Steve Mertl tackles a tough subject with a lot of nuance at Yahoo News: Canada’s character homes are disappearing fast, should we save them?
Here are a few excerpts from a much more extensive article, with good analysis from Calgary and Ontario as well as Vancouver, plus quotes from the interview he did with me at the end.
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Teardown. It’s a dismaying word for many residents of Vancouver, where sustained high real-estate prices have sacrificed a lot of older homes to the wrecker.
Teardowns used to refer to mouldy old shacks but in Vancouver, hundreds of solid, even fully updated homes are being bulldozed. …
The issue is now on the radar of Heritage Canada The National Trust, a preservationist group that has put West Side Vancouver’s character homes and gardens on its Top 10 Endangered Places List. Adderson notes it’s not just the high-end west side; the blue-collar east side may have been hit even harder. …
Heritage designation may flag some houses but Kathryn Morrow, communications manager for the Vancouver Heritage Foundation said so-called character homes fall into a kind of grey zone that makes protecting them hard. … All major cities facing population growth and high property values are facing the same pressure to some extent.
Lynda Macdonald, a community planning manager, says she sees it happening in Toronto as well.
“The land values are so high. If you’re going to spend a million dollars on a piece of property and it’s got an old bungalow on it, that bungalow may be a perfect response to the neighbourhood . . . but generally people are saying the real estate is so valuable I need more house to justify it.”
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Vancouver: A character home on the west side after demolition
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The drive to demolish and rebuild is a characteristic of a comparatively new country like Canada, where only a handful cities have buildings more than a century or two old.
Gordon Price, a former six-term Vancouver city councillor who’s director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, said that’s especially true in Western Canada, where heritage is measured in decades, not centuries.
“The turnover to some degree is inevitable for any city our age or any Canadian city, for that matter, where you are likely going to see an evolution of a city over time, and a century or so is not very long,” Price said in an interview.
What causes people to take notice is when the rate of change itself changes.
“What is distressing to people is that they are seeing the turnover happen so fast,” Price said.
Price agrees regulations make it very hard for people to justify spending money to bring an older home up to modern building and safety codes.
“You’re asking a lot of people in terms of applying stringent bylaws, constraints or disincentives to to keep a character house,” he said.
Price said taxation and regulatory structures would have to be created to give property owners the incentive to preserve a character home. But any breaks they get might come at a cost for others who could see their property taxes rise.
How many voters would sit still for that?
“That’s why politicians get very wary,” Price said. “They can intuitively or directly sense that this inequity question is going to come back to bite them quickly.” …
“Over time what is initially seen as character becomes heritage, (said Price) and that distinction is important because it has legal and economic ramifications and expectations,” he said.
Removing a serviceable character home can diminish an entire neighbourhood, but Price also cautioned that preventing someone from realizing the value of their property can also create a backlash.
Finding the right balance takes consultation and a willingness to take a political risk. Price said most of all, citizens have to be on board.
“Basically it has to come from the bottom up,” he said. “This is not something that can be imposed by a political group, a council.”
The drive to preserve heritage runs up against the need for a city to evolve and grow. Certainly some preservation is important, but mourning the loss of every character house isn’t a rational response.
I always find it strange that those who purport to be environmentally aware take such a cavalier attitude about dumping literally tonnes of material into a landfill each time a character home is destroyed.
Canada is an immigration society. Immigrants used to settle and often came with little, if any, money but eager to grow, start a new life and contribute to local communities. While many immigrants still do that today, more and more essentially use Canada as an insurance policy for corruption or autocratic systems they come from, with no real “home” here.
This house demolition is a rational response by the home/lot owner in a city with high land values, but it is essentially the result of a failed immigration policy where we let immigrants with cash into the country who speak little to no English and who have generally no regard for a city, as the city or piece of real estate is just an investment and perhaps an address on a second or third passport.
Canada needs to review its immigration policies as many immigrants do not pay any income taxes yet use the school system and/or healthcare system. Many immigrants consist of a mother and a child or two, with a man back home. After 3 years of being here they get a Canadian passport and some stay, but many leave. The kids may stay, or not, or float back and forth, coming back for (free) major hospital visits or for more (free) schooling. The current revenue tools, especially on the provincial level which fund healthcare and schooling, may be inadequate to align costs with benefits of new immigrants. Perhaps property taxes need to be far FAR higher with a corresponding drop in income taxes or PST. Perhaps healthcare costs need to be pre-paid for ten years by any immigrant.
Perhaps we ought to disallow dual citizens altogether ?
Related story here about the floating life of affluent transnationals: http://www.vancouversun.com/Douglas+Todd+floating+life+affluent+transnational+migrants/10083574/story.html
I’m not following — how does an immigrant earn income in Canada yet not pay income tax? I’m assuming this immigrant has some amount of income, since they’re buying property. And speaking of property — if they are buying real estate aren’t they paying property taxes? Even if you’re renting, you have a landlord who is paying property tax. And for fun, let’s say they’re not paying property tax. In this case the municipality will sieze and auction it off to someone who will pay the taxes (including back taxes in some cases). School district funding in BC comes mostly from the property tax. While discussing whether the funding from this tax is adequate is certainly of topic, the point remains that schooling is not “free.”
And same with health care. In British Columbia residents pay for health care through MSP. If you don’t have MSP or are not part of another provincially funded plan you pay out of pocket for medial services. No one is getting free health care.
Because the man lives abroad, and the wife and kid(s) live here getting education, healthcare and citizenship for free. Then later, once they have their passport and Canadian citizenship they bring grandma, grandpa and dad when they are old so they can get free healthcare.
MSP is $100/month .. probably a subsidies of 60-90%. Almost half (!!!!) the provincial budget will be healthcare in a few years. That is not sustainable !
That was my point: the property taxes and MSP collected are far too low for education and/or healthcare provided to a subset of our relatively wealthy immigrants / transnationals.
Our taxation system needs to reflect these new realities of fairly well off non-Canadians who wish to come here and that take advantage of our poorly aligned funding of healthcare and education.
When there are high fixed costs of land, the variable cost of the housing becomes relatively smaller.
So high land prices incentivize greater spending on houses, in the form of renovations, or complete rebuilds. It’s no coincidence that land prices are so high and Canadians are spending a large amount on renovation.
It’s like if you are going to see a hockey game in another city. The high fixed cost of the flight makes the variable cost of the seats relatively smaller. You wouldn’t spend $500 on a flight only to opt for the nosebleeds – you are going to get very good seats. Some story for buying a million dollar piece of land, then living in a dilapidated “character-shack”.
So, if we want to save our character-shacks, the best solution would be to allow the construction of a lot of housing elsewhere, preferably in the form of high density housing near transit. This would put downward pressure on land prices and lessen the incentive to tear down cheap character houses on expensive land.
Land prices will only go down if more land is made available. MetroVan could do that fairly easily, but chose not to, for example by allowing land in the shallow portions of the ocean, (off UBC, W of Richmond or Delta, or in Mud Bay between Tsawwassen and S-Surrey), by removing some land from the agricultural reserve, by converting public spaces that are underused (say some parkland or public golf courses) for more housing, or by releasing more land further out but accessible via high speed transit. Abbotsford, Langley or MapleRidge are quite scenic but fat to Vancouver, say 1h minimum.
More density, say in Kits, Kerrisdale, Shawnessy, W-Van or UBC will not lower land values nearby, it might even increase it. People that want & can afford $3M+ houses do not want a condo necessarily.
Portland, for example, instituted a new rule 20 or so years ago stating “no more new single family houses – only higher density”. After that single family houses shot up in price immediately.
Economics 101: more and more people, with same land base: higher land prices, and thus, demolition of old housing stock, regardless of its character. Add to that a disconnect to the city, the land or the character (due to immigration and/or affluent transnationals by the tens of thousands in a city like Vancouver) and you will see even pretty houses disappear.
Rather than complaining about this, Vancouver and/or the province of BC should monetize it, for example by drastically raising land transfer taxes by 1% per $1M, say:
1% of the first $1M
Houses over $1M: $10,000 plus 2% on the next $1M
Houses over $2M: $30,000 plus 3% of the next $1M
Houses over $3M: $60,000 plus 4% on the next $1M
Houses over $4M: $100,000 plus 5% of the next $1M
Houses over $5M: $150,000 plus 6% on the next $1M
Houses over $6M: $210,000 plus 7% of the next $1M
Houses over $7M: $280,000 plus 8% on the next $1M
Houses over $8M: $360,000 plus 9% of the next $1M
Houses over $9M: $450,000 plus 10% on the next $1M
This would cool overall prices somewhat, reduce redevelopment and flipping houses (where often no taxes are paid as it is undeclared) and allow the city and/or province to collect vastly more in taxes to fund schools, healthcare, bike lanes, social services, homelessness, CP rail greenbelt buy back, etc. ..
The giveaway of Canadian passports and/or land for next to nothing really irks me. If people want to come here: great, let them after proper screening, skiil assessment and language training, but monetize it for the benefit already here !
[btw: I am an immigrant, like so many here ]
The investor class immigration loophole has been effectively closed since the Harper government ended the program in February.
Second, increased density in Vancouver’s inner suburbs is not aimed at lowering land values, but at increasing the number of units per lot such that homes become more affordable and more people can be housed. Dramatically raising land transfer taxes would perhaps slow the demise of character homes, but would do nothing for affordability in Vancouver. There is plenty of land with large (and often empty) single-family homes in in the city, without invoking the reclamation of Spanish Bank or transit-oriented development in Abbotsford. I think the West End, together with more creative multi-family developments found in RT zoning, provide a better guide to preserving Vancouver heritage homes in the context of increasing overall density.
“The land values are so high. If you’re going to spend a million dollars on a piece of property and it’s got an old bungalow on it, that bungalow may be a perfect response to the neighbourhood . . . but generally people are saying the real estate is so valuable I need more house to justify it.”
If people aren’t allowed to expand beyond the original footprint then the prices won’t be so high. The reason they are so high is because they know they can tear it down and build something bigger. Tearing down a 2000 sf single family house and building one twice the size for one family is not a win for the city. If you are going to tear down heritage at least build multiple family dwelling in the same style of the neighbourhood as seen in areas of mount pleasant and kits
Well, not quite. Each lot has a zoning. The zoning usually determines front setbacks, rear setback, side setbacks, maximum height, and a maximum or minimum size. Why should the home owner not be allowed to replace his 2000 sq ft house with a 4000 sq ft one if the zoning allows it ?
It is up to the city to change zoning. In some areas they allow multiple dwellings on what used to be single family neighborhoods. That is OK for some neighborhoods, but not all. Some neighborhoods ought not to be densified, as densification also destroys character of a neighborhood.
Density has two sides. A city the size of Vancouver needs all sorts of zoning, from mansions to mere singe houses to townhouses to duplexes to 6-plexes all the way to 60 story highrises.
Implied in the attitude of many who dismiss the wholesale demolition of our old homes is : “Oh well they have to move with the times and give way to higher density”. In fact, most are demolished to make way for larger homes, usually holding fewer people. Homes with wasteful features like a bathroom for every bedroom, double height living rooms and three car garages.
And ? Is this not their right ? What is wrong with a high living room ceiling or a three car garage ? Are you just envious ? Or you think the state ought to regulate ceiling heights, too ?
Yes, some old homes need preserving, perhaps some streets ought to be designated heritage streets, but certainly not all of them or even most of them. Why should we ?
Exactly. The fundamentals of our city argue for the necessity of density, but few character home demolitions lead to greater density or even providing more housing. In some cases, where the old homes have multiple secondary suites, density may even decrease as a result of the demolitions.
I tend to think we can have our cake and eat it to, though bold and creative zoning changes. The city could rezone some areas for multiple-family housing, allowing a kind of density bonus for preserving desirable elements of the original structure. We have ample precedent for integrating new residential design into existing neighbourhoods. Extending this into soft density increases does not strike me as a stretch from current practice.