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They’re wrong. The best way to make housing more affordable in Metro Vancouver is for governments to get out of the way and allow developers to build more homes.

I was living in Vancouver when the Canada Line SkyTrain — which runs from Waterfront, south along Cambie St. to Richmond and the airport — opened in the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics. At the time, most expected a development boom around the new subway stations.

When I visited last month, there were indeed a host of new condos and construction sites along Cambie. But it was very apparent that the new buildings were not the large towers one would expect in a city that is boxed in by the sea on one side and mountains on the other, where even crack shacks sell for over $1 million. Instead, the street was littered with a bunch of new low-rise buildings.

A look at the city’s Cambie Corridor Plan shows that municipal planners have a meticulous set of regulations laid out for each few blocks. On some sections of the street, developers can build 12-story buildings, while on others, they are limited to six.

How did they come up with these restrictions that directly limit the future supply of housing in the city and thus serve to keep prices high? At the intersection of Cambie and Marine Dr., it was done on the basis of a “shadow impact analysis.” The plan states that, “Proposed buildings should not shadow the soccer field during morning school recess period.” God forbid.