Repost: What the cost bottleneck looks like
Slides from a presentation to the Metro Vancouver board
I’m doing an informal presentation today as part of the YIMBYtown “Unconference.” It’ll be based on a presentation to the Metro Vancouver Regional District board that I did back in November.
In short, there’s three bottlenecks to building more housing:
The approval bottleneck (“it’s easier to elect a pope”)
The cost bottleneck (even if it’s legal to build, it won’t get built if costs are too high)
Actual construction
In some ways the approval bottleneck is more obvious - why is it illegal to build a fourplex or a small apartment building? So I thought I’d talk a bit about the cost bottleneck.
Two requests to Metro Vancouver Regional District
[Update: the video from the board meeting has been posted. My presentation starts around 24:00.] The Metro Vancouver Regional District board (41 elected officials from across the region) is having a meeting this Friday: agenda and board package. I’m hoping to make a five-minute presentation on agenda item 3.5: Costs of Providing Infrastructure and Servic…