Vancouver’s vacancy rate is about 3 percent, making a lack of housing the new norm. At the core of the problem is a scarcity of affordable development which is being stymied by regulations and cost.
Could innovative building be the solution? Perhaps, but developers say it’s not that simple.
“There’s innovative housing types, but what’s closely wrapped up in that are innovative zoning types,” said Jack Harroun, a general contractor in Vancouver. “The reason I say that is you can have a lot of innovative housing and nowhere to put it.”
Tiny homes, for example, could be considered innovative, but there’s little land zoned to accommodate those types of homes.
“If you want to do (accessory dwelling units) or you want to do any kind of mixed-use development, there’s a lot of building obstacles to the code and potential planning process to make some of those things that sound great. But when you put the pencil to the spreadsheet, it makes it infeasible,” Harroun said.
The Vancouver Housing Authority strives to provide affordable housing and looked into constructing ADUs and tiny homes, but quickly learned it wasn’t as cheap as they imagined.
“We’re looking down the same avenue, how can we reduce the cost of construction, and that just didn’t pan out to be a real viable opportunity,” said Roy Johnson, VHA executive director.
Instead, VHA is looking at different construction methods to reduce the amount of time spent building rather than reduce the materials cost. Exploring cross-laminated timber, for example, in addition to installing prefabricated elements is on their to-do list.
“We’ve done it on a couple other projects,” said Terry Harder, VHA construction manager, about walls built off-site. While the cost savings are not significant, he said it has saved construction time. “It’s been a huge benefit.”
Johnson added that completing construction sooner means they can launch into the next project sooner, “which could accelerate the number of units we build.”
Still, there’s a general consensus that the more innovation makes its way into construction, the more beneficial it could be for affordable housing. At this point, Harroun said the benefit lies with multi-level developments at least six stories tall.
“I think there’s a lot of people trying and I’m desperately hopeful that somebody comes up with something new and innovative that will work and really drive those prices down,” he said.
Changes to the planning and zoning codes, however, would also help.
Harroun said increasing flexibility in zoning would allow builders to get creative with density. Shrinking the average lot size and building more row houses is just one example.
“That could provide some really great solutions with limiting any kind of sprawl,” he said. “It’s one or the other; you get sprawl, or you get density.”
Rezoning to allow taller buildings or homes closer together could be the affordable option, Harroun added.
“If your population is going to double in the next 29 years, the people have to go somewhere,” he said. “Either we keep doing what we’ve done, or we get innovative.”
Johnson said inclusionary zoning has helped bring about additional affordable housing units, but it’s still not enough to solve the problem.
“Unfortunately we don’t have that magic answer. Otherwise, we’d be doing it,” he added.
