Quote:
Originally Posted by Hmoob
I read that very differently. I read business owners pointing out that there's a market for the product they sell, and a societal interest in having that product available. They're indicating that the current regulatory regime is interfering with their ability to provide that product, to society's detriment.
We need more housing, and office space, and community support spaces (unless we somehow limit population growth in the metro region). How are we incentivising the development of that space? Telling developers that they've had it too good and can handle a harder reality certainly doesn't encourage more construction.
It's clear that some here aren't interested in hearing what developers understand as their impediments to production. How would you propose we enable the significant pace of required construction?
Alternately, how would you go about limiting population increase? We could go with the status quo of pricing out anyone who doesn't have enough money to make it here. Or we could set up a lottery system to determine who's allowed to move here and stay. We could even bias it to disfavour certain nationalities (wink wink, nudge nudge). Does that sound ok to anyone?
The more I hear some of the complaints on this forum, I suspect that people are more interested in finding someone to blame than in finding a realistic path forward. We aren't going to find a perfect path. Some developers might make some money in the process. The city may change in ways that upset some of its residents. Reality. Let's do our best to meet the needs of this amazing, growing city and the people who live here.
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Unfortunately politics has invaded our housing solutions. There are many anti-capitalists that rather it all crash and burn rather than pay people to build our housing. Like Swanson, they insist that all housing should be built by the government at a loss and we should take from this magical group of rich people that have big pockets of money that can pay for everything annually. Honestly its kind of hilarious how much steam Swanson has lost since the election. She's starting to realize that the money just isn't there for a lot of her initiatives and has pulled back drastically. I really appreciate that she's learned from reviewing her proposals with city staff.
I think we should waive all sales, provincial income, foreign buyer, development fee, and property transfer taxes on developers that build condos in Vancouver as long as half the condos sell for under $500,000. I'd also want to do the same and provide a 5 year rental income tax waiver for people who purchase new condos or build apartments to rent out. I'm sure they'd go crazy over it and this would drastically improve our rental and housing situation. Paying income taxes on your rental properties decreases the income by 30%+. To waive that for 5 years makes investing in rental drastically more attractive, even if its just the provincial portion. Its insane that we block foreign buyers from apartment buildings and rental condos given that they are helping our housing situation by providing rentals to locals.
To raise money I would also support allowing "unlimited" density and height at certain areas that do not block flight paths as long as the developers pay for it. There's no reason to not allow 90+ storeys as long as they are well designed, pay the price, and do not block anything important.