Like Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., also has a housing shortage. At the same time, many new homes in Vancouver sit vacant. Vancouver’s experience could hold lessons for Seattle.

Gil Kelley is planning director of Vancouver, B.C. He said a few years ago, you could look out at the Vancouver skyline at night, you know, when you’d expect to see people cooking and watching TV, and you could spot some buildings that were mostly dark.

“A great number of units had been purchased and just sat empty,” he said. It turned out, foreign investors were turning to Vancouver real estate as a place to park cash as opposed to as a place for people to live.

So Vancouver started charging a 15 percent tax on sales of homes to foreigners. And just this year, the city imposed a 1 percent property tax on vacant homes.

Related event: Urban Innovations speaker series: Affordable Housing