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Many of the needed solutions are out of the city’s jurisdiction. However, the city’s own land-use policies of promoting unsustainable levels of market redevelopment has been largely responsible for enabling this crisis to escalate.

Incentives to retain character houses such as more secondary suites and infill can improve affordability for renters and owners while accommodating growth.

The problem is that they don’t seem to know what the right supply is, other than it needs to be affordable. And they do not know how to achieve that affordability. So it still falls back to the same old doctrine.

By engaging with limited interest groups and insiders, the city has set emerging directions before broader public input. This is putting the cart before the horse. The focus of the emerging directions is of course reflecting that feedback, which is — the same old response — more supply. But none of the income levels identified as needing housing options will likely be able to afford the proposed new housing options.

One positive move by the city is to link housing affordability targets to income. But new construction is often more affordable only when it is small units. When the city is trying to encourage larger units for families, these new units will be out of the reach of most of the targeted income levels unless they are subsidized. There is no way that the city can produce subsidies to address the numbers of units they are targeting.

Although the status quo is not the answer, the emerging directions are in fact more of the status quo. Examples are: more area planning around transit stations for high-density development; Cambie corridor Phase 3 development; and expanding the rental 100 program off the arterials. All of these actions are more of the same and will continue producing unaffordable market rentals and ownership while inflating land values.