Renters could be among the first to feel the effects of a city housing strategy that aims to make Vancouver more affordable for low and middle-income earners.

Coun. Geoff Meggs, who served as council liaison on an 18-member task force formed last December to examine the affordability issue, said he’s optimistic rental prices in the city will ease over the next year or two as more rental units become available.

“It may not be enough to resolve some of the issues out there, but it would be great if we saw our vacancy rates creep up a little bit so that our rents were more modest and people have more access to newer buildings,” he said.

City council is set to vote on a staff report Tuesday that outlines priority steps to put recommendations made by the task force into action.

The strategy calls for increased housing density, including condominiums, apartments, townhomes and row housing, along major arterial roads across the city, including Main Street, Dunbar, Fraser and Hastings.

The city will also consider piloting three so-called “thin streets” projects in the West End, Grandview-Woodland and Marpole, all of which are undergoing a community planning process.

Meggs said residents of the three communities under consideration for a trial project will have an opportunity to share their thoughts on the concept over the next few months, with work potentially getting underway within a year and a half.

“The idea is to see if the whole concept works well,” he said.

The thin-streets concept would see housing, and potentially additional green space, developed on a portion of an under-used road or lane.

Olga Ilich, a developer and former Liberal cabinet minister who co-chaired the task force with Mayor Gregor Robertson, said the recommendations are not “radical.”

Rather, the ideas are geared to generate new ways of thinking about development in a city where land is notoriously expensive and increasingly hard to come by.

“Right now Vancouver is attractive for (developers) who do great big projects and single-family home builders, but there are not a lot of smaller builders who specialize in some of the smaller projects,” she said.

“I think the main thing we were talking about when we were on the task force was be open to new ideas, don’t just think ‘This is the way we do it. This is the way we’ve always done it.’”

Data supplied by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation found Vancouver apartment renters paid on average $1,102 per month in 2011, the second-highest rental rate in the region behind West Vancouver ($1,478/month).

About 50 per cent of Vancouver residents rent, with vacancy rates averaging 0.9 per cent over the past 30 years.

The average price for a single-detached house on Vancouver’s west side in 2011 was $2 million, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

On the east side, the average price last year was $824,000.

dahansen@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/darahhansen