If you think buying a house in our housing market is hard, try finding a place to rent

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Connor Holloway thought a budget of up to $1,500 a month for a two-bedroom apartment would get him and his roommate a place in Kitsilano — maybe not luxurious, but livable.

That dream disappeared about the time he was shown into the so-called second bedroom of a Kits ground-floor suite only to run smack into the furnace and hot water tank. Renting at $1,500 a month, it also came with an entrance shared by the entire family.

But that began to look good compared to the slightly cheaper accommodation nearby, where he had to step over feline feces and regurgitated material of indeterminate origin in the showing.

“Good luck,” said Holloway when asked if he thought it possible to find a two-bedroom suite anywhere close to Kits for $1,000 a month. “That’s hot property.

“We’ve had to extend our pool from Kits to Dunbar, past Oak St. and downtown and we’re still looking.”

If you think buying a house in Vancouver’s overheated housing market is hard, try finding a place to rent.

One thousand dollars a month is the new sweet spot for a one-bedroom suite anywhere west of Main Street in Vancouver and while that will get you a bigger place the farther you go from the city centre, you’ll likely find yourself well into Surrey and beyond if you want a good two-bedroom at that rate.

The market varies, though, with basement rental suites and individual condos not included in the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2005 annual survey, which considers only purpose-built rental units. There are places that come in below the $1,004 pegged by the CMHC as the average for a two-bedroom in Vancouver’s census metropolitan area stretching from West Vancouver to Pitt Meadows.

However, many of the deals never show up in the ads. Great digs tend to be passed tenant to tenant in a kind of underground forum where you have to know someone, or know someone who knows someone.

PROPERTY MANAGER UPSET

So precious is this information that one property manager was quite upset at the prospect that we might publish the fact that he has among other properties, a complex with two-bedroom suites for $900 on Southwest Marine in Vancouver. Nor did he want his name or company name used.

His reticence likely had something to do with the 50 or 60 phone calls he had just fielded for another suite, this one two bedrooms above a restaurant on the sought-after west side of Vancouver, at $950 a month.

Finding tenants isn’t the problem — dealing with the lineups looking for apartments is the more likely scenario.

“There’s a ton of people looking,” said Holloway. “I went to a place on West Fourth and there had to be at least 60 people lined up outside. . . . It was just wild. It wasn’t great, but we didn’t get it anyway.”

For landlords and property agencies, the applications flood in. “Vacancy isn’t our biggest problem these days,” says Judith Harris, general manager for investment properties at Crosby Property Management.

“Basically if you only had $1,000 and you wanted to be downtown or on the west side, you could get a bachelor in an old building and no amenities or a teeny, tiny one bedroom.

“In the nicer buildings, for a two bedroom you’d be paying $1,400 to $1,500 on the west side.”

In trendy Yaletown, Harris said one-bedroom suites of 600 to 700 square feet are listing around $1,100 to $1,200 a month. Close to the University of B.C., expect to pay even more, with one bedrooms starting around $1,300. Outside of the purpose-built apartments, prices can be lower.

“If you wanted to live in a basement, you could have a one bedroom basement in Kits Point for $1,000,” said Harris.

For a two-bedroom suite, Harris had to look further out.

“You could get a two bedroom in Surrey for $1,000,” she said. “For $1,000 you could maybe get a two bedroom in Burnaby but it wouldn’t be all that great.”

In her search, Harris found one bedroom and den suites at 800 square feet in a new building on Kingsway renting for $1,400 to $1,500 a month. For that, you get a kitchen counter that’s an upgrade from the standard Arborite.

The rental rates come as no surprise to David Goodman, a commercial realtor with Macdonald Commercial Real Estate Services and co-author, with son Mark Goodman, of the Goodman Report, an online publication and marketing service that tracks market trends and sales in the Greater Vancouver apartment market. “We do have a serious supply problem in Vancouver and it’s not going to go away,” he said.

The Lower Mainland’s high-priced real estate is reflected in the price and the limited supply of rental accommodation.

With the average price of a new condo in the Greater Vancouver area ranging from $275,000 in east Vancouver to $550,000 on the west side, according to Royal LePage’s latest report, and with land at a premium, creating rental accommodation is too costly for many developers.

Landlords upgrading

And with real estate prices high and Vancouver’s capitalization rate low — a ratio used in determining the value of income-producing properties — Goodman said landlords find they must upgrade older buildings and charge higher rents.

“In order for an owner to pay for the property and then put money into the building, it’s just Economics 101 that they have got to get higher rents,” he said. “No one is building rentals, which is another problem.

“The only new rentals coming on stream are the condos which go into a rental pool.”

Goodman said landlords are constrained by the market in the rents they can ask.

“One shouldn’t be pointing to a landlord if they are trying to achieve market rents,” he said.

“If it is over-market, it will sit empty.

“The market never lies.”

Like the real estate market, in rentals, it’s all about location, location, location.

“You can get from 458 square feet to 1,450 square feet for the same price,” said Debbie Johnson, marketing manager with Gateway Property Management Corp.

Her company manages properties across Canada and fields inquiries from prospective tenants in Canada and worldwide. The requests range from people who are working downtown and want to be able to walk to work, to dog owners seeking pet-friendly buildings, to tenants needing wheelchair-accessible buildings, which can eliminate many of the older walkups.

Demand exceeds supply

Gateway deals only with purpose-built rentals and demand far exceeds supply.

“Our hearts go out to tenants trying to find a place to live,” said Johnson. “It is very stressful for them.”

Her company is about to launch a new real-time service for tenants through its website in which vacancies can be instantly uploaded by apartment managers.

Johnson said condos are in such demand that individual condominium owners in Vancouver will hold open houses for prospective tenants.

“You go down and there will be 15 people waiting to rent the condo,” she said.

Johnson said that with the market determining the rental rates, it’s not about finding a bargain but simply finding an apartment.

“It’s not so much a matter of finding the good deals at a bargain because you are looking at market rents out there,” she said. “When you are looking at areas like the West End and downtown, you pretty much have to pound the pavement and go door to door.

While some apartments maintain waiting lists, Johnson pointed out that often tenants don’t have the luxury of waiting to find accommodation.

Despite vacancy rates that hover at 1.5 per cent for the Vancouver CMA (Census Metropolitan Area), with many of the most popular areas well below that, Vancouver is second place behind Toronto for the average price of a two bedroom apartment.

A two bedroom on average in Toronto will set you back $1,052 a month, compared to Vancouver’s $1,004, according to CMHC’s 2005 rental report. For a real deal, check out the cities with the lowest average rents in Canada — Trois-Rivieres at $474 and Saguenay at $472.

While some tenants might suffer sticker shock at Vancouver rents, Cameron Muir, senior market analyst with the CMHC in Vancouver, said rents tend to rise at the rate of inflation.

“Real rents have been flat for more than a decade,” he said. “That being said, the gap between owning and renting a home is widening right now, which makes some renters think twice before buying because of the difference in affordability.”

The CMHC will be collecting data for its 2006 rental survey this month, a process that will include individually owned condominiums for the first time. Muir said with the supply of purpose-built rental units remaining virtually stagnant over the past decade, investor condominiums are contributing much-needed supply to the market.

“On the demand side, we have fairly strong demand coming from young singles and couples and families who are finding the prices in the ownership market too high for them to afford,” said Muir. “We are also seeing a number of migrants moving here in their search for jobs from other parts of the country, as well as internationally and they are getting sticker shock at the prices being asked.”

Low vacancy rates are the norm, not the exception in Vancouver. Muir said for five of the past 10 years, the vacancy rate was at or below 1.1 per cent.

“For the rental household looking to find something to rent, it can be a difficult task,” he said.

The Vancouver CMA has 110,000 purpose-built rental units while the number of informal basement suites remains uncounted and condos will be tallied this fall.

Unlike some other rental markets where landlords offer incentives to fill vacant suites, there is no such need here.

“Because vacancy rates are so low, it is highly unlikely that there are a great deal of bargains available or price slashing going on by companies,” said Muir.

Despite that, tenants looking to get more for their money may look at older buildings that haven’t been upgraded and while they trade off such perks as granite countertops and party rooms, they may get apartments built on a larger scale than today’s compact units.

SUMMER IS HIGH SEASON

Phoebe Jones manages apartments and townhouses throughout the Lower Mainland for owners, with units ranging from a one-bedroom apartment in Richmond’s Steveston area at $730 to a three-bedroom townhouse in Surrey near Guildford at $850. Jones said in her experience, tenants looking on the west side of Vancouver tend to be students, or singles and couples without children.

“If you move out to the Surrey area, you could very well have a whole family living in two bedrooms,” she said. “If you are a young family and your job is out in the valley area, there is no use living in Vancouver and paying the higher rents.”

“On the other hand, if you have children in university, or you work downtown, you would much rather live on the west side where you don’t necessarily need a vehicle.”

Kasia Galecka, who runs apartmentguide.ca with her father and the accompanying apartment listing website, mywestend.ca, said the period from June to September marks the high season for apartment rentals.

“It is usually the hardest to find a place between June and September, when there are only 40 to 80 apartments a month listed, compared to winter months when there can be 150 listings in a month,” she said.

Galecka said with many rental buildings in the West End having mostly studio suites and one-bedroom units, finding a two-bedroom suite is difficult. Of the 443 company-owned rental buildings in the West End, only 59 have advertised two-bedroom apartments in the last four years, according to Galecka.

“I’ve had friends with roommates looking and it is difficult,” she said. “Usually they end up renting a condo.

“Then you are dealing with an owner or a management company.”

And the price can go up considerably for a new or nearly new condo.

One listing on Galecka’s site has a two-bedroom condo on Georgia Street going for $2,000 a month.

“If you are willing to go farther out, you can definitely find a two bedroom for $1,000, but in the West End and Kits, it is going to be more expensive,” she said. “There are not many of them here and they are kind of a pricey commodity.”

What $1,000/month rent gets you in an apartment or townhouse

1. Vancouver downtown, near Coal Harbour — Studio, one bath, 568 sq. ft., heat not included, hot water included, stove, fridge, west facing, no pets, wheelchair-friendly building, granite counters, in-suite washer and dryer, dishwasher, garburator, microwave.

2. Downtown Vancouver — Just off Robson near public library, a studio with one bath, 438 sq. ft., hot water, heat not included, stove, fridge, west view, takes pets, wheelchair friendly, in-suite washer and dryer, dishwasher, micro-wave, common BBQ, social room, fitness room, games room, media room.

3. South Granville — Bordered by West 12th and West 16th Avenues and Granville and Burrard, one bedroom, one bath, 675 sq. ft., heat, hot water, stove, fridge, northwest view, no pets, wheelchair friendly, outdoor swimming pool, common BBQ area, fitness room, sauna and games room, common laundry.

4. Arbutus/Kerrisdale in Vancouver’s west side — One bedroom, one bath, 720 sq. ft., includes heat, hot water, stove, fridge, east view, no pets, newly renovated suite with common laundry.

5. New Westminster — Two bedrooms, one bath, 885 sq. ft., includes heat, hot water, stove, fridge, south view, no pets, outdoor pool, social room, games room and common laundry.

6. Surrey — Three bedrooms, two baths, 1,452 sq. ft., heat, hot water, stove fridge, west view, no pets.

7. White Rock — One bedroom, one bath, 762 sq. ft., heat, hot water, stove, fridge, north view, no pets, common laundry.

8. Abbotsford — At $805, three bedrooms with one bath, 1,100 sq. ft., heat, hot water, stove, fridge, south view, no pets, wheelchair friendly.

WINNING AT THE RENTAL GAME

Here are some helpful hints and contacts to help you find the perfect rental home.

– Walk or drive around the area you want to live and look for signs. Go early on the first of the month to get the best selection of apartments coming available the following month.

– Check classifieds in the newspapers, check websites and bulletin boards in your school or other locations where people post rental signs. If the building has a resident manager taking applications on site, knock on the door.

– Be ready with references. Likely you’ll be required to provide a reference from the last place you lived so if you regularly hosted parties that attracted the police or never paid your rent on time, that could be a problem. Also you may be asked for an employment reference. Landlords are not allowed to refuse to rent to a tenant based on the tenant’s income, as long as that income is legal.

– Be prepared for a credit check. You can check your own credit to ensure they are no unpleasant surprises by going to the Equifax Canadian website at www.equifax.ca or TransUnion at www.transunion.ca.

ON THE WEB

www.rto.gov.bc.ca

www.amsrentsline.com

www.apartmentguide.ca

www.gatewaywest.com

www.crosbypm.com

www.bchousing.org

www.craigslist.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Jim Jamieson
Province

Scotiabank began offering 100-per-cent financed mortgages yesterday, a product they say will allow prospective home buyers to enter into the red-hot real-estate market, even though they don’t have a five-per-cent down payment.

The new product, however, was greeted with skepticism by realtors and financial planners — who expressed concern it may expose some consumers to too much risk.

The 100-per-cent mortgage, insured through Genworth Financial Canada, is available to first-time home buyers. It is offered with amortization up to 35 years, a term of six months to seven years and in variable or fixed rates at competitive levels.

Mortgage insurance from Genworth Financial Canada costs 3.75 per cent of the amount owed, which is rolled into the regular payments. By comparison, insurance on a mortgage where there is a five per cent down payment is 2.75 per cent.

In a zero-down scenario, a $289,000 purchase becomes, including insurance, a $299,837 mortgage at 6.6 per cent over 25 years. With five per cent down, a $307,000 purchase becomes a $299,670 mortgage.

Alison Strimas, vice-president mortgages for Scotiabank, said the money lending market is simply adapting to demand for more flexibility as the real-estate market in Canada continues to remain robust.

“There has been an evolution of products over the past few years,” she said.

But Strimas said only borrowers who can afford the new mortgage will be qualified.

“The banks are prudent lenders and they are in the business of keeping people in their homes,” she said. “It’s critical the borrower qualifies and can afford this mortgage.”

Vancouver westside real-estate agent Grace Kwok said she wondered if a zero-down payment mortgage is a good idea.

“It will bring more people into the market,” said Kwok. “It’s a good way to get into the market without renting. But are people going to get in over their head with properties they really can’t afford?”

Canadians are already in more debt than ever before. The national savings rate has fallen from 16 per cent in 1985 to negative 0.5 per cent in 2005.

Judith Mewhort, a financial planner with Montridge Financial Group in Vancouver, said that 100-per-cent financing — especially for first-time buyers — makes her very nervous.

“A first-time homebuyer probably has less of a cushion behind them, fewer assets, lower liquidity,” she said. “Even five per cent [down] makes me a bit nervous. There is too much movement in interest rates. If somebody loses their job or they become disabled, it’s a very thin line you’re walking. I’d be concerned about the amount of risk somebody is taking.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Gerry Bellett
Sun

VANCOUVER – Homeowners of 118 properties in False Creek will face rent increases of more than 700 per cent following changes in their 60-year land lease agreement with the city of Vancouver.

The city has decided to raise the rent for seven apartment complexes that were built in 1976, bringing in a total of $110,643 in revenue a month.

Previously, the city was receiving $7,095 a month.

A total of 435 units were developed in 1976 and buyers were given the choice of prepaying the entire land lease or paying monthly rent.

The agreement stipulated that owners not choosing the pre-paid option would have their land rent reassessed after 30 years, then again in 10-year intervals until the lease expires in 2036.

“These properties are held under a leasehold interest as opposed to freehold and the 30-year term has expired. Fifty-five other leases in False Creek will be coming up for renewal in 2010 and 2012,” said Michael Flanigan, the city’s director of real estate services.

The largest increase is for a unit in Leg in Boot Square, which had yielded $121.50 a month in rent. That is now being increased to $2,027.

The cheapest was for a unit in Scantlings that paid $70.27 a month for the last 30 years and has been raised to $528.76.

The new payments will come into effect in six months.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

John Bermingham
Province

Mayor Sam Sullivan is looking to corporations and individuals, not government, to solve the housing crisis for the city’s desperately poor.

“The status quo is no longer acceptable,” said Sullivan yesterday. “This council is clearly committed to thinking and acting outside the box.”

Sullivan said he wants to find ways to get the private sector investing in social housing. They could include an ethical investment fund or public-private partnerships.

“It has become increasingly clear that the old models of funding housing are not meeting the needs of vulnerable citizens,” said Sullivan, who has been unable to get senior government money for social housing. “When you consider that cities collect only eight cents of every tax dollar, we clearly need to find other sources of funding besides property taxes to help improve the lives of our most needy.”

He said he also wants to review the city’s bylaws and development rules to make social housing a more attractive option for developers.

Vancouver developed a homeless action plan last year that called for 800 new units of social housing annually. They have yet to be built. A report last month warned that homelessness could triple by the 2010 Olympics.

Sullivan thinks the crisis is with the hard to house — the mentally ill and drug-addicted — who need a home and support.

Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson said Sullivan has failed to wrest dollars from his political allies.

“I see it as a complete failure on the part of the mayor to come up with any constructive solutions,” said Stevenson. “We have a desperate need on the street. We need some coming-together from the three levels of government to solve this crisis.”

John Young of the group Think City said social housing will have to yield a profit before developers will touch it. “Somebody’s got to make some money,” he said. “Where’s that money coming from? It comes from the people paying for the housing, one way or another.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

Derrick Penner
Sun

The sellers’ market in Lower Mainland real estate is coming to a close. Sales in September declined sharply and listings rose for the fourth month in a row.

In Greater Vancouver, the Multiple Listing Service recorded 3,344 sales in September, representing a 24.7-per-cent drop from the same month a year ago. New listings in the region increased 11.4 per cent to 5,115 units.

In the Fraser Valley, 1,323 sales in September equated to a 23-per-cent decline from September 2005. Total listings increased 19 per cent.

Between both regions the number of sales compared with the number of listings is still too high to bring buyers significant price relief. Still, a trend toward fewer sales and more listings could balance the market so that neither the seller nor buyer has a particular advantage.

September’s results mark a continuation in the market shift driven by steep increases in house prices, said Cameron Muir, senior analyst for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

“The asking price of many home sellers is getting to the point at which fewer and fewer buyers can pay,” Muir said.

The average MLS sales price for a single-family home in Greater Vancouver during September was $741,644, a percentage point off the average August price, but still up by double digits compared with a year ago.

Single-family home sales across Greater Vancouver fell 26.8 per cent to 1,034 transactions compared with a year ago. The townhouse market saw the biggest drop with 392 sales, 33.8 per cent below September, 2005.

Condominium sales in Greater Vancouver fell 18.4 per cent to 1,093 transactions.

In the Fraser Valley, where average single-family-home prices hit $493,727, home sales fell 29.6 per cent. Townhouse sales were down 17 per cent to 254 and condominium sales dropped 17.5 per cent to 241.

Muir noted that a decline in sales, even as dramatic as the region has experienced, shouldn’t be a surprise following the frenzied activity of 2005.

“At this point, it’s not a signal of any kind of significant market correction,” Muir added.

However, Tsur Somerville, director of the centre for urban land economics and real estate at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, said the trend in sales is a sign the Lower Mainland market “is clearly putting the brakes on.”

“But it’s too early to say how much.”

Somerville said real estate markets pass through a balanced period when they are rising from depression to overheated, and will also hit balance, or “equilibrium” on their way back.

“Since [the market] has been very overheated, it’s quite reasonable to go back to balance,” Somerville added.

“The question is, are we going to stay there or keep going?”

Somerville wonders whether the psychology of buyers is shifting and more of them are focusing on negatives rather than positives, such as cost overruns for the 2010 Olympics. Somerville said buyers might also be looking at the poorly performing U.S. housing market and worrying how that might affect B.C.

Whether it does or not is immaterial, he added, “because psychology matters.”

“If sales continue to drop and listings . . . keep going up, you can get prices declining, even in the midst of very strong employment numbers,” Somerville said.

Rick Valouche, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, added that it is hard to characterize the drop in sales as decline when the comparison is being drawn against Greater Vancouver’s best year ever.

“We’re on pace for the third-best year ever,” he said.

The frenzy of bidding wars for properties has disappeared, but there is still demand. On average, houses are staying on the market 40 days before selling, compared with 48 days in 2005 and 43 days in 2004.

Prices, Valouche said, have “definitely scared some [buyers] out of the market, but it’s hard to say we’re having a down market when we sell 2,500 units in a month.”

David Rishel, president of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, added mortgage rates are expected to remain at low levels for the time being, and the economic picture looks solid.

“Nobody’s saying [the market] will continue at the pace it has been forever,” Rishel added. “There are always going to be peaks and valleys. But we don’t anticipate the valleys will be very deep and hopefully the peaks won’t be as high.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Minister eyes up to 15 sites for redevelopment

Miro Cernetig
Sun

Construction cranes may soon be a common sight at British Columbia’s social-housing projects as the provincial government moves to get the private sector involved in redeveloping housing for the poor.

On Tuesday, the government announced it would begin giving rent supplements to 15,000 households that make less than $20,000 a year. It also promised to build up to 450 emergency shelters to deal with the growing problem of homelessness.

But Forests Minister Rich Coleman, a former real estate developer who was given responsibility for social housing by Premier Gordon Campbell, has much bigger plans that he will be announcing in the months to come.

He said in an interview he has instructed his staff to identify 12 to 15 social-housing sites that could be redeveloped by the private sector in partnership with the government and social housing authorities.

While he did not specifically name the sites involved, Coleman said most are social-housing projects in the Lower Mainland.

He estimated the projects could yield up to 4,000 additional social-housing units and that construction could begin within a year, with the projects finished within three to four years. Profits from selling development rights to the private sector, he said, could be funnelled back into other social housing endeavours.

“This is the beginning of what I believe is a paradigm shift,” said Coleman.

No specific deals were mentioned, but Coleman said many social-housing sites, many of which will be turned over to the province by the CMHC in January, now have too low a density.

He wants developers and societies running social-housing projects to propose ways of increasing density. In some cases, he said, that would mean more social-housing units being added while in others, developers would buy the land from the government for market housing.

Coleman said the government is committed to no net loss of social housing in any project, and that people in current projects will not be displaced.

But the New Democratic Party and anti-poverty groups were skeptical of the government’s promises.

The NDP distributed a draft of a government discussion paper written in June 2005 that estimates 3,150 social-housing units would have to be built every year for the next decade to fill the current needs.

There are currently about 15,000 households on the government’s waiting list.

To deal with that pressure, the government announced Tuesday it will offer $40 million a year in rent supplements to the “working poor,” who will qualify for from $1 to $300 a month to help them pay their rent. About 15,000 households making less than $20,000 a year and with under $10,000 in assets would qualify.

But anti-poverty critics said the government’s plan lacked a concrete strategy for building more affordable housing.

“The only way to get people off the streets is to build housing for them,” said Jean Swanson, who coordinates the Carnegie Community Action centre in the Downtown Eastside. “And we need thousands of them. How many are they going to build?”

Coleman, who promised to increase the government’s spending on social housing to $250 million by 2008 from about $200 million, did not spell out a target number of new social-housing units.

Al Mitchell, who runs the Lookout Shelter and other refuges for the homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, said homelessness is a chronic problem now. He estimates that last year he turned away 5,000 people. He said the government’s rent supplement plan would not make much difference in solving that problem.

“They don’t need another one hundred bucks they then pump back to the landlord, because the landlord knows he can raise the rent,” said Mitchell. “What’s needed is more places for people to live. … I’m very disappointed.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Sun

Low-income renters who stand to benefit from the new subsidy announced Tuesday probably won’t care what it is called.

But the new rental assistance program that is the centerpiece of what the provincial government is billing as an innovative and comprehensive housing strategy is really not a housing policy at all, but a new form of welfare.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman said the program, which will give a subsidy to families earning less than $20,000 a year that pay more than 30 per cent of their income on rent, will not help alleviate the housing crunch, but will at least give badly needed comfort to the 15,000 working families that are expected to qualify.

That does not make it bad, but it leaves undone the more difficult task of addressing the serious shortage in this province of rental housing that is affordable for low-income working families.

On that front, Coleman’s new housing strategy recognizes a number of key elements of the complex problem, but falls short on solutions.

It recognizes that the provincial government cannot on its own afford to build and subsidize enough housing to meet the demand in this torrid market. But the ultimate solution — finding ways to make it profitable for private developers to build affordable housing — is still in the talking stage.

Still, Coleman is at least talking sense. He promised to talk to municipalities about the need to drive down development costs that add tens of thousands of dollars to the price of new homes.

He promised to talk to Ottawa about lowering barriers posed by arcane and punitive taxation imposed on redevelopment and the possibility of providing incentives for developers who are willing to try to create an affordable housing market.

It’s hard to see how Coleman will be able to make any progress through encouraging words alone, though.

While the province has to tread carefully in areas of municipal jurisdiction, if municipalities can’t find ways on their own to reduce development fees, the provincial government should consider using its fiscal and legal clout to intervene.

Otherwise, the gap between what it costs to produce housing and what lower-to-middle income people can afford will continue to grow.

Coleman also recognized that the more immediate needs of the homeless can and should be addressed more directly. The 450 additional supportive housing units for homeless people he promised will not solve the problem, but they will make a welcome difference.

So will the new funding for counsellors to seek out people living on the street who cannot be helped merely by providing more shelter.

Less certain is the impact of the decision to transfer the management of 2,600 housing units over to the Aboriginal Housing Management Association.

Coleman says the move recognizes the disproportionate need for housing among aboriginals, who make up three per cent of the population of British Columbia but 30 per cent of the homeless in Vancouver.

But as with any reorganization, the province should monitor the transfer of authority to ensure that it truly benefits the people who are supposed to receive the services.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006