Quote:
Originally Posted by Truenorth00
I too would like to hear some suggestions.
Towers are too ugly. Duplexes raised land value too much.
Okay, short of deporting people from the Lower Mainland, what's the solution?
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Fixing Vancouver's affordability crisis will be difficult as the city has gone out of its way thru decades of bad zoning and housing policy to make the city as unaffordable as humanely possible but there are options.
1} Ban the destruction of all SFH unless they are required to build at least 3 homes in its place and alley homes don't count as housing units.
2} Greatly increase Vancouver's ridiculously low property tax rates on SFH while decreasing them on condos/TH.
3} Free up all city owned land exclusively for affordable housing both rental & real estate.
4} All rental and rent-to-own applications to the city should be completely within 3 months.
5} Wave all fee applications on rental or rent-to own buildings paid for by owners of SFH making their construction much more palatable to developers
6} No application of SFH, TH, condos {ie no more than 5X average income for the respectively municipality} be approved unless a high percentage include affordable housing ie 40%
5} Increase the agricultural tax rate in the ALR to urban rates unless it is producing very large {at least $3 million} of agricultural produce per year and when these tax avoiders are forced to sell than can only do so to the city at agricultural assessments and then can only be developed as affordable homes.
6} 50% of all buildings over 5 stories to be built as either rentals or rent to own where, for example, 5 years of rent equates to your 10% down keeping asking prices down.
7} 20% of all homes built in Metro must meet CMHC mortgage qualifications which automatically means only for Canadian citizens and those who do not already own a home which gets rid of flippers, speculators, and money launders. 100% of all housing built on former city owned land and ALR have housing built for first time CMHC qualifiers,
8) Require 50% of all housing under 5 stories in each municipality be modular housing which is much faster and cheaper to build.
9} Liquidate public golf course {100% in Vancouver itself} and the land to be used exclusively for affordable rental, real estate, and rent-to-own with, again CMHC mortgage qualifications. No more than 3 golf courses in all the Metro. Double the property tax rates on private ones.
These are all options that would make a HUGE dent in Vancouver's affordability crisis and ones the cities can legally employ. The fact that no city in Metro does any of them speaks volumes about how serious the city is about housing affordability and how corrupt our politicians are.