherwise. Just this last week, city council dealt with two big downtown development policy issues. First, building heights for new development in what is referred to as the historic area, including Chinatown, Gastown, Victory Square and Hastings Street.
Also on the agenda was the issue of view corridors in the downtown peninsula and planners’ recommendations to allow four new skyscrapers that will punctuate the skyline.
The completion of the Woodward’s Downtown Eastside development was also celebrated last week with much fanfare — deservedly so.
But it isn’t just Woodward’s and downtown building heights that have been talked about lately.
Council approved the first project under the city’s much vaunted STIR Program (or Short-term Incentives for Rental Housing Program): a new 20-storey tower at Davie and Bidwell in the West End. In return for building 49 market rental units, Millennium Developments was allowed to triple the allowable height and almost triple the density for a new 98-unit condominium tower.
When STIR was launched in July, the city heralded it as proof of city hall’s “leadership in difficult economic times to encourage continued development activity.” The program was supposed to be implemented quickly “to allow the private sector to develop new rental housing stock in the short term to assist with housing affordability.” So far, only the one project has been approved and one more — also in the West End — is in process.
Commercial real estate expert David Goodman calls the STIR Program “a dismal and laughable failure.” In his recent newsletter, he pointed out that restrictions preventing old rental buildings from being redeveloped under STIR are limiting the ability of STIR to encourage any significant supply of new rental housing.
A few months ago, council also approved the planning direction for the North False Creek area, paving the way for a high-density mixed-use neighbourhood built around BC Place Stadium and GM Place and a new event venue/civic plaza.
Look outside the downtown and you’ll see work is only in the early phases for a two-year planning process to develop a land-use policy plan for the Cambie corridor that will focus on opportunities to integrate development with transit along and around the Canada Line. I wish I could say the same kind of planning is taking place around the long-established Expo Line and Millennium Line SkyTrain stations. It’s shocking that the Broadway and Commercial station, a major Vancouver transit hub, has so little density around it.
CityPlan was adopted 15 years ago, providing a framework for planning over 20 years in the city’s 23 neighbourhoods. So far, only nine neighbourhoods have plans in place. Twelve are without 20-year plans 15 years later. The first two plans, for Dunbar and Kensington-Cedar Cottage, are almost 11 years old. Perhaps it’s time for a new neighbourhood planning process and a new focus from city hall. Without it, there’s little hope of affordable housing in Vancouver.
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. E-mail: [email protected]
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