Bring back employee housing, architect urges
Don Cayo
The Vancouver Sun
What if Vancouver were to suddenly get a lot of nice new homes, all of them available to working families for half the rent people pay to live in comparable properties today?
This wouldn’t address all the complex and overlapping issues that underlie the city’s housing crisis. But it would certainly help.
And it’s doable, says Oberto Oberti, a Vancouver architect whose firm has been involved in everything from high-end residences, to restoration projects, to commercial properties, to golf and ski resorts.
How? By not only dramatically increasing density — a solution lots of people propose — but by also locking in the substantial benefits of new zoning to make some substantial new housing projects affordable to working families.
Oberti makes the case for an updated version of employee housing — a concept long established in places as diverse as mining towns and resorts like Whistler.
And he’s not talking dormitories or dreary row housing, but rather vibrant and bustling neighbourhoods reminiscent of those charming European cities that so many Canadians like to visit. In his words, “street-front density” as opposed to “a forest of towers.”
Local government would, of course, have a role to play, but not simply — or even not necessarily — writing big cheques.
The important thing, he argues, is for government to assemble the land and attaching covenants to limit its use to non-market housing for people employed within the Metro Vancouver region. Then the local government could dramatically up-zone the land to allow more floors and much higher density, thus allowing many more residences to be built with no additional land cost.
The homes could be built by either the private or the public sector, as long as the covenant is in place. With land costs reduced from massive to modest, low rents could still produce a profit for the owner.
True, this wouldn’t directly address the problem of low-income citizens who don’t have jobs — single moms on social assistance, disabled people, and the like. But a big increase in housing options for working people would lessen the pressure on existing housing stock and other new developments.
Combined with three other measures — a streamlined approval process, low-cost project financing from CMHC and/or B.C. Housing, and the use of simpler, but high quality, construction techniques — it would allow these homes to be rented out for half what they’d cost today, he said.
Of course there’d be opposition to such densification — there always is. But some willing neighbourhoods could no doubt be found. And he notes there are times politicians must stand up to NIMBY lobby groups and make decisions based on the greater good.
Besides, local governments already up-zone neighbourhoods all the time in pursuit of greater tax revenues. So it seems only reasonable to expect them to do the same to address a serious housing problem that impacts not only workers and their families, but also the businesses that want to employ them.
Oberti suggests good places to start would be Vancouver’s several neighbourhoods with mostly dowdy one- and two-storey commercial buildings. The street-fronts could still house the same kinds of retailers and services, he said, while the space above them would become home to many who are, or fear they soon will be, squeezed out of today’s housing market.
It seems to me Oberti’s idea could also provide some relief for neighbourhood businesses, especially mom and pop shops, that are hit — often crippled — by soaring property taxes when their streets are up-zoned under current rules. Now property taxes soar in lockstep with soaring land values. But with covenants limiting future developments to non-market housing, both the land values and the tax bills would remain stable.
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