With three levels of government involved and a dog’s breakfast of vested interests at play, no sane person should expect any official game plan to ease Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.

Politicians are ducking and real estate interests are weaving, leaving hopeful buyers to their own devices.

It appears the jungle law of supply and demand will persist in the region until Canada’s currency strengthens — cooling the ardour of foreign buyers — or interest rates rise — cooling the ardour of domestic buyers.

Vancouverites are rightly concerned that the typical price of a detached home in the region has now reached $1.105 million, up more than 14 per cent in the past 12 months alone.

They are understandably dismayed by bidding wars further inflating home prices, in the recent case of one West Vancouver view property, by as much as $1 million over the asking price.

Things here are wild and — judging from my email inbox — people do not believe for a nanosecond that offshore buyers reflect no more than five per cent of the market, an assertion the B.C. Real Estate Association made in a recent report.

It is well worth noting the report failed to include landed immigrants or business-class investor immigrants as foreign buyers.

Politicians are aware of the public’s anxiety, and have levers at their disposal to assist certain categories of buyers and discourage others. But they are keeping 10-foot poles at hand, preferring not to mess with the market.

In any event, they would be unlikely to find common ground on the issue with the other levels of government that also have a hand in housing policy but a different ideology.

A right-leaning Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not greatly preoccupied by Vancouver’s affordability challenge. Commenting in March on hot markets in Toronto and Vancouver, the PM said: “We are watching it. We’re not planning to take any immediate action.”

Last month, a left-leaning Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson called for a tax on house flipping, which most observers agree is not a major cause of the escalating property prices, and on “luxury housing.”

(The top five per cent of Vancouver’s housing is valued at $3.4 million or higher.)

But B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s finance ministry quickly warned a luxury tax would hurt residential property sales and cost 3,800 construction and realty jobs.

The premier, in a potshot targeting Robertson, suggested Vancouver’s excessive development fees play a role in exacerbating price woes.

The governments involved have no interest in a co-ordinated approach. Otherwise, the politicians would have jointly mandated an independent body to gather facts and explore ways to calm the market.

Such a body also could analyze housing measures adopted in other globally attractive cities such as London, Singapore and Sydney.

In large part, the inaction is due to the fact the aforementioned parties do not want to kill the goose laying all the golden eggs. Or even ruffle her feathers.

Here’s why. More than 33,000 housing units in the region sold last year, with the total value of transactions reaching $27.3 billion. That’s equivalent to 50 per cent of the province’s entire budget spend this year.

All that activity generated $2.1 billion in economic spinoffs and an estimated 16,227 jobs, including 12,000 realtor jobs in Metro Vancouver.

Indeed, “offices of real estate agents and brokers” was cited recently by Statistics Canada as one of the 20 top growth industries in the province in 2014. The sector registered a 16.5-per-cent increase in output.

The province rakes in nearly $1 billion a year in property transfer payments.

Then there’s all that property tax collected by municipalities, based on assessed value.

Another consideration, as Clark points out, is the home equity Vancouver-area property owners have accumulated, equity they do not want diminished. Homeowners out-number the millennials trying to crack the market and they vote.

Politicians, lobbied by real estate interests, won’t act on this file unless forced by an enraged public.

byaffe@vancouversun.com