Vancouver, Canada is a city of world class unaffordable housing. And yet it possesses some $10 billion dollars in real estate holdings which include social housing.
Most big cities own land, whether tied up in productive use, ‘lazy,’ with room for other uses, or vacant with no earmarked future. That land lends to be held in trust for the benefit of its citizens.
Vancouver has for many years kept its land in a Property Endowment Fund that is required to generate a reasonable profit if the use of the land changes. The fund includes Vancouver’s social housing.
The trouble is, social and other forms of ‘more affordable’ housing return less than ‘reasonable profit’. Expanding social housing programs on city land? Unprofitable. Giving away or selling city land at less than market rate to participate in affordable housing project? Unprofitable.
The city of Toronto over the last few years has been frustrated by a problem similar to that of Vancouver. With a mandate to increase affordable housing on one hand, but a firm requirement to receive market rate for any city land that is sold, Toronto has had little to contribute to affordable housing projects. The city’s requirements tug almost equally in opposite directions. For all of Toronto’s hopeful housing activism the city has managed to sell only 6 of some 840 city-owned parcels of land over the last three years.
Seattle has also been attempting to make its land own holdings more available to affordable housing projects. For more on Toronto and Seattle efforts to free up city-owned land, try: Affordable Housing, Seattle & Toronto. The Tail of Two Cities
In Vancouver, after years of frustration, there has been a promising new breakthrough: the creation of the Vancouver Affordable Housing Endowment Fund. It is mandated to participate in the delivery of thousands of truly affordable housing units over the next decade. Read more in the Globe and Mail: Vancouver removes perplexing roadblock to affordable housing
