2024 table of contents

Happy New Year! Given how much stuff I post, I figured it might be useful to have a table of contents for what I’ve posted in the last year.

Policy announcements and proposals

There’s a lot of new policy announcements and proposals, from different levels of government, from opposition parties, and from government advisors. I try to summarize the key points.

• Feb 6 - The 2017 National Housing Strategy

• Feb 14 - BC Builds: middle-income public housing

• Feb 21 - Ottawa matches funding for BC Builds

• Mar 14 - Blueprint for More and Better Housing

• Apr 1 - BC Budget 2024

• Apr 3 - Federal government ties $6B infrastructure funding to housing reforms

• Apr 4 - BC: inclusionary zoning guidelines

• Apr 8 - Federal budget 2024 preview

• Apr 9 - Reducing the number of public hearings

• Apr 15 - The overall federal housing plan

• Apr 17 - Federal budget 2024

• Apr 23 - Vancouver staff report on provincial legislation

• May 15 - Vancouver missing housing completion targets

• May 30 - Another concrete strike appears on the way

• Jun 13 - Vancouver is allowing multiplexes in Kitsilano and Shaughnessy, but not following provincial guidelines

• Jun 17 - Burnaby multiplexes: more permissive than Vancouver

• Jun 19 - First Vancouver multiplex gets permission to build

• Jun 24 - Vancouver staff report on Transit-Oriented Development

• Jun 25 - Vancouver housing targets and plan

• Jul 2 - Rupert and Renfrew Station Area Plan

• Jul 8 - Making view cones less restrictive

• Jul 29 - BC to West Van: you have 30 days

• Aug 21 - Poilievre's housing bill would do surprisingly little

• Sep 9 - BC releases standard multiplex designs

• Sep 12 - BC to require flush toilets at construction sites with 25 or more workers

• Sep 23 - Home ownership at a 40% discount

• Sep 24 - Allowing mixed-income social housing

• Sep 26 - Kevin Milligan on Rustad's tax-credit proposal

• Oct 1 - BC NDP: Home ownership at 40% off, province-wide

• Oct 8 - Opposition to Metro Vancouver DCC increases

• Oct 17 - Proposed Metro Van increase on property owners: $90/year. On renters trying to find a place: $600/year.

• Nov 7 - Raising threshold for GST on new homes

• Nov 26 - Latest housing data: completions, housing starts, building permits

• Nov 27 - Mike Moffatt: four ways to reduce household costs

• Dec 18 - Villages: more retail, up to six storeys

• Dec 19 - Burnaby plans for universal water metering

• Dec 30 - Vancouver budget task force report

Housing Accelerator updates:

• Week 17 - Iqaluit and Nunavut, Wall Street Journal article

• Week 18 - Summerside, Surrey, Guelph

• Week 19 - Burlington, St. Catharines, Saint John, Kingston, Ajax

• Week 20 - Fredericton, Richmond, Milton, Whitby, Squamish

• Week 21 - agreement with Waterloo, vote in Oakville, rejection in Windsor, Surrey details

• Week 22 - Charlottetown, Regina, Coquitlam, low-cost loans for student housing

• Week 23 - Ottawa, Abbotsford, Victoria/Campbell River/Comox, rural communities

• Week 24 - Edmonton, plus support for smaller communities in Newfoundland, Alberta, and Nova Scotia

• Week 25 - Saskatoon, Thunder Bay, Whitehorse, North Vancouver, plus smaller communities in Ontario and New Brunswick

Arguments and explanations

xkcd

• Jan 9 - Homeowners fear change to their neighbourhood, not falling prices

• Jan 10 - Why are Vancouver's property taxes so low?

• Jan 16 - Auckland’s 2016 upzoning lowered the cost of land per square foot of floor space

• Feb 13 - Non-market housing - it helps, but we need market housing to meet the scale of the shortage

• Mar 19 - What do city councillors do all day?

• Apr 10 - Water metering would provide better incentives to not waste water

• Apr 24 - Yes, housing can be cheaper

• Apr 29 - The University Endowment Lands: some of the most expensive and underused land in the Vancouver area

• May 29 - Shrinkflation: Vancouver apartments are small because cost per square foot is high

• Jun 12 - We need excess capacity. If people are building right up to the limits, restrictions are too tight.

• Jun 20 - The downside of low taxes

• Jun 26 - Municipal finance ideas. You can’t beat something with nothing.

• Jun 27 - Yes, home prices are too high

• Jul 3 - Housing should be higher priority than design

• Jul 16 - Learning from practitioners

• Jul 30 - Why does Vancouver build so many high-rises?

• Aug 27 - Unsold high-rise condos in Burnaby. Investor demand isn’t infinite.

• Dec 2 - Ratcheting up the floor on prices and rents

• Dec 9 - Is housing unaffordability in Vancouver caused by scarcity or by low wages?

Counter-arguments:

• Jan 31 - CityHallWatch on Reddit mobilization

• Apr 11 - Letter to Mike Hurley. Austin: building more housing, rents falling

• Jun 18 - Response to Elizabeth Murphy op-ed in the Tyee

• Jul 24 - What’s wrong with Patrick Condon’s analysis?

• Aug 26 - C. D. Howe: a bad study of vacancy taxes

• Nov 25 - Rally against the Broadway Plan

Interesting arguments and explanations from other people:

• Jan 11 - Stephen J. Smith: Harmonizing elevator regulations

• Feb 22 - The growth debate in 1990, with Arthur Erickson

• Mar 7 - Oh the Urbanity!: Density follows demand

• Mar 12 - Jerusalem Demsas on UCSF study: homeless people in California are from California

• Mar 20 - Alain Bertaud on Vancouver

• Apr 2 - Tom Davidoff on "local democracy" resulting in housing scarcity

• Apr 18 - Sydney: what if apartment buildings could be somewhat taller?

• May 2 - Michael Wiebe on single-family zoning: reserving land for the rich

• May 6 - Globe editorial: "The build-more ethos is (finally) gaining political ground"

• May 23 - Manville and Monkkonen on unwanted housing

• Jun 5 - Michael Andersen: Construction costs and rents in Portland

• Jul 4 - Arpit Gupta: low property taxes make it harder for younger people to own

• Jul 23 - Stephen Quinn interview with New West mayor Patrick Johnstone

• Aug 7 - TransLink report: the need for more funding

• Aug 8 - Why housing in Vancouver is about 2X as expensive as Edmonton

• Aug 12 - Brendan Dawe on Burnaby: "masters of the old paradigm"

• Aug 14 - Class C apartments get cheaper when there's a lot of new "luxury" Class A apartments

• Aug 20 - Uytae Lee explains how new "luxury housing" frees up older housing

• Oct 16 - Stephen Smith: why are mid-rise elevators 3X as expensive in the US and Canada, compared to Europe?

• Dec 12 - Report: how can we bring down transit costs?

• Dec 17 - Salim Furth: how do high rents cause homelessness?

• Dec 23 - "I just want some damned stability in my life"

Presentations and submissions

• Jan 18 - Presentation to high school students: Why is housing so scarce and expensive?

• Jan 24 - Speaking notes: Jericho Lands policy statement

• Feb 7 - 2024 pre-budget submission

• Feb 27 - Presentation at YIMBYtown in Austin: Overcoming risk aversion in BC and Canada

• Mar 11 - Slides from a 15-minute talk to investors and small developers

• Mar 25 - Presentation at a VANA social event: All the lights are flashing red, all the sirens are going off

• Jun 3 - Speaking notes for HUMA parliamentary committee

• Oct 9 - Urbanarium debate #17 on the province asserting its authority over land use. Municipalities regulate new housing like it’s a nuclear power plant, and tax it like it’s a gold mine.

• Oct 30 - Presentation to Metro Van board: Taxing land lift is an unreliable source of revenue

• Dec 4 - Submission regarding federal proposal to tax vacant land

• Dec 11 - Speaking notes for Broadway Plan review

Individual projects

Besides wider policies, there’s a lot of battles over individual projects, which have to go through the discretionary site-by-site approval process.

• Jan 23 - 2015 Main Street: a 25-storey rental building close to SkyTrain

• Jan 30 - Speaking notes for 2015 Main Street

• Mar 6 - West Point Grey Safeway proposal, 450 market rentals, 115 non-market

• May 28 - 130 West Broadway

• Jul 22 - Shawn Oaks: high-rises near Oak and 41st

• Aug 6 - A new five-storey rental building in Kits

• Sep 11 - North Saanich: Council rejects subdivision of a 23,000 square foot lot

• Sep 18 - Speaking notes for 1149 Lynn Valley Road, in the District of North Vancouver

• Oct 23 - Will New West city council reject the Columbia Square redevelopment?

• Oct 28 - Central Saanich: 1934 Hovey Road. Rejected mixed-income rental and seniors housing.

• Nov 12 - A "monstrosity" in "beautiful and exclusive Arbutus Ridge"

• Nov 18 - Broadway Plan rezonings: slides and speaking notes

• Nov 20 - Surrey city council rejects Fleetwood townhouses

The political landscape

Summary of what’s happening in the political realm.

• Jan 2 - What's happening in 2024

• Feb 29 - Poilievre takes another swipe at Eby

• Apr 25 - A sketch of local politics for Josh White: Exasperation and impatience vs. fear and complacency

• May 21 - BC Conservatives on housing policy

• Sep 4 - David Eby vs. John Rustad

• Oct 2 - Mario Canseco: poll on housing

• Oct 7 - Advance voting in the BC election starts this week

• Oct 15 - David Eby's pragmatic problem-solving approach

• Oct 21 - The BC election: a photo finish

• Oct 29 - BC election: BC NDP re-elected with a bare majority

• Nov 4 - Trump 2.0: macroeconomic populism

• Nov 6 - Trump 2.0: it's happening

• Dec 16 - BC NDP and BC Greens reach agreement

What’s happening on the demand side

In the short term, cutting population growth is the biggest lever that the federal government has.

• Jan 16 - We need to fix the problem regardless of who's to blame

• Jan 25 - Marc Miller imposes province-wide caps on international student numbers

• Feb 1 - Ontario colleges flooded the system

• Mar 26 - Population growth: from >1M to 350,000

• Mar 27 - When Covid hit, housing scarcity spilled over

• May 9 - Limit on work hours for international students

• Aug 1 - Are the student caps working?

• Aug 15 - Amnesty for illegal immigrants is a bad idea

• Aug 29 - Low-wage temporary foreign workers

• Sep 5 - Vacancies up, rents down near universities and colleges

• Jun 6 - Demographics and housing demand

• Jul 11 - Immigration, labour shortages, and housing shortages

• Jul 18 - International study in BC

• Sep 19 - Student caps appear to be working

• Oct 31 - Sharp cuts to immigration targets

• Nov 21 - International student applications down

Stories from elsewhere

• Jan 3 - Joseph Politano: price changes within US cities

• Jan 4 - The US homebuilding boom

• Jan 17 - Gradualism in the US

• Feb 8 - Cape Breton University and the international student cap

• Feb 15 - Texas: lots of supply is pushing down rents

• Mar 13 - In January, San Francisco approved six homes

• Mar 18 - Calgary: delaying tactic fails

• Mar 21 - Jake Anbinder on the 1970s shift to local control

• Mar 28 - Doug Ford, NIMBY

• Apr 16 - Ontario housing legislation: Bill 185

• May 1 - Minnesota: 60-day permitting decisions

• May 7 - Federal funding for social housing will be redirected from Ontario to municipalities

• May 8 - Oh the Urbanity!: Edmonton is leading on housing reform

• May 14 - Oakville rejects four-plexes

• May 16 - Calgary council approves infill housing policy

• May 22 - Burlington cuts development charges on new housing

• Jun 4 - Development charges in Ontario

• Jun 10 - Housing shortages across the rich world

• Jul 10 - Office-to-residential conversions in Calgary

• Jul 15 - The Historical Housing Prices Project

• Jul 25 - 2009: Shrink-wrapping NYC

• Jul 31 - Seattle: bricks over housing

• Aug 19 - Nova Scotia boom vs. Ontario bust

• Aug 22 - Greg Ruben: The dramatic battle over LA's next swing set

• Aug 28 - Calls for more housing at the DNC

• Oct 3 - The UK is stagnating because it's banned investment in housing, transport, and energy

• Nov 5 - Why is Costco building housing over a new store in LA?

• Nov 28 - NYC: congestion pricing is back

• Dec 5 - Building a six-storey steel-frame building in NYC