Whatever happened to Co-Op Housing?
Severe gap between income and house prices in all Metro Vancouver markets: report
Zoocasa report finds there isn’t a single market across Metro Vancouver where a household earning the median income can afford houses for sale.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/severe-gap-between-income-and-h...
Global warming will never properly be addressed unless poverty is addressed and the Greens oppose the NDP Renter’s Rebate of $400 annually. Go figure!
https://vancouversun.com/news/politics/b-c-greens-still-oppose-ndp-promise-of-renters-rebate
Global warming will never properly be addressed unless poverty is addressed and the Greens oppose the NDP Renter’s Rebate of $400 annually. Go figure!
We can't stop driving the SUV to WalMart to save two dollars on a case of Dasani bottled water unless poverty is addressed. Go figure!
Our family loves Vancouver, but we're leaving because the struggle to live here is simply too hard
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/lee-abrahams-our-family-loves-van...
- from 2015
The crisis is about to deepen. According to the State of Homelessness in Canada 2014 report, federal funding towards housing has decreased by 46 per cent, despite Canada's population increase of nearly 30 per cent over the past 25 years.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2015/07/why-housing-firs...
More than $2,000 a month for a co-op unit in Vancouver — what gives?
An explainer on how rents for phase one of the city’s newest co-op were established
ps://www.vancourier.com/real-estate/more-than-2-000-a-month-for-a-co-op-unit-...
More than $2,000 a month for a co-op unit in Vancouver — what gives?
What Vancouver needs to do is some creative rezoning so they can start granting permits to build rendering plants and crematoriums and sex shops pretty much anywhere. That should drive down the demand to live in Vancouver, and voila, cheaper housing.
There must be some reason why so many people want to live in Vancouver. I've never been, but I've heard it's lovely. Anyway, that demand (and the fact that supply is necessarily finite) is why housing is so expensive. Fix that and you fix everything.
There must be some reason why so many people want to live in Vancouver. I've never been, but I've heard it's lovely. Anyway, that demand (and the fact that supply is necessarily finite) is why housing is so expensive. Fix that and you fix everything.
The weather here in Vancouver is balmy compared to the rest of the country. I don't think I could manage moving back east! The supply of housing here in Vancouver still has a lot of room to grow since we can grow upward, not just outward. Places like Paris, Vienna, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have much higher population densities than Vancouver. Here in Vancouver the civic politicians are trying to figure out the best ways to re-zone the city in order to increase affordability. There is talk of re-zoning areas to include more rental housing and more social housing. There is also talk of increasing taxes on expensive housing to reduce its demand.
Various municipalities are trying strategies but whether they are working or will work is unknown to me. However this is a regional problem not a Vancouver problem per se.
https://www.burnaby.ca/City-Services/Planning/Housing.html
https://www.burnabynow.com/real-estate/richmond-passes-10-year-affordabl...
Seems pretty reasonable.
The mechanism by which landlords could seek an above-guideline increase for proven maintenance expenses may sound attractive, but many landlords would not have the expertise or resources to go through a cumbersome application process for the top-up, Hutniak said.
What expertise or what resources?
It should be as simple as submitting your bona fide receipt for necessary maintenance or upgrades above and beyond. Did you have to replace the roof this year, because the old roof was 17 years old and leaking? Did you hire a reputable contractor who issued you a receipt? It shoudn't be any harder (or any easier) than that.
Time for Selina to thump these right-wingers
dp
Government supported housing has to go federal. No city wants to be "the best" at housing the homeless and the poor. Can't blame them. Any city that doesn't have a long wait list for social housing will become a magnet for people who need social housing and end up with a long waiting list.
What would be the rationale for prohibiting multi-family dwellings? What was the rationale when they were prohibited originally?
Any city that doesn't have a long wait list for social housing will become a magnet for people who need social housing and end up with a long waiting list.
Sounds like a self-correcting system. Like at the grocery store, where shoppers choose the shortest lines, and leave longer lines when others are moving faster.
My Village has developed a housing shortage even though houses are continually being built. A lifestyle turned into a tourist destination. It has both its good points and its negatives.
Two decades ago, you could barely give away a Cumberland fixer-upper. Since the closing of the mines in 1966, the town — once home to one of B.C.’s biggest mining operations — had steadily seen its population drop and its charm fade. Comox Valley real estate agents were said to have sneered at the village, and they often refused to list its properties.
But the town has made a remarkable comeback. Today, Cumberland heritage homes fetch half a million or more and are as coveted as Courtenay’s tony Crown Isle, a golf-centred development where the lawns are manicured and the fire hydrants are painted gold.
Indeed, Vancouverites and other real-estate refugees are cashing out and arriving with pockets full of equity and aspirations of small-town living made ultra-vibrant by the town’s love of mountain biking, music, art and enough civic pride to fuel a city four times its size.
Between 2011 and 2016, the village welcomed 1,300 new residents, putting the population at just under 4,000. If current trends continue, its population could grow to 8,500 by 2030. And the population makeup has changed too. In 2006, less than 50 per cent of residents had a post-secondary education, and fewer than 200 earned more than $50,000 in after-tax income. Today, roughly 70 per cent have a university degree or college diploma, and more than 300 are pulling in $50,000 or more.
https://douglasmagazine.com/cumberland-bc-has-become-the-cool-place-to-b...
I think Jean Swanson would be the one to talk to about affordable housing
Jean Swanson is truly amazin’
How City of Vancouver formula built in high rates at subsidized ‘for-profit affordable’ rentals
Ever wonder why rates are high at ‘for-profit affordable housing’ projects that are being subsidized by the City of Vancouver?
Start looking at city hall’s formula in setting rents, suggests housing activist Sara Sagaii.
According to Sagaii, the city “worked the increase into their formula”.
“Not only are these rents not affordable— we already know that—they are also not at average market rent,” Sagaii explained.
Sagaii is with the Vancouver Tenants Unions, and she cites the city’s rental incentives guidelines for reference.
The guidelines set different ‘maximum’ rents for East Side and West Side projects in order for builders to be exempt from paying development cost levies or DCLs.
In the case of East Side developments, Sagaii noted that the rate is not based on average rates in this part of the city, but on citywide averages.
This means that anything built in the West Side will “contribute to increasing rents” in the East Side, Sagaii said.
A footnote in the city’s rental incentive guidelines as it refers to East Side developments reads: “For studio, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units, the maximum DCL rents are the average rents for all residential units built since the year 2005 in the City of Vancouver as published by CMHC in the fall 2018 Rental Market Report.” [CMHC is the federal Canada and Housing Corporation.]
For 2019, the starting maximum rents set by the city for East Side developments are the following: studio $1,607; one bedroom, $1,869; two bedrooms, $2,457; and three bedrooms, $3,235.
For West Side developments, Sagaii noted that based on the guidelines, the city is “intentionally working an extra” cost into West Side rents.
It’s a 10 percent addition, Sagaii said.
A footnote in the city’s guidelines as it relates to West Side projects reads: “For studio, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units, the maximum DCL rents are the average rents for all residential units built since the year 2005 in the City of Vancouver as published by CMHC in the fall 2018 Rental Market Report plus 10%.”
For 2019, the starting maximum rents for West Side developments are: studio, $1,768; one bedroom, $2,056; two bedrooms, $2,703; and three bedrooms, $3,559.
All of these rates start to apply on the day council holds a public hearing on rezoning applications for these ‘for-profit affordable rental housing’ developments.
After the hearing and until the project is built, the developer can increase rents.
Also, the initial rents apply only to the first occupant. After the first tenant leaves, any rent that the market can bear is allowed.
“Is it any surprise then that the ‘affordable’ rents keep going up year after year?” Sagaii asked.
Berlin's bold proposal: Evict the landlords
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-berlins-bold-proposal-f...
Over 100,000 newcomers to BC in 2021, the highest in 60 years. Amongst many things, hopefully newcomers to BC are being educated about Indigenous land claims, etc. upon their arrival.
