Tackling the roots of Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis

The affordability crisis in Vancouver certainly isn’t news—it was a central theme of our most recent civic election, and the two preceding it—but in recent weeks, calls for senior government intervention have landed on the premier’s desk in the form of a petition seeking restrictions on foreign ownership of property.

Readers might be confused by Premier Christy Clark’s warning that implementing taxes on foreign real estate investors would cause housing prices to drop, while Housing Minister Rich Coleman insists the provincial government has no intention of even collecting data on foreign ownership, nor has it come up as an issue for his ministry.

Michael Geller: Housing, density and activist architects

Green Party city council candidate Pete Fry, spoke eloquently about how citizens are often given little opportunity to provide their input into community plans, both in terms of density and height. He urged the architects in the room to join the citizen activists as architect activists, and help communities to understand density and how best …

A better city together One community at a time and with a little help from our neighbours to the south

I recently travelled to Portland, Oregon, to see how they do things differently, and how that might apply to Vancouver. I met with planners, urbanists, business owners, housing activists, neighbourhood associations and city officials. I could write several articles on what I discovered there: affordable, human-scale housing initiatives; small business incubation; robust multi-modal transportation and genuine place making.
But what really drew me in was the Office of Neighbourhood Involvement.