Real Estate discussions

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by chowhou

There is no such thing as building new affordable homes unless it's government subsidised.

Bingo. It used to be that the public sector was a big driver of housing construction at one or more levels. There's also the previous MIRHPP that allowed developers to build taller in exchange for below-market units.

$4k for two bedrooms will be invaluable for 2040... but not 2026. Other options are needed in the meantime.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Since when is Russia Wving a “housing expert”? He was a software developer who ran under Kennedy Stewart’s disastrous banner last election.

Do you disagree with the data he has presented, or not? I know you are a long time supply and demand denier, so it's no coincidence you have a problem with this information.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

That said, the "build only luxury housing and suck it up for a decade" strategy from several elections ago was a horrible idea... especially if that decade comes and goes and housing is still unaffordable. Best to densify for all incomes.

I agree. The empty homes tax was implemented to solve the problem of high end homes staying empty as speculative investments. We've since seen that had a marginal impact at best.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

What in his bio leads you to believe he’s a housing expert? Are you a “housing expert”?

You're getting hung up on the wrong thing. Maybe I should have said "longtime Vancouver housing commenter that backs up his experienced assertions with data".

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by chowhou

All new housing is luxury housing. All older affordable housing was once new housing. There is no such thing as building new affordable homes unless it's government subsidised. The only issues are that we're not allowing enough to be built and taxing what is allowed too much.

Exactly. They aren't building new condos without insuite washers and dryers for example. That was a luxury ~25 years ago. Soon AC will be added as a default, which was a luxury ~10 years ago.

Inflation is real, but so is lifestyle creep.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Since when is Russia Wving a “housing expert”? He was a software developer who ran under Kennedy Stewart’s disastrous banner last election.

Attacking the messenger and not the message. Bold.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Do you disagree with the data he has presented, or not? I know you are a long time supply and demand denier, so it's no coincidence you have a problem with this information.

He presented a lot of data from US cities. Funny he ignored other data, like this:

Politicians and pundits often blame Canada’s housing crisis on a simple problem of supply and demand: housing prices are high because not enough new housing is being built for the people who want to live there. But something weird is happening in the city of Vancouver. Between 1970 and 2020, the city tripled the number of homes within its limits, primarily by adding density to already built-up areas, but the population only rose by around 70 per cent. No other major city in North America can claim a comparable feat: New York City increased its housing stock by only 30 per cent over the same period, and Los Angeles and San Francisco had similarly modest gains.

Yet despite this new density, Vancouver holds the dubious honour of having the highest home prices in North America. Houses in Vancouver cost an average of around $1.3 million. This is the great paradox: the city that’s added the most number of homes is now the least affordable, and the most vulnerable residents are no closer to securing the homes they need. Why? Because the problem isn’t just about how much housing we build. It’s about the cost of the land beneath it. ..

https://macleans.ca/economy/why-cana...emand-problem/

Oh but wait, the "horrible" Patrick Condon wrote this. And he's just a retired urban planner and professor, not some rando software developer who fits in with your POV.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Oh but wait, the "horrible" Patrick Condon wrote this. And he's just a retired urban planner and professor, not some rando software developer who fits in with your POV.

Patrick Condon isn't an urban planner, he's a landscape architect. And he's still teaching landscape architecture - he hasn't retired. He's an expert on trees and shrubs.

He's also not good with the numbers that his arguments are based on. "Between 1970 and 2020, the city tripled the number of homes within its limits, primarily by adding density to already built-up areas." The 1971 census identified 153,395 occupied private dwellings in the city. In the 2021 census there were 305,336. So the city has twice as many homes (and households) over a 50 year period.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Oh but wait, the "horrible" Patrick Condon wrote this. And he's just a retired urban planner and professor, not some rando software developer who fits in with your POV.

Patrick Condon is a landscape architect.

[GenWhy?]

"Between 1970 and 2020, the city tripled the number of homes within its limits, primarily by adding density to already built-up areas, but the population only rose by around 70 per cent."

I can guess it might related to household sizes from 1970 to today.

Do we know how many dwellings were in Vancouver in 1970? Are we around 320,000 today? At 2.1 persons per household that gets us exactly around our current population.

Pop of 426,256 in 1971 to 662,248 in 2021.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

"Between 1970 and 2020, the city tripled the number of homes within its limits, primarily by adding density to already built-up areas, but the population only rose by around 70 per cent."

I can guess it might related to household sizes from 1970 to today.

Do we know how many dwellings were in Vancouver in 1970? Are we around 320,000 today? At 2.1 persons per household that gets us exactly around our current population.

Pop of 426,256 in 1971 to 662,248 in 2021.

Yes, it's almost all changing demographics. I put the number of dwellings in an earlier post. The 1971 census identified 153,335 occupied private dwellings in the city. In the 2021 census there were 305,336. (There were 23,000 more 'not occupied by a census household' - those were not necessarily vacant. They didn't publish the number of total dwellings in 1971).

In 1971 there were 42,000 1-person households. In 2021 there were 120,000. In 1971 there were 49,000 2-person households, and in 2021 there were 101,000. And the average household size is 2.1 in 2021, and was 2.7 in 1971.

[GenWhy?]

I'm bad at math so if we still had 2.7 persons per dwelling we'd have 60,000 "extra dwellings"?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

I'm bad at math so if we still had 2.7 persons per dwelling we'd have 60,000 "extra dwellings"?

You're not as bad as Patrick Condon! It doesn't quite work that way. Most of the population in the census are classified as living in private households, and some live in other arrangements (collective housing, homeless, incarcerated, in hospital etc).

In 1971 there were 426,760 people identified in the census in the City of Vancouver, with 408,705 of them living in 153,335 private households. That gives you an average household size in 1971 of 2.665 (which they round to 2.7). The rest of the population (18,055 people) were in some other living arrangement, but not a house, or apartment.

In 2021 the total population was 662,248 and 650,380 lived in 305,335 private households. (The other 11,868 were in another living arrangement). That gives you an average household size in 2021 of 2.13, (hence the quoted 2.1).

[GenWhy?]

Yeah it's looking more like we double the number of dwellings than tripled. And I wonder if he's using the city names for the Metro?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Oh but wait, the "horrible" Patrick Condon wrote this. And he's just a retired urban planner and professor, not some rando software developer who fits in with your POV.

Patrick Condon, the guy who asserted that there were only ~20 passengers on a Canada Line train, that streetcars were enough for UBC, that Jericho shouldn't be so tall and that the towers should instead be built on public golf courses, among other bad takes? If he's on one side of an argument, the opposite is true.

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Oh but wait, the "horrible" Patrick Condon wrote this. And he's just a retired urban planner and professor, not some rando software developer who fits in with your POV.

Quoting Patrick Condon? Yikes.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Yeah it's looking more like we double the number of dwellings than tripled. And I wonder if he's using the city names for the Metro?

That's possible, I guess, but his math is still off. The number of households has tripled, but the population increased from 1m to 2.6m, so x2.6. Given the same demographic forces in society (more single person families everywhere), that's not surprising, and not a big deal.

And if he means Greater Vancouver, he shouldn't say 'city of Vancouver'.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Patrick Condon isn't an urban planner, he's a landscape architect. And he's still teaching landscape architecture - he hasn't retired. He's an expert on trees and shrubs.

He's also not good with the numbers that his arguments are based on. "Between 1970 and 2020, the city tripled the number of homes within its limits, primarily by adding density to already built-up areas." The 1971 census identified 153,395 occupied private dwellings in the city. In the 2021 census there were 305,336. So the city has twice as many homes (and households) over a 50 year period.

Well, UBC lists him thusly:
Expertise:
-Urban design
-sustainable design
-housing
-transportation
-sustainable communities
-urban watershed health
-real estate
-public transport
-public transit

https://news.ubc.ca/expert/patrick-condon/

if you can find an equivalent for Russil I'll happily read it.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Well, UBC lists him thusly:
Expertise:
-Urban design
-sustainable design
-housing
-transportation
-sustainable communities
-urban watershed health
-real estate
-public transport
-public transit

https://news.ubc.ca/expert/patrick-condon/

if you can find an equivalent for Russil I'll happily read it.

How about all of the times Condon has been wrong? That track record says a lot.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by whatnext

if you can find an equivalent for Russil I'll happily read it.

Again, you're deflecting. Forget Russil's credentials. Russil was just the messenger. (I know he's Asian, but he was born and raised in Vancouver). The message - the data he shared - came from Alex Brennan and Felicity Maxwell.

She's an advocate, planning commissioner, and community leader in Austin, Texas. He worked for eight years as a Senior Planner for Capitol Hill Housing, where he also served as the Executive Director of the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict. Prior to working at Capitol Hill Housing, Alex worked in the Bay Area as a researcher and planning economics consultant. Alex has a Master’s in Urban Planning degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

So sounds like a level of expertise that gives their contribution validity.