Housing crisis is a failure of government, not the fault of investors

We’ve all heard anecdotes about global capital and foreign ownership. I recently wrote about the market externalities affecting my own community of Strathcona. A well-financed west-side investor set about purchasing a number of homes in the neighbourhood: in cash, with no subjects or conditions, and always over the asking price.

Strathcona has a limited land base, maybe 350 detached homes in all, and this particular investor may have purchased a dozen of them—about 5 per cent.

Coincidentally, five per cent is about the same number that the BC Real Estate Association claim as the relatively insignificant amount of foreign ownership in Vancouver. A little higher at 5.8 per cent is the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s figure for percentage of foreign ownership in the downtown peninsula.

Vancouver Housing Bubble Trouble Needs Thoughtful Regulation

Housing affordabilty in Vancouver isn’t really news, of course. Since the federal government stopped funding new social housing in 1993, we’ve seen increasing pressure on low income Vancouverites. Today, after fifteen years of low interest rates and steadily increasing housing prices in Vancouver, what was once a social justice issue for this city’s most vulnerable and their allies, is increasingly taking its toll on middle-income owners — and the politicians and pundits are taking notice.

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.