Could townhouses help solve Vancouver’s affordability problem?

By

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It’s no news to many that young families are finding it hard to find a suitable home in Vancouver, but an expert may have a partial solution. Townhouses may help keep growing families in the city.

A recent affordability index shows there are few townhomes in Metro Vancouver’s urban areas, even though they remain one of the most popular types of homes to buy. Young families are finding they’ve outgrown a typical Vancouver condo, but can’t afford to buy a single family home.

The result has been an exodus from the city to places like Surrey, where there is a lot of room and desire to build townhomes.

Thomas Davidoff with the Sauder School of Business says the lack of townhomes is changing the look of the city. “To which types of residents is Vancouver going to be appealing over time? It’s going to be very high-end luxury and probably starter homes for singles and couples.”

Michael Ferreira with Urban Analytics says we need larger units that can accommodate families, and ones that are built are usually snapped up right away. “It’s more important to create that sort of stepping stone product for people who are living in a condominium that are outgrowing it, to be able to move into something with more space.”

He says Vancouver has a lot to lose if the young families all leave. “There’s just an energy that you get from it that you don’t get in a retirement community.”

The lack of urban townhomes doesn’t only affect the young. Ferreira is finding older couples wanting to downsize are staying in their single family homes longer than they want to, further decreasing supply of single family homes. That is compounding the problem facing young families.

Building townhomes in Vancouver is difficult; you need large parcels of land which can be hard to come by. This seems to at least be on the radar for city politicians. NPA councillor George Affleck blames the slow process developers have to go through.

“There’s something happening in between the chance to have it rezoned, but there’s nobody asking. So, how do we encourage more developers, smaller developers to develop the smaller pieces of property and putting in townhouses.”

Vision Councillor Geoff Meggs says there’s been pushback against townhouse development in areas which have traditionally been for single family homes only.

“We’re putting them wherever we think that there’s strong community support and close to arterials. We’ve already rezoned in a number of important neighbourhoods in the last couple of years to provide support for that. But often communities resist on the basis that they want to keep the single family housing form. We can’t be deaf to those concerns.”

Ferreira says city council must be brave and start allowing these homes to be built in areas which have been typically for single family homes only, like the West Side, Shaughnessy and Grandview-Woodlands, even if there is resistance.

“There are neighbourhoods that are currently all single family now that are going to have to accept, and be willing to accept, different forms and higher-density forms of housing. That doesn’t mean that they have to accept high rises.”

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today