VANCOUVER — Carla Gibbons and husband Tyler Moore love living in Vancouver and, with a combined family income of $128,000 and a $150,000 down payment at the ready, they expected to be able to buy a home in the city.

“It’s hopeless, there’s nothing out there for us,” says Gibbons, a lab technician at the BC Cancer Agency.

“It’s like we’re being pushed out of the city,” says Moore, an electrician at Lions Gate Hospital. “If there is no room in Vancouver for families, what is this city going to look like in 15 years?”

They know they cannot afford a single-family detached house on either the east or west side of the city. They are ready to pay $600,000 for a three-bedroom townhouse or a half-duplex with 1,000-1,200 square feet of space plus a yard for Gibbons’s son, Easton, and the couple’s year-old daughter, Louise. They also have a large dog.

They would settle for a condo if it had an outdoor sun deck that would offer some play space.

Gibbons believes her must-haves are reasonable. She just wants to be able to accommodate her two young children.

The couple has seen “five or six houses,” all “dingy and dirty” or featuring odd configurations — with bedrooms on a lower floor or a third bedroom that really was a tiny den lacking a closet — or the property was on a busy commercial street, near railway tracks or backing onto a parking lot.

The family now lives in a two-bedroom townhouse on Fraser Street, for sale at $599,000 because they’ve outgrown it. The baby sleeps in her parents’ bedroom.

A new building is being constructed next door but Gibbons and Moore were disappointed that all 29 of the condo units feature a single bedroom.

They found two ideal three-bedroom townhouse developments in their east-side neighbourhood, but units in one started at $750,000, the other at $800,000.

They want to remain in Vancouver rather than head for the suburbs because Louise is in a west-side daycare, at $1,350 a month, after being wait-listed for a year. Easton’s father lives in North Vancouver. Moore finds it challenging enough to bicycle to his North Shore workplace from Vancouver.

Finding a home “would not be a problem for us anywhere else in B.C.,” says Gibbons, who moved from Kamloops to Vancouver years ago for schooling. Moore, from Revelstoke, followed Gibbons to the city.

The two are not whiners. The truth is, relatively few Vancouver properties offer three bedrooms in their price range.

Using a Multiple Listing Service search engine, entering the family’s requisites, two half duplexes and four townhouses on the east side were listed last week when I visited the couple. Four condos on the west side were available.

The family’s plight is one reason the newly created Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency has been welcomed. But it’s mandated to be a resource centre providing affordable rental housing for families who don’t qualify for social housing but cannot afford to buy.

Should a couple earning nearly $130,000 a year need the agency? The median household income in Vancouver is $70,000.