When friends and acquaintances from other parts of Canada ask me: ”Why is Vancouver so expensive?”

I reply: “Because people keep coming here!”

This may sound overly simplistic, but it’s the major cause.

The Metro Vancouver Regional District as part of their Regional Growth Strategy Plan estimates that more than a million more people will move here within the next 25 years.

As well, as we’re now considered an international hub, there are also nearly 100,000 international students in Metro Vancouver.

We’re popular, for obvious reasons.

So it seems every day in the media, there are stories about the cost of housing in the Vancouver area, the cost of rents and the absence of more affordable housing. To even the most casual observer, it’s evident we have a problem.

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It’s not my intent to roll out affordability indexes here. I’m sure some British Columbians could recite them by heart. I was surprised (or not) when I read that the average price of a single-family home in East Van now is nearly $1 million.

Officially, one-third of the nearly 1,800,000 British Columbian households are rented. I believe it’s more because census and household surveys can’t possibly capture the many thousands of secondary suites in the province, nor all the rental units in large houses, nor all the condominiums that are rented out or other types of units used as rentals, so it could be between 35-40 per cent.

And our rents are not cheap. We are all surely aware that the Vancouver area has the highest rents in Canada. In B.C., according to a recently-completed study on rental housing by the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, almost half of all renter households pay more than 30 per cent of their gross income for rent. This is considered unaffordable. What’s more, according to the same study, nearly one quarter of British Columbians are paying more than 50 per cent of their income for rent, which puts them at risk of being homeless. Renters are in a serious affordability crunch.

More rental housing is not being built, and will not be built if rental housing has to compete for land with condominium development. This is no secret. In September of this year, a parcel of land of less than one acre on Alberni Street in Downtown Vancouver sold for $83.5 million. This site is only a few blocks from Vancouver’s West End, where nearly 85 per cent of residents rent.

Luckily, B.C. has a rent protection policy in place and has had one for the past two decades. We believe it is what keeps many people in their homes and prevents homelessness. In the past 10 years, using the yearly rent-increase allowances compounded, a landlord would have received nearly a 50 per cent increase in rents. A fair return. This system of a yearly allowable increase simply limits extreme rent increases where some landlords would otherwise take advantage of tight housing markets.

Critics say that rent control inhibits their building of new rental units. No. It’s the price of land. In Ontario, the rent control laws do no apply to buildings built after 1991. Yet Toronto still has a shortage of purpose-built rental housing. Or that rent controls prevent landlords from doing repairs on their buildings.

Puzzling since Line 8960 of the Canada Revenue Agency Income Tax Guide states: “If you pay for repairs to your property, you can deduct the cost of labour and materials.”

Tenants need this protection in order to live in Metro Vancouver. Let’s hope we keep it or we’ll be in a real mess, and Granny may be on the street.

Tom Durning is a senior staffer at the Tenants Resource & Advisory Centre in Vancouver