I was back on the CBC today to talk housing, on a BC Today panel with Michael Geller. As always I had a lot of fun, it’s always exciting trying to spread the pro-housing message!
Here’s a link to the full discussion:
And here’s a clip of my response to one of the callers, who basically “Vancouver is full”. That’s one the ideas that really rubs me the wrong way. I’m serious when I say that that freedom of movement is one of the hallmarks of a free and democratic society. I think people know what’s best for themselves, and we should empower people to make decisions about where they want to live and what opportunities they want to pursue. That should be up to each of us, not planners artificially restricting housing choice just to satisfy a handful of NIMBYs.
By the way, I must correct Michael Geller’s position that apartments are no longer banned on most residential land. That’s just not true. You can quibble about exactly what the percentage it is, depending on whether you include things like roads and parks, but the bottom line is as soon as you get off arterial roads, most of the land in the city completely bans apartments.
This is slightly outdated now, but this analysis from Jens von Bergmann is a good place to start for an actually rigorous look at this question. His conclusion:
35% of all households live on single family and duplex properties making up 81% of Vancouver’s residential land, while the remaining 65% of households live on 19% of the residential land.
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