Lots of dunks on this already so I’m going to do an educational thread about the alternatives to small market housing.

1) First, to get it out of the way: people who grew up in North America are used to luxurious housing.

https://twitter.com/afrocosmist/status/1842300112086634628

They often are coming from living in a single detached house with 100s, even 1000s of square feet of space per person. This is a global anomaly, not a norm, but it’s a norm for them. Of course, it causes lots of problems, like a luxury, car-centric, carbon-intensive lifestyle.

It’s so funny to me that I write a whole ass thread about higher taxes & using that for nonmarket housing and public transit & immediately get told no, the market won’t save us and govt must step in.

DID I STUTTER? What is govt intervention if not taxes and social safety nets?? Trust me when I say I’m not a deregulation-obsessed libertarian please for the love of all that is holy I am tired

Housing can be pretty straitforward in some ways (e.g. give housing to homeless to end homelessness). It can be somewhat counterintuitive in other ways.

One of those ways it can confuse some, is land value. Let's talk about land price, and how SO many people get it wrong. Land value is part of what you're paying for when you buy, say, a house, right? So it seems natural that lower land price means lower housing cost. Thus, some planners and electeds come to the conclusion that they should do whatever they can to lower land prices. Wrong!

Good morning! Let’s talk some more about why policies like Inclusionary Zoning raising the price of *new* housing is bad - and not just for buyers of said new housing.

It also raises the price of existing/older housing.

https://twitter.com/amoralorealis/status/1607866095293329409

Let’s say new housing “pencils” (it’s only viable to build) at $3000/month in rent. That means market housing prices across the board must rise before new housing is built. Slightly older units will charge $2800, older still units charge $2500, etc.

Apparently more people are interested in Inclusionary Zoning and problems associated with them than I thought. However, it's only one of *MANY* things we do that raise the floor price at which developers can build. Let's talk about some of them (and no it's not just zoning) 1) Community Amenity Contributions

CACs are charged for new multifamily development. Often, it's a closed, intransparent, discretionary process on determining how much to charge. This is risk - and again, since capitalism, the higher the risk, the higher the return must be...

In honour of yet again being called Far Right for criticizing Inclusionary Zoning, let's talk about why IZ is not my favourite way to fund "affordable" housing.

Inclusionary Zoning is popular because people think that it's a way to "force developers" to pay for affordable units. This is, however, a misconception. Developers will only build when there is a profit margin - the greater the risk, the higher the profits must be - because that's how borrowing money works. They will not get financing unless there is a return on investment.

Good morning, another day and another bit of housing myth to debunk.

Anti-government conservatives like this (unsurprisingly ABC fanboys) will occasionally claim that lower govt fees on housing will lower prices. Let’s talk about how this is overly simplistic. Now, let’s start with what should be obvious: producers are profit-maximizing. This means that the price they charge is the highest price consumers will pay for. Just because costs go down, they aren’t going to altruistically lower housing costs.

Since @advocateclaire has asked so nicely, let's talk data and what I presented at the VCPC panel.

What does housing look like in the City of Vancouver? What are we currently building?

According to BC Assessment data, we are currently mostly building low density housing. From 2014-2018, we built mostly detached housing. Vancouver is already built out, so this means that old detached houses are being replaced with new, more expensive detached houses - which means 0 net new housing, but plenty of gentrification.

Let me tell you a story about social housing.

I was born in Japan. Even after my family moved to Canada, my mother would bring me back to live in Japan for months at a time, because she wanted me and my siblings to stay fluent in Japanese. I stayed with my great aunt a lot. My great aunt was single, elderly and lived on a pretty small pension. She qualified for danchi apartments - fully subsidized, "100% affordable" public housing. It was great for her because as long as she lived frugally, she was able to save, even on her limited pension.

Serious question @pmcondon2 - what are you trying to keep land cost low *for*, if not nonprofit social housing?

Not that upzoning only for social housing is going to raise land value. Why would it rise when there is no profit to be had??? Status quo: land values are already rising quickly, and being practically all captured by multimillion dollar detached house homeowner-investors. This is...fine? 😅 because it’s not upzoned?

For whomst are we trying to keep land values low? People obsessed with streetcars?

I'd like to share another tidbit I hear a lot from social housing/nonprofit developers that I find infuriating: the projects often lose units even before the public hears anything about the rezoning proposal. 1/N

https://twitter.com/amoralorealis/status/1144115137567047680

So in the last thread, I talked about how every new multifamily development (including social housing) needs to apply for a "rezoning" because everything but single detached houses are banned by default in 76% of Vancouver due to zoning bylaws, right? 2/N

Don’t care about for-profit rentals in Shaughnessy? I thought so too, at first! Who cares about developer profits? Not me. Well, let me share some tidbits I’ve learned from nonprofit/social housing developers. 1)zoning bylaws prevent everything but mansions in places like Shaughnessy. That means even social housing can’t be built “by right,” only mansions are allowed by default. To be able to build denser housing, you need to ask for a special exception to the bylaws - a “rezoning.”

This is the Housing Vancouver Strategy Annual Progress Report and Data Book 2019 summary thread! Big thanks to city staff for this, which is *chock full* of great data (so much so that summarizing is going to be difficult). vancouver.ca/files/cov/2019… Note: All municipalities should be doing this. It's great for transparency and informed decision-making. If you don't live in the City of Vancouver (CoV), ask your municipality where their housing data book is at.

So, we're all going to start talking about the big money laundering problem with the US and Europe, right? And not a certain Asian country? Cause I'm sure you're not a racist.

https://twitter.com/amoralorealis/status/1126625267630235649

Like, I’d love to talk about this, it’s a fascinating topic. I really don’t know if I can trust many people to not be racist while doing so, though. And apparently no one is actually going to even skim the report.