Vancouver missing housing completion targets

First six-month status update

[Update on next Tuesday’s Housing Happy Hour: it’ll be at Portland Craft, 3835 Main Street, instead of Hero’s Welcome. Portland Craft is just up the street from Hero’s Welcome.]

Cumulative targets for the city of Vancouver

'Decline in completions': Vancouver misses housing targets ordered by B.C. Sarah Grochowski, Vancouver Sun.

In its first status update to city council, Vancouver reported that 1,607 net new housing units had been completed in the first six months, from Oct. 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. The city has been given a one-year target of 5,202 net new units and a five-year target of 28,900 net new units.

Oops.

The targets are for completions rather than housing starts, which means that in order to meet them, municipalities like Vancouver need to get a lot of housing approvals into the pipeline, and they also need to pay attention to economic viability. Setting restrictive limits on density, and extracting CACs so high that projects become marginally viable, means that any increase in costs results in projects having to wait for prices and rents to go up further.

If a municipality fails to meet its targets, the province has the power to intervene directly.

More

• Council meeting agenda, including the staff report and video.

• BC announces first housing targets, September 2023.

• Housing targets estimate from Jens von Bergmann and Nathan Lauster, updated September 2023. Their estimate is that the city of Vancouver's targets (which they're failing to meet) are much too low. The city needs to build about 15,000 homes per year for the next 10 years, rather than 6,000.

• Setting housing targets for municipalities, November 2022. The provincial legislation which gives the province the power to intervene.