Ryan Holms, CEO of tech firm Hootsuite, wrote a column a few days ago in the Financial Post:
This lack of affordable housing has reached a crisis point. Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town: a city with no viable economy, other than a service industry catering to wealthy residents and tourists.
The consequence of this is impossible to overlook. Unaffordability is emptying Vancouver of one of its most valuable assets — young people who grew up in the city and who are invested in it.
Trenchant observation by someone with a deep economic interest in the city. Which leads to the next obvious question: In the light of such an unequivocal statement, why has the Province chosen to (1) reiterate they will do nothing that might affect the asset value of existing housing; (2) indicate they will do something to assist first-time buyers (thereby adding more pressure to buy on the existing, and inadequate, housing stock; (3) suggest the realtors police themselves.
The reality is that Vancouver, both City and Metro, is a cash cow for the Province. Example: the property transfer tax alone – more critical than ever in light of the results of their disappointing LNG strategy. And frankly, I don’t have too much trouble with that. This is the place where most of the GDP of the province is generated, thanks in no small part to government infrastructure and investment. The urban core does indeed exploit the hinterland, even as it also provides a market and services. Wealth redistribution is part of the deal.
But, look, if the city is your cash cow, here’s the other part of the deal:
When you’re creaming your cash cow, have some respect for the cow!
Housing and transportation are two of the top priorities – constitutionally – of the provincial government. And what have they had to say (much less do) about the highest priorities for their constituents in this city. Not much.
Here’s an indicator: the newsletters of the Liberal MLAs who represent the people most impacted by unaffordability and insufficient transit.
And here’s a test: Find any indication – on the City of Vancouver MLAs sites generally or their ‘newsrooms’ specifically – where they mention their concern and proposed actions to respond to these two issues.
.
.
Suzanne Anton’s newsroom site:
.
.
Andrew Wilkinson’s newsroom site:
.
Moira Stilwell’s newsroom site.
.
Not a thing I could find about transportation or, especially, housing – the ’emergency’ issue in the mind of Ryan Holms, one of the top job generators in the province.
How do they get away with it?
Look at the age of the MLAs. Tells it all.
David Eby certainly got way ahead of the curve on this scandal, aided immensely by Andy Yan’s data and Kathy Tomlinson’s explosive expose. Now watch the govt try and play catchup.
Or not. To them, silence is golden.
They would never put anything controversial in that ‘news release’ section. It’s all just fluff to make themselves sound more important than they are/doing something.
Silly post:
1. The PPT coming in pays for the HOG going out. The ‘cow’ comment is BS. Do homework.
2. Ryan too cheap (or conflicted) to make a cash donation to Vision while getting (otherwise valuable for PDR) land rezoned for office? Cheapskate. Regardless, the City will takes it cut through Gillespie’s amenities pay out.
3. The primary obstacle to affordability is city-constrained supply, and – according to the development industry – municipal costs and inordinant delays. A geek from the IT industry knows better? Metric? MLA websites? Brilliant.
4. If the province intervened fiscally & legislatively over a municipality to correct city-driven supply constraints (and costs), there would be a war. The province has however, done much for the lowest levels of social housing, its partial responsibility. Mid-level market housing is all in the Councillors hands, and they will fight to keep it that way. Try posting their websites and their track records on affordability; some of them have been in office for AGES compared to the newer MLAs.
Silly.
I would agree with “city-constrained supply,” but only to a point. Vision, the NPA before them, and the BC Libs all fear pissing off wealthy west side voters and therefore have not graced the vast tracks of large and standard lots with upzoning, save for Vision’s rather timid lane houses.
Where I depart with your developer-school 101 rhetoric is with the supposed delays behind the counters of city hall and the “high cost” of processing. Vancouver has two or three times the staffing of other Metro munis with similar numbers of development applications. The actual evidence indicates a surprising amount of delays pertain to developer and consultant incompetence in getting their own incomplete plans up to snuff, at least to the point where they comply with zoning bylaws and CD agreements without too many GFA calculation errors (which always, it seems, happen in the applicant’s favour).
And, of course, the hundreds of private development managers who regularly call and harass staff en masse wanting to jump ahead of the queue despite incomplete drawings waste a shocking amount of staff time. The applications that proceed quickly and efficiently are in the minority, but have everything to do with striving to meet the city’s legal requirements from the beginning, not haranguing the planners, or more importantly the technical staff, and having good consultants.
Delays also relate to the sheer volume of applications in record development years and value ($1.4 billion construction in 2015 in Vancouver alone) and the inability of politicos to staff up without the so-called ‘free enterprise’ critics complaining about a bloated city hall full of increasing numbers of fat cat apparatchiks who are on a permanent coffee break. Not one city hall critic, it can be noted, has ever worked the counter themselves and thus hasn’t a clue of what they are talking about.
Ryan Holms’s article in the FP: http://business.financialpost.com/executive/careers/without-affordable-housing-vancouver-risks-becoming-an-economic-ghost-town
I copied the spelling from above, which I thought looked off. It should be Ryan Holmes.