Further to the lessons I learned after living in Downtown South for a month in the early 1990s:
I eventually realized that Downtown South was taking the pressure off my neighbourhood, the West End. As more units became available, they provided an outlet for newcomers who would otherwise compete with existing tenants.
And that’s what happened for two decades: the hundreds of new condos that were picked up by investors and rented out in Downtown South (and Triangle West, north of Robson) were giving an outlet for newcomers who could afford the higher rents. Upper-income renters left alone the 50s walk-ups and the 60s highrises for lower-middle-income renters.
Downtown South and Triangle West also provided an alternative to West Enders who were willing to pay a bit more for something new (lots of electrical outlets and less dubious plumbing) – and that in turn kept a ceiling on rents, since landlords couldn’t raise rents on the ‘old’ beyond something that was ‘new.’ It even resulted in the West End uncrowding a bit in the 1990s, as those sharing units migrated east and north on the peninsula. The population of the West End grew hardly at all.
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West Enders got very used to the idea that the neighbourhood could stay very much the same, regardless of the pressures of growth elsewhere in the city. Indeed, City Council had a big political stake in keeping it that way. As the NPA learned when three-storey walk-ups were being demolished in Kerrisdale, the price of change could be high. Jim Green, running for Mayor as the COPE candidate, came surprisingly close to beating Gordon Campbell in the 1990 election, taking advantage of public discontent with demolitions and rising housing costs.
And it didn’t make much sense for any party to allow the developers into those neighbourhoods that still had a large stock of 1940s and ’50s boxes. Demolition and condo construction actually resulted in a loss of population density, a complete elimination of affordability and lots of upset neighbours unhappy with the loss of view and the eviction of grandma who had been happily living in her stucco box for years.
And so the Council I sat on brought in rate-of-change constraints and, in 1989, even more complicated requirements for the West End that essentially limited to a handful the number of lots that would allow for new development. The rate of change slowed to practically zero in the West End; the number of new buildings since then could be counted on your fingers. And with outlets for growth on the other sides of Burrard and Robson, everyone was happy enough.
Until, of course, the pressure returned. Rents may have remained more or less stable, constrained by provincial legislation and market forces, but they continued to notch up. And one thing about the ‘affordability’ issue: no one thinks we have it, not compared to what they remember in decades past. So candidates in the last civic election, appealing to what they heard from their supporters, ran on the platform that they would address the lack of affordable rental housing.
And then they made mistake of actually trying to do something about it.
More on that to come.
I’ll look forward to the rest of your thoughts on greater density in the West End, which is my home as well.
By the way, that map from blockwalk.ca contains an embarrassing error: the compass rose is pointing the wrong way. West End streets run pretty much north-west to south-east, give or take a couple of degrees. The map has them running east-west. This does not inspire confidence in the rest of the information presented in the map.
Is “West End uncrowding a bit in the 1990s” your way of saying that was the period in which the West End saw the highest population increase?
The West End’s population went up 9.6% in the 90’s – the greatest increase than any other period according to the census numbers indicated above.
Neither did we see rental rates stabilize with the availability of more and newer housing supply in Yaletown / Coal Harbour. Neither would newer towers in the West End lower rental rates in the community due to the Province’s geographic rental increase loophole that MLA Spencer Herbert has been trying to do something about, which could actually cause an increase in rents in the immediate surrounding area.
It’s also interesting to note that in the recent CMHC report, vacancy in Vancouver edged higher, as did rents, which undermines the supply and demand argument.
I would sooner track unemployment rates in Vancouver to get a handle on affordability than I would housing supply. But no one seems to want to talk about the local lackluster economy and our high unemployment instead opting to distract us with easily refuted bogus claims and unfounded supply and demand arguments that pander to the fringe, paid activists, and the self-anointed urbanist bourgeois experts.
I am not so sure that there is a low vacancy rate in Vancouver. A few months ago I rented an apartment in Marpole, and I found that many buildings had one or more vacancies, and rents to me seemed very reasonable.
As to that map from BlockWalk, it certainly is colourful. That bright pink area is attractive. I notice that it is not labeled the Downtown Eastside.
That’s because it is Chinatown, as labelled.
Thank you, I’ve just been searching for info about this topic
for a while and yours is the greatest I have found
out so far. But, what in regards to the conclusion? Are you sure
in regards to the supply?