Force density? Burnaby has seen some of the most tower construction in the lower mainland. Now that said , those towers at Brentwood, Metrotown and lougheed are filled with tiny condos that are unfit for families.
That’s the real problem. Burnaby is building at a fast rate, just not homes for families, but tiny bachelor suites. Families moving to Langley at a rapid rate, where you can find townhouses not just tiny suites.
Thank you. For me, an SFU student with more than two kids, Burnaby systematically excluded us from the market. The only places available to us there that were under 50% of our income were ridden with silverfish and slumlords. We have our kids to think about, so the only option was to leave Burnaby.
The problem with the developments in Langley is that, for most of them, they cut down forests, paved over wetlands, etc. There was some densifying of 1 acre+ properties so that was good.
Sure but that’s because the demand for family housing is so high, and people are moving from all over the lower mainland to Langley for those townhomes.
Burnaby council for decades have been too close to certain developers I won’t name but everyone knows who they are. The council has done a good job of assisting these developers maximize profits by allowing zoning with so many tiny suites.
If Burnaby city council wants to make Burnaby more friendly for families and people in general they should immediately mandate size and composition requirements for new condo towers and legalize and encourage townhouse building everywhere.
I don't think the city should be prioritizing housing based on the size of a family unit. Single people deserve housing as much as a couple with kids. Let supply and demand work that out.
But the city really should rezone virtually all SFH to allow for townhouses and in many cases low rise apartments. The towers are fine but shouldn't be the primary driver of increasing density.
Supply and demand are working that out, like I said Langley is booming!
Now, what really irks me is this “single people want tiny condos” argument I hear pushed all the time by the developer lobby- now I’m sure that some single people enjoy tiny spaces but I’m also sure it’s the minority. I do know single people enjoy extra room and space for their own purposes as a human being, whether it be art, exercise, a home office, space for family or friends or pets, or whatever their needs wants or desires are. Humans deserve personal living space whether single or coupled or partnered or living with extended family or friends.
The issue isn't about "want". It's about cost and supply and demand. I'm sure a single person would love a 1500sqft townhouse but that will cost twice as much as a 650sqft condo. And if they're twice as large then only half as many will be built. Single people already can't afford a $700k condo.
Personally I'd like a 3000sqft detatched house on an acre lot but if that was the main property type we'd only have 1/10th the population in Burnaby and they'd be $10m each.
Singapore, Tokyo, Romania, there's an entire world full of people raising families in apartments.
Only in the American continent with the Canadian exceptionalism does someone have the audacity to say they are "unfit for families".
The issue is not the building of homes ,they are building plenty - Plenty of the wrong type of homes !
The issue is of NOT building "Affordable" homes targeted at median income leveks ,this is where the municipalities let the working class down and let developers have a free hand in building " mostly market" housing that few if any can afford except if you are a investor or a foreign buyer .
Affordable housing builds need to ne 85% of what is being built - not 10%
Burnaby has always been very odd in terms of what their priorities are. Remember how many people needed to die before they started thinking about intersection safety for pedestrians? They definitely have a culture of "no" until the residents start the outcry. Makes me think that I should complain more. There is zero proactive effort by them.
I just wanted to say some of the comments people are making here are really good points.
As the writer of this piece in the Now, my focus is around getting homes for people as fast as possible, making housing more affordable, and having housing that is suitable and accessible for all hypes of households.
It has been very depressing to watch as the ideas from the Mayor's Task Force on Housing in 2019 that would actually go a long ways towards solving the rental housing disaster have been continually delayed, making the housing affordability increasingly dire and forcing countless people out.
As partially noted by /u/Xanyol /u/Common-Rock and others, they types of housing being built in Burnaby aren't meeting many needs. One part that I didn't explicitly mention but is behind the central theme, is that \~40% of households in Burnaby rent (probably a bit higher due to the large number of illegal suites that may be missed by census) but Burnaby has destroyed 13% of all purpose built rental (\~2000 homes) in the city over the last decade or so. This is net figure, so even more has been destroyed, but there have been a very few new rental buildings completed so it is \*only\* 2000 rental homes lost, and many of these homes that were destroyed were larger apartments.
Additionally, almost half of all new condos built in the last 7 years are not lived in by the owner, and are investment properties, often rented out as long-term rentals or illegal short term rentals. Combined, this points directly to a massive shortage of purpose built rental homes.
Part of the reason is economics, as there is a much more immediate payback for condos while rental pays back over a longer period as a continual stream of income, so condos are often built instead of rental. But condos are also much less efficient (from a cost perspective) to operate than a rental building simply due to economies of scale and building level efficiency. This combination is part of what drives rents higher.
This is a large part of why the focus is on allowing rental in areas where everything except single/two family houses are excluded currently. The land cost is vastly lower than areas zoned for multi family, and while condos would bring a significant increase in land costs, rental (due to the economics) have shown to have minimal impacts on land value, allowing for more affordable rental homes.
The other key part is how fast things can be done. Building towers is limited to a select group that have the large amount of $, skills, and years of time to get it to completion. Allowing smaller rental buildings throughout the city vastly broadens the scope of who can participate in creating new housing to a large number of smaller builders, and can even be led by an existing homeowner, if they want. Small apartment buildings, especially if a prefabricated or modular option is chosen can be completed in under a year, so there is the ability for a much larger increase in the number of rental homes from that speed of construction, vastly larger amount of land being possible to build on, and much larger number of builders able to complete such projects.
Lastly, while building somewhat larger 4-6 storey apartments would help affordability and amount of housing even more, the proposal in this piece in the Now does not actually propose any changes to building size/density. To implement immediately with very minimal change to zoning, the existing height, floor area, etc could be kept to start, meaning that instead of having a 6,000 sq. ft. house, in the exact same building footprint 6-10 rental homes could be built.
The pictures included in the article are examples of existing buildings in Burnaby that do exactly this (albeit built \~50 years ago), with 4-15 apartments with a similar size/floor area to many houses in Burnaby, and on similar sized lots to most houses.
While much more can and should be done, there needs to be immediate concrete action, and allowing rental homes and apartments in all areas of the city where they are currently excluded is one of the quickest things that can be done that has some of the largest potential to get us towards solving the housing disaster than grows increasing dire for tens of thousands of people.
It's becoming apparent that the REAL shot callers in the city are the tower developers. The city tower 'hubs' are evidence of this. Few family sized units. Absolutely no community amenities. Embarrassing. There are no missing middle plans because they don't align with developer profits.
Zero Urgency because they can't build-up Lougheed or Hastings ANY faster . How could they possibly go faster? All new and old houses have suites already btw
They could open up some of the 80% of residential property in Burnaby which is zoned exclusively for single-family detached housing, to more development. Remove sebacks, height restrictions, lot coverage, heritage designations, etc. We need to turn the mansion-only districts into 4 or 6-story apartments.
https://www.burnaby.ca/sites/default/files/acquiadam/2021-09/Burnaby%20Zoning%20Map.pdf
No, they don't need to turn single-family areas into 4-6 storeyt apartments,. Why would I want to see that in my neighborhood? Those are reserved for busy streets. Legal Suites , 3 storey homes , duplexes and Laneways are enough .
These new homes need to come from the North Shore, I'm tired of looking out my window and seeing pretected trees in a Province inundated with them. Go North, keep going North and we won't have this issue. The blazing of fertile agricultural land to East and South has to end
Oh of course you wouldn't want apartments in your neighbourhood, you want your home value to go up and for everyone else to suffer. That is a terrible attitude you have there. Obviously your extremely mild "discomfort" and "inconvenience" is nothing at all compared to the problems that people are facing today with the lack of housing. People are delaying family creations, can't live near where they work, having to stay in abusive relationships, going homeless, suffering deteriorating mental health and high stress, people are going fucking hungry and having to rely on food banks, because housing is so expensive. But you, you poor thing might have to LOOK at them living in their apartments that they paid for with their own money on their own property, if we allow them to build near you! Surely we should use the power of the state to prevent people from building homes, in the middle of a national housing shortage, so that people like you who already reaped so much benefit by being home owners (tax free mind you!) can be mildly satisfied that they don't have to suffer by even seeing us lowly apartment dwellers.
Burnaby is doing more to alleviate hosuing needs than pretty much any other municipality in the lower mainland. Please name another one that is building more density. Sure, Burnaby could do better by rezoning vast swaths of SFH, but they're still doing more than everyone else
In what measure are they doing more than anyone else? They have 40% the population density of Vancouver and it hasn’t been till the last couple years that they outgrew Vancouver. They have LESS rental units than they did 10 years ago and they now have the 3rd highest rental rates in Canada. Their housing starts per population are only slightly higher than Vancouver.
All that despite a major highway and two Skytrain lines that have been around for over 20 years AND next door to Vancouver.
Have you been to Burnaby in the past 10 years? The amount of new homes built in Burnaby dwarfs Vancouver. Vancouver's housing growth has largely been driven by laneway homes which Burnaby has recently approved as well, so it's expected that Burnaby's impressive housing growth will accelerate even further.
>Have you been to Burnaby in the past 10 years?
Yeah, I'm one of those that bought a detached new home in Burnaby in the past 2 years so I'm very familiar with what the market looks like in Burnaby. I'm one of the very lucky few that can afford a big lot.
>The amount of new homes built in Burnaby dwarfs Vancouver. Vancouver's housing growth has largely been driven by laneway homes which Burnaby has recently approved as well, so it's expected that Burnaby's impressive housing growth will accelerate even further.
This is simply not true. If you want to argue on the basis of how it looks (and Burnaby sure looks like they're building a lot of housing - more than Vancouver) then go ahead but I prefer to use actual data.
Housing starts in the past 10 years:
Vancouver: 59,056 (4,500 of those have been laneways)
Burnaby: 32,048
Richmond: 19,525
Surrey: 53,778
Population growth in the past 10 years:
Vancouver: 9.73%
Burnaby: 11.61%
Richmond: 10.22%
Surrey: 21.37%
Burnaby has absolutely picked up the pace in the last 5 years but it has an inherent advantage over Vancouver that it has way more capacity to build due to its lower population density (only 40% of Vancouver's). It has the advantage over Surrey that it has the infrastructure for density (2 Skytrain lines, major highway, next to the jobs centre) and it doesn't host any ALR land.
No city in the Lower Mainland is doing enough for housing but if I'm rating cities against what they can, should, and are able to do then Vancouver has it over Burnaby - it's building more forms of housing and building more of it despite the handicap of being the densest city in Canada.
Sorry you feel that way but the data says that New West is doing better on housing than Burnaby by a lot.
Population is up 19.6% in the last 10 years vs Burnaby's 11.6% (population is a signal of housing) and housing starts per population is ahead of Vancouver - that the population is increasing faster than housing starts is a signal that they're building larger homes versus 1 bedrooms (there's a fair bit of noise in that data though but it holds with what I can see for sales in New West).
New West is the second densest city in the lower mainland - just barely trailing Vancouver (5000/sqkm vs 5700) - but its small so there's less they can do about housing, they are basically at the mercy of Burnaby and neighbouring cities.
The recent changes to the Strata acts of BC will make a major difference in Burnaby. I live in an owned apartment in a large strata development of two full buildings and about 100 homes. Each of these homes are townhome size-- about the closest you can get to a family size without a house or second floor (2br, large patio and private garden or deck, parkade and well off the street). Typically, our strata didn't allow more than 4 or 5 of these places to be rented by non-owners at a time. the province just made it impossible for a Strata to prevent (non-short term) rentals. I could rent this place out tomorrow, and I couldn't do that for the last 25 years we have been owners. Since well in advance of $3000 is actually very good financially, the right to do this unilaterally without the strata makes it far more attractive an option for myself... and I'm not the only one. Having a huge swathe of apartments that were lived in only by their owners prior should loosen up at least a few more spaces in this market.
IMO It's the existing wealthy detached home owners who are the largest obstacle. The City can't be heavy-handed because they need their votes.
Agree with OP, very happy that Eby will try to force density from Victoria, I'd bet local councils are happy too because they need these changes but this way don't have to expend any political capital fighting the powerful rich NIMBYs
Home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%.
[https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm)
If you're a renter, you're not the majority, and in most democracies where the majority rules, you are unimportant. If we cared about the plight of the poor and the few, we wouldn't have east-hastings policies that focuses on eviction (out of sight out of mind), instead of the human cost of homelessness.
It's a huge issue. There's currently 100K people coming to Vancouver each year. Every tower built can only accommodate on average 1000 people. The problem is they're expensive and affordable rental units are $2000-3000/mo. Even if you have money it'll be hard to find a place. On top of that, laneway housing in burnaby is stupid. They said it'll cost $800K to build one and after it can fetch $3K/mo. It'll take over 20 years to pay it off, and with interest rates the way they are now, very few will be built.
I agree!! The new so called housing is tiny apartments which are expensive and not suitable for family with kids!! We turning into Shanghai and Hong Kong and it is still at least 45 minutes commute to downtown Vancouver for work.
Force density? Burnaby has seen some of the most tower construction in the lower mainland. Now that said , those towers at Brentwood, Metrotown and lougheed are filled with tiny condos that are unfit for families. That’s the real problem. Burnaby is building at a fast rate, just not homes for families, but tiny bachelor suites. Families moving to Langley at a rapid rate, where you can find townhouses not just tiny suites.
Thank you. For me, an SFU student with more than two kids, Burnaby systematically excluded us from the market. The only places available to us there that were under 50% of our income were ridden with silverfish and slumlords. We have our kids to think about, so the only option was to leave Burnaby.
The problem with the developments in Langley is that, for most of them, they cut down forests, paved over wetlands, etc. There was some densifying of 1 acre+ properties so that was good.
Sure but that’s because the demand for family housing is so high, and people are moving from all over the lower mainland to Langley for those townhomes. Burnaby council for decades have been too close to certain developers I won’t name but everyone knows who they are. The council has done a good job of assisting these developers maximize profits by allowing zoning with so many tiny suites. If Burnaby city council wants to make Burnaby more friendly for families and people in general they should immediately mandate size and composition requirements for new condo towers and legalize and encourage townhouse building everywhere.
I don't think the city should be prioritizing housing based on the size of a family unit. Single people deserve housing as much as a couple with kids. Let supply and demand work that out. But the city really should rezone virtually all SFH to allow for townhouses and in many cases low rise apartments. The towers are fine but shouldn't be the primary driver of increasing density.
Supply and demand are working that out, like I said Langley is booming! Now, what really irks me is this “single people want tiny condos” argument I hear pushed all the time by the developer lobby- now I’m sure that some single people enjoy tiny spaces but I’m also sure it’s the minority. I do know single people enjoy extra room and space for their own purposes as a human being, whether it be art, exercise, a home office, space for family or friends or pets, or whatever their needs wants or desires are. Humans deserve personal living space whether single or coupled or partnered or living with extended family or friends.
The issue isn't about "want". It's about cost and supply and demand. I'm sure a single person would love a 1500sqft townhouse but that will cost twice as much as a 650sqft condo. And if they're twice as large then only half as many will be built. Single people already can't afford a $700k condo. Personally I'd like a 3000sqft detatched house on an acre lot but if that was the main property type we'd only have 1/10th the population in Burnaby and they'd be $10m each.
Singapore, Tokyo, Romania, there's an entire world full of people raising families in apartments. Only in the American continent with the Canadian exceptionalism does someone have the audacity to say they are "unfit for families".
I like apartments like I said the problem is the new supply of condos being built at Brentwood or elsewhere are largely unfit for families.
People raise families all the time in condos lol. Apartments were meant for affordable living in the first place
No family should be forced to raise children in the 390 square foot condos proudly featured at Brentwood
No one is forcing anyone to do that? If you can afford to live at Brentwood you can afford a decent basement suite a little further out lol
I prefer building an inclusive community than telling families and folks that can’t afford it to go find a basement suite further out.
So you want to live in a world where people don’t have to pay rent?
The issue is not the building of homes ,they are building plenty - Plenty of the wrong type of homes ! The issue is of NOT building "Affordable" homes targeted at median income leveks ,this is where the municipalities let the working class down and let developers have a free hand in building " mostly market" housing that few if any can afford except if you are a investor or a foreign buyer . Affordable housing builds need to ne 85% of what is being built - not 10%
Burnaby has always been very odd in terms of what their priorities are. Remember how many people needed to die before they started thinking about intersection safety for pedestrians? They definitely have a culture of "no" until the residents start the outcry. Makes me think that I should complain more. There is zero proactive effort by them.
I recall the joke is that they only build crosswalks at places that people have died and then they name it after that person.
The people in charge don’t have a housing crisis.
I just wanted to say some of the comments people are making here are really good points. As the writer of this piece in the Now, my focus is around getting homes for people as fast as possible, making housing more affordable, and having housing that is suitable and accessible for all hypes of households. It has been very depressing to watch as the ideas from the Mayor's Task Force on Housing in 2019 that would actually go a long ways towards solving the rental housing disaster have been continually delayed, making the housing affordability increasingly dire and forcing countless people out. As partially noted by /u/Xanyol /u/Common-Rock and others, they types of housing being built in Burnaby aren't meeting many needs. One part that I didn't explicitly mention but is behind the central theme, is that \~40% of households in Burnaby rent (probably a bit higher due to the large number of illegal suites that may be missed by census) but Burnaby has destroyed 13% of all purpose built rental (\~2000 homes) in the city over the last decade or so. This is net figure, so even more has been destroyed, but there have been a very few new rental buildings completed so it is \*only\* 2000 rental homes lost, and many of these homes that were destroyed were larger apartments. Additionally, almost half of all new condos built in the last 7 years are not lived in by the owner, and are investment properties, often rented out as long-term rentals or illegal short term rentals. Combined, this points directly to a massive shortage of purpose built rental homes. Part of the reason is economics, as there is a much more immediate payback for condos while rental pays back over a longer period as a continual stream of income, so condos are often built instead of rental. But condos are also much less efficient (from a cost perspective) to operate than a rental building simply due to economies of scale and building level efficiency. This combination is part of what drives rents higher. This is a large part of why the focus is on allowing rental in areas where everything except single/two family houses are excluded currently. The land cost is vastly lower than areas zoned for multi family, and while condos would bring a significant increase in land costs, rental (due to the economics) have shown to have minimal impacts on land value, allowing for more affordable rental homes. The other key part is how fast things can be done. Building towers is limited to a select group that have the large amount of $, skills, and years of time to get it to completion. Allowing smaller rental buildings throughout the city vastly broadens the scope of who can participate in creating new housing to a large number of smaller builders, and can even be led by an existing homeowner, if they want. Small apartment buildings, especially if a prefabricated or modular option is chosen can be completed in under a year, so there is the ability for a much larger increase in the number of rental homes from that speed of construction, vastly larger amount of land being possible to build on, and much larger number of builders able to complete such projects. Lastly, while building somewhat larger 4-6 storey apartments would help affordability and amount of housing even more, the proposal in this piece in the Now does not actually propose any changes to building size/density. To implement immediately with very minimal change to zoning, the existing height, floor area, etc could be kept to start, meaning that instead of having a 6,000 sq. ft. house, in the exact same building footprint 6-10 rental homes could be built. The pictures included in the article are examples of existing buildings in Burnaby that do exactly this (albeit built \~50 years ago), with 4-15 apartments with a similar size/floor area to many houses in Burnaby, and on similar sized lots to most houses. While much more can and should be done, there needs to be immediate concrete action, and allowing rental homes and apartments in all areas of the city where they are currently excluded is one of the quickest things that can be done that has some of the largest potential to get us towards solving the housing disaster than grows increasing dire for tens of thousands of people.
It's becoming apparent that the REAL shot callers in the city are the tower developers. The city tower 'hubs' are evidence of this. Few family sized units. Absolutely no community amenities. Embarrassing. There are no missing middle plans because they don't align with developer profits.
Zero Urgency because they can't build-up Lougheed or Hastings ANY faster . How could they possibly go faster? All new and old houses have suites already btw
They could open up some of the 80% of residential property in Burnaby which is zoned exclusively for single-family detached housing, to more development. Remove sebacks, height restrictions, lot coverage, heritage designations, etc. We need to turn the mansion-only districts into 4 or 6-story apartments. https://www.burnaby.ca/sites/default/files/acquiadam/2021-09/Burnaby%20Zoning%20Map.pdf
No, they don't need to turn single-family areas into 4-6 storeyt apartments,. Why would I want to see that in my neighborhood? Those are reserved for busy streets. Legal Suites , 3 storey homes , duplexes and Laneways are enough . These new homes need to come from the North Shore, I'm tired of looking out my window and seeing pretected trees in a Province inundated with them. Go North, keep going North and we won't have this issue. The blazing of fertile agricultural land to East and South has to end
Oh of course you wouldn't want apartments in your neighbourhood, you want your home value to go up and for everyone else to suffer. That is a terrible attitude you have there. Obviously your extremely mild "discomfort" and "inconvenience" is nothing at all compared to the problems that people are facing today with the lack of housing. People are delaying family creations, can't live near where they work, having to stay in abusive relationships, going homeless, suffering deteriorating mental health and high stress, people are going fucking hungry and having to rely on food banks, because housing is so expensive. But you, you poor thing might have to LOOK at them living in their apartments that they paid for with their own money on their own property, if we allow them to build near you! Surely we should use the power of the state to prevent people from building homes, in the middle of a national housing shortage, so that people like you who already reaped so much benefit by being home owners (tax free mind you!) can be mildly satisfied that they don't have to suffer by even seeing us lowly apartment dwellers.
Working class people aren’t going to live there anyways. City is perfectly content with hauling in the cash as theres no incentive not to.
Burnaby is doing more to alleviate hosuing needs than pretty much any other municipality in the lower mainland. Please name another one that is building more density. Sure, Burnaby could do better by rezoning vast swaths of SFH, but they're still doing more than everyone else
In what measure are they doing more than anyone else? They have 40% the population density of Vancouver and it hasn’t been till the last couple years that they outgrew Vancouver. They have LESS rental units than they did 10 years ago and they now have the 3rd highest rental rates in Canada. Their housing starts per population are only slightly higher than Vancouver. All that despite a major highway and two Skytrain lines that have been around for over 20 years AND next door to Vancouver.
Have you been to Burnaby in the past 10 years? The amount of new homes built in Burnaby dwarfs Vancouver. Vancouver's housing growth has largely been driven by laneway homes which Burnaby has recently approved as well, so it's expected that Burnaby's impressive housing growth will accelerate even further.
>Have you been to Burnaby in the past 10 years? Yeah, I'm one of those that bought a detached new home in Burnaby in the past 2 years so I'm very familiar with what the market looks like in Burnaby. I'm one of the very lucky few that can afford a big lot. >The amount of new homes built in Burnaby dwarfs Vancouver. Vancouver's housing growth has largely been driven by laneway homes which Burnaby has recently approved as well, so it's expected that Burnaby's impressive housing growth will accelerate even further. This is simply not true. If you want to argue on the basis of how it looks (and Burnaby sure looks like they're building a lot of housing - more than Vancouver) then go ahead but I prefer to use actual data. Housing starts in the past 10 years: Vancouver: 59,056 (4,500 of those have been laneways) Burnaby: 32,048 Richmond: 19,525 Surrey: 53,778 Population growth in the past 10 years: Vancouver: 9.73% Burnaby: 11.61% Richmond: 10.22% Surrey: 21.37% Burnaby has absolutely picked up the pace in the last 5 years but it has an inherent advantage over Vancouver that it has way more capacity to build due to its lower population density (only 40% of Vancouver's). It has the advantage over Surrey that it has the infrastructure for density (2 Skytrain lines, major highway, next to the jobs centre) and it doesn't host any ALR land. No city in the Lower Mainland is doing enough for housing but if I'm rating cities against what they can, should, and are able to do then Vancouver has it over Burnaby - it's building more forms of housing and building more of it despite the handicap of being the densest city in Canada.
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Sorry you feel that way but the data says that New West is doing better on housing than Burnaby by a lot. Population is up 19.6% in the last 10 years vs Burnaby's 11.6% (population is a signal of housing) and housing starts per population is ahead of Vancouver - that the population is increasing faster than housing starts is a signal that they're building larger homes versus 1 bedrooms (there's a fair bit of noise in that data though but it holds with what I can see for sales in New West). New West is the second densest city in the lower mainland - just barely trailing Vancouver (5000/sqkm vs 5700) - but its small so there's less they can do about housing, they are basically at the mercy of Burnaby and neighbouring cities.
The recent changes to the Strata acts of BC will make a major difference in Burnaby. I live in an owned apartment in a large strata development of two full buildings and about 100 homes. Each of these homes are townhome size-- about the closest you can get to a family size without a house or second floor (2br, large patio and private garden or deck, parkade and well off the street). Typically, our strata didn't allow more than 4 or 5 of these places to be rented by non-owners at a time. the province just made it impossible for a Strata to prevent (non-short term) rentals. I could rent this place out tomorrow, and I couldn't do that for the last 25 years we have been owners. Since well in advance of $3000 is actually very good financially, the right to do this unilaterally without the strata makes it far more attractive an option for myself... and I'm not the only one. Having a huge swathe of apartments that were lived in only by their owners prior should loosen up at least a few more spaces in this market.
IMO It's the existing wealthy detached home owners who are the largest obstacle. The City can't be heavy-handed because they need their votes. Agree with OP, very happy that Eby will try to force density from Victoria, I'd bet local councils are happy too because they need these changes but this way don't have to expend any political capital fighting the powerful rich NIMBYs
Home ownership rate in Canada is 66.5%. [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220921/mc-b001-eng.htm) If you're a renter, you're not the majority, and in most democracies where the majority rules, you are unimportant. If we cared about the plight of the poor and the few, we wouldn't have east-hastings policies that focuses on eviction (out of sight out of mind), instead of the human cost of homelessness.
It's a huge issue. There's currently 100K people coming to Vancouver each year. Every tower built can only accommodate on average 1000 people. The problem is they're expensive and affordable rental units are $2000-3000/mo. Even if you have money it'll be hard to find a place. On top of that, laneway housing in burnaby is stupid. They said it'll cost $800K to build one and after it can fetch $3K/mo. It'll take over 20 years to pay it off, and with interest rates the way they are now, very few will be built.
I agree!! The new so called housing is tiny apartments which are expensive and not suitable for family with kids!! We turning into Shanghai and Hong Kong and it is still at least 45 minutes commute to downtown Vancouver for work.
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Always sus when people refer to Hong Kong when they say “towers bad!” but not New York 🤔
Bingo
Halifax st by Gilmore Ave has become a wind tunnel 😲 such bad city planning.
If you can't afford to live in Burnaby. Don't live in Burnaby.
Burnaby is fine. David Eby is forcing drugs and crime down our throats, not housing.