Scot links to another story from CBC on the hottest housing story at the moment, with this note: “The video is good. Brendon Is a frequent PT commenter who started Abundant Housing Vancouver.”
Speaking of PT commenters, two regular contributors – Michael Kluckner and Bryn Davidson – will be debating the issue at the next Urbanarium debate on March 8:
Details and tickets here.
The CBC article also has a corresponding segment on CBC The National, which will be aired next week I think (was to be this week, but delayed for ? reason).
Bryn and I both provided background info for the article/piece, but neither of us were interviewed for air.
We bought our property 12 years ago. I remember my exact words when I first aw it with my then 6 months pregnant wife: That’s a good house. We’ve raised two kids here. My son was born in the front room. There was screaming going on. The police showed up. Abashed, they left, with offers of assistance whe the midwives explained.
The house was then assessed at about $25K. It has gone up and down. No idea what that’s about. Odds are it will be assessed about the same in 10 years. The house will still be here. So will we. We are at least the 7th owners over the past 100+ years.
How did our old house escape being bulldozer bait? It was thanks to an unscrupulous agent that deflected offers because the commission was too small to share: $6,000. Split that four ways between two agents and two brokers, and that’s only $1,500 each. Not worth getting out of bed for.
To a builder this house was garbage; an opportunity to throw ip a Van Spec. Obviously it was not garbage.
There’s a lot to be said for dis incentivizing builders. There’s more to be said for incentivizing Universal Design. Heritage design? An old-fashioned look? WTF are you talking about?
The City’s in a tricky spot here but needs to weigh in on its future, not its past. There will be no end to stories in the Vancouver Sun about old-timers who returned from the war, built their dream bungalow on 44th Avenue, and blissfully raised 11 kids, all of whom went on to receive the Order of Canada. What we will not hear are the Kerrisdale stories that were never told because they never happened because an urban designer in City Hall arbitrarily decreed some unknown architectural feature of the 44th Avenue bungalow too precious to be touched.
Neighbourhoods change. Cities change. If we’re so concerned about preservation, let’s not be selectively half-assed about it. Raze the whole city, decamp to Abbotsford, and let the forest retake the peninsula. Ottawa will probably pay for half the job. Alberta will gladly chip in the rest. Moral angst assuaged.
If we got Hausmann’s Paris, maybe. But no, we get pink plaster palaces on large naked lots here instead, and a huge amount of 2x4s made from old growth fir in the landfill. Jack’s Salvage is doing well though.
Heritage architecture is well worth preserving. Design is substance. Building around it is entirely possible. Just ask the Romans.
Um, you do know how much the romans knocked over and built on top of, right? Not carting it to the landfill, maybe, but certainly not preserving it.
We can certainly strengthen the deconstruction rules so that that old growth doesn’t end up in a landfill.
Also … you know the Baldachino at St Peters? How well that is ‘preserved’ metal from the Pantheon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter's_Baldachin
One can address pink plaster without killing new houses. Consider the remodel which will inevitably occur on this house, for instance https://www.pixilink.com/103640 … how much of the original studs do you imagine will survive turning it into something actually worth almost $4million?
Also, embodied energy is only one aspect to care about … ‘greenness’ also must take into account operating energy, the payback in terms of carbon for a leaky old house vs a good new house (better yet, a passivehouse) is surprisingly short. The greenest house is the one already standing only applies today, and tomorrow, in a decade, not-so-much. The average house has the same emissions as a crappy car, those old-house emissions add up fast.
Some heritage is certainly worth preserving. But there is plenty of great architecture (say, Erickson houses) which aren’t protected, and with the proposed rules, plenty of rotten houses which might be. Lets look at what things deserve preserving – thats the only things you see when you visit Rome – the stuff that didn’t get demolished, don’t pretend you’re seeing a pristine preserved time capsule.
There might be plenty of stories about the “old-timers who returned from the war, built their dream bungalow on 44th Avenue, and blissfully raised 11 kids” … but the new version of that person, the one that served in Iraq or Afghanistan, certainly can’t follow the same path, where is the sob story about them?
I agree with much of what you said. Yes, Rome and every other ancient city is built on the rubble of the buildings that came before. However, they still knew and practiced a helluva lot more resiliency than we do today. I note that the Coliseum still stands mainly through the distinctly cultural act of preservation, though the base economics of doing so may suck (tourist revenue aside).
One of the best books I’ve read is Homer-Dixon’s ‘The Upside of Down’ which refers several times to the Roman’s penchant for building aqueducts that have lasted millennia. Some of their original clay brick walls — over a thousand years old — still stand on London’s South Bank near the original site of the Globe Theatre. They were buried and forgotten until modern construction activity uncovered them, and it’s indicative of the beginning of London’s long history with that imported building material manufacturing technique using local materials economically.
That house on w 59th — that is exactly what I’m constantly referring to regarding land use vs. preservation. That’s an exorbitantly wasteful 50-foot lot, and it is obvious that the continuous 24-foot front yard setbacks lock up so much land it looks like a private linear park. The possibilities are numerous if the city would stop killing them with their zoning bylaws.
If the house was an original Craftsman bungalow, a developer could move it forward 14 feet and set it on new foundations, knowing the original clinker brick chimneys and fireplaces will have to be replicated. The land freed up would be like gold, and several rowhouses or a couple of small cottages could be built in the backyard. The city could under a more creative leadership allow additional floor area to help recoup the cost of moving and preservation of heritage architecture and trees. I am not such a purist to dictate that the architecture of a century ago needs to be replicated as nauseum. There are many ways to creatively contrast modern with heritage that can exemplify and respect both.
However, that house doesn’t seem to offer a huge amount of heritage, so it should be dismantled and recycled instead of binned. The old fir studs, joists and old millwork would make beautiful furniture and millwork in the new homes. By law you have to recycle the drywall and asphalt shingles anyway (this is not well enforced), and well-broken concrete from the foundations and stairs makes good road and sidewalk base aggregate material. All the metals can be quite easily separated for recycling.
When discussing Green, I think one must address modern construction materials. I really don’t get how OSB, MDF, Melamine, particle board, etc. can be considered Green when they don’t last beyond their first soaking. Green = Resiliency in my view. I completely agree with your comment on operating energy budgets. There are several stages of high-efficiency even below a full-scale Passive House.
Adding to Alex’s point about the various glued together products like Melamine.
If you’ve ever sawed it, you’d see and breathe some of the most unpleasant ultra-fine dust imaginable. A basic dust mask is not enough to keep it out. People worry about off-gassing (the new car smell) after they buy, but to installers that work with it daily, the dust is a real life shortener.
I wonder too about the long term life of these products even when they don’t get wet. Our house had a horrible smell that turned out to be the deterioration of the carpet underlay – which had never been wet. It was just father time and decay of a synthetic.
Remember the UFFI fiasco some decades back? Mike Holmes is a proponent of new kinds of foam insulation, but the stuff totally weirds me out. CBC Marketplace profiled a home owner that went through hell with an insulation foam product. That stuff will never be recycled.
Clearly, there are many houses that are still liveable for decades, but are demolished thanks to the profit motive of builders; with the collusion and chicanery of the rightfully much-maligned real estate industry.
The Courier had an article May 19, 2016 about how builders get their excavator buckets into properties. Builder Atwal Jawanda is quoted saying that all his sites were purchased through relationships with agents. He goes on to state: “It’s such a dog-eat-dog world. I don’t want to get into that bidding process.”
But who is the big dog here? Is it the family trying to buy something modest, or is it the guy with an excavator that gets funneled deals from agents who get to double end – once on the sale of the “tear-down”; and once from the sale of the new-build. Jawanda spells it out in the article.
Not so long ago, I went to a Heritage Vancouver event at the Vancity theatre, which was essentially focussed on this issue. There was a panel which included Gordon Price. Lets say there was 150 – 200 people in the audience, he asked the audience, “how many of you are interested in saving heritage houses.” Every hand in the audience went up. Gordon Price then asked, “how many of you are willing to pay more taxes, in order to finance the preservation of heritage house”? Less than ten people raised their hand.
A woman in the audience told the story of her 1925 craftsman bungalow in Kerrisdale, which her husband refused to agree to allow to be designated heritage. It is worth 3.5 million as a teardown, perhaps 2.5 million as a heritage house. Her husband said that he wasn’t willing to forgo a million dollars when they sold, since none of the children would be able to buy it.
As a city we can choose to save as few or as many heritage homes as we like. No individual homeowner should be forced to pay for that preservation. The price of preservation is a loss of property value that should be paid for. Are we willing?
No need for more property taxes to preserve heritage. Owners could be compensated by by charging developers market rates for the extra density that is almost given away
Many cities are wrestling with the heritage preservation issue. Dan Ross is correct, though, the city is in a difficult position. And politics will be played – it’s Vancouver.
Of course most are in favour of it, until……
Here’s what they did in Los Angeles recently:
https://www.planetizen.com/node/90733/la-made-your-house-historic-and-never-told-you
If these houses are being labelled ‘character’, as opposed to ‘Heritage’, that won’t (I assume) stop them being demolished in any future up-zoning of a single family neighbourhood, or some portion of that neighbourhood. The current initiative should just be a way to stop the demolition of character single family houses for the purposes of building new single family houses. If that’s the case, the downside may not be as bad as some think, and there may even be upsides (additional floor area or units on those sites).
Admittedly, the stronger recognition given to character houses in the public mind may inflame some future fights about specific up-zonings. but ‘character’ and ‘Heritage’ are different animals, and should be seen as such.
Ergo the rallying cry by many to upzone. Allowing more gentle and careful density should be a way to defray the costs of preservation. Taxes going up to do this is a non-starter. Abolishing demolition permits without reasonable alternatives will only cause wood frame construction to grind to a halt. Sticking with the status quo (1:1 replacement after demo) will not emphasise neighbourhood character or address affordability.
The hard decision has to be made sometime.
Anybody who thinks we don’t have a problem with destruction of heritage homes should pick up a copy of Vanishing Vancouver. The problem is the city makes heritage retention difficult with its green building code. I know people who were deterred from rehabilitating an old house due to all the ridiculous hoops the city put up.
Heritage houses tell us about where we came from and the people who lived in them. I can understand losing them if there is no other option to increasing density, but to lose one solely so a spec builder or foreign owner can throw up some gaudy monstrosity is unconscionable.
I also can’t help think of the Legge Mansion lost in the West End because the city made silly demands about preserving a tulip tree (which in the worst case would grow back). Also as far as I can tell the multi-unit building which replaced it has not been marketed or offered for rent anywhere locally. Anyone know why?