With “for lease” signs popping up everywhere in Vancouver’s commercial districts, it’s become crystal clear just how difficult the situation is for our city’s small businesses. Online retail is part of the reason so many small businesses are closing shop. Many of us now find the convenience of shopping with our keyboards much preferable to…
Category: gentrification
Turn up the taps & cool housing prices more
For many years now housing prices in Vancouver have been moving up at a very fast pace — so fast that most of us have been priced right out of the market. Economists will forever debate the causes of this phenomenon. However, it would appear that at long last relief finally may be here. Provincial…
View cone demolition – another nail in the coffin of affordable housing
Yesterday, Vision Vancouver approved the application for a tower adjacent to BC Place Stadium. The application is from BC Pavilion Corporation or PavCo, the provincial Crown corporation originally created to manage the Expo 86 site. The tower, one of three PavCo is proposing in total for the site, has created a lot of concern given…
Affordable rents: There’s a way, just no will
Over the last number of years, Vision Vancouver has been offering developers significant incentives in the form of waiving development cost levies or DCLs in return for a commitment from the developer to provide purpose-built rental housing. (See my June 29 blog on DCLs.) Unfortunately, this has not helped at all in addressing Vancouver’s housing…
Hurried “chainsaw massacre” of our city’s zoning
I don’t normally read the Vancouver Sun — it’s much too conservative for me. However, I was recently made aware of a great guest editorial by Elizabeth Murphy, a respected urbanist and former member of Vancouver’s planning department. Her op ed ran July 2 and is a must-read. Calling it a “chainsaw massacre”, she does…
Developers, their fair share — and real low-cost housing
Housing was all over the news this week, but three examples really speak to the usefulness of development cost levies in this regard — when they’re used for real affordable housing. I’ve long been critical of the City of Vancouver for its policy of waiving development cost levies or DCLs when a developer agrees to…
A fighting chance with limits on big money in politics
Last week I blogged about the very positive, upbeat COPE nomination meeting I recently attended. This week let’s take a look at the bigger picture — the likely impact of new legislation that will govern campaign financing in this fall’s municipal elections. David Eby, B.C.’s Attorney General, brought in legislation last September shortly after Vancouver’s…