Kristin DeRose has only lived in Vancouver for six years. But she has found herself constantly on the move, because the houses she rents keep getting demolished. “This is the third house I’ve lived in since I moved here that’s going to be torn down,” said DeRose, standing in the living room of a mid-century modern home at 4488 Cambie St. “One was in Point Grey, at First and Tolmie, the other was at Victoria and 49th. (Those) two we were evicted (from) because they were being torn down — this one we moved in knowing it.” DeRose is thankful for the relatively low rent she pays for a home that is about to be demolished ($1,800 a month for four bedrooms). But she’s perplexed why perfectly good houses keep getting knocked down. “I find people (here) just neglect property,” she said. “They just crash through houses and build brand-new houses, constantly.” Caroline Adderson feels the same way. And she decided to do something about it. Last year, Adderson started a Facebook page, Vancouver Vanishes — “A lament for, and celebration of, the vanishing character homes in Vancouver.” The page includes photos of heritage homes that have been torn down, plus mini-profiles (“Address: 3775 West 36th Avenue; Built: 1927; First Owner: George J. Kilpin, Musician, the Capitol Theatre; Status: DEMOLISHED”). It has proven popular, with 3,277 Facebook “likes.” Now she has started an online petition calling on city council to “save Vancouver’s character houses.” After a month, it’s attracted 2,635 signatures. But saving old houses in today’s red-hot real estate market is an uphill battle. Houses in desirable west-side neighbourhoods like Kerrisdale, Point Grey and Dunbar routinely sell for $2 million or more. They are often sold to developers, who knock them down and put up a bigger home that sells for upwards of $4 million. “And nobody lives in it,” said Adderson, an award-winning writer. “It’s not an increase in density, it’s not green, and it’s not increasing affordability — the price of the house doubles. Nobody (in Vancouver) can buy it. And then it’s empty, because it’s bought by (overseas) investors, or developers who are building it to attract investors. “It’s totally altering the neighbourhood, emptying the neighbourhood, everything.” Many people feel the same way, and have made their feelings heard at City Hall. Council has responded by having staff put together a “heritage action plan” to try to save the city’s dwindling stock of heritage buildings. Whether it will work is debatable. • We meet with Adderson at 3333 West 32nd Ave., outside a handsome “Dunbar castle” (a small home with a turret) that was built in the late 1930s. “There are people who are very passionate about this kind of house,” she said. “Somebody posted on my page that he’s keeping a record of them.” The 2,469-sq.-ft home looks to be in excellent shape. It’s bright and airy, with five bedrooms, a nanny suite, wood floors, a gas fireplace, and an updated kitchen with stainless steel appliances. But Adderson said an application has been filed to build a new home on the site.

The house is on a 48-by-113-foot lot at the corner of Blenheim, and sold for $1.475 million last July. That’s almost double the $768,000 the house sold for in 2004, which in turn was a major increase from the $590,000 the house sold for in 2003. The house also sold for $513,000 in 1997, $560,000 in 1996, and $248,000 in 1991. Down the street, a giant new house is being constructed at 3356 West 32nd Ave., which used to have a modest home that sold for $2.275 million in 2012. A block up Blenheim is a big hole where a couple more houses have been torn down. Adderson says that on some blocks there are almost no old houses left. Four old houses directly beside her home have been torn down and replaced with larger faux-heritage homes (she calls them “craftsmen on steroids”), which were sold to investors who don’t live in them. “There are five houses on my street that are empty,” she said. The one bright spot for heritage activists is the “Two Dorothies,” a pair of lovely mock-Tudor homes that were built next door to each other at 2827 and 2837 West 43rd Ave. in 1931. Their nickname comes from neighbours Dorothy MacMillan and Dorothy Smith, who owned the homes for many years. The two Dorothies might be the cutest heritage homes in Vancouver — their steep roofline, arched windows and timber-on-white-stucco facades make them look like something out of a fairy tale. They are also quite large (2,400 sq. ft) and in great shape. But a developer snapped them up for $1.95 million apiece in December 2012, and made plans to demolish them for two new 4,500-sq.-ft single-family homes. There was a public backlash, and the houses were on Vancouver’s heritage registry, which offered them some protection. So the developer worked out a deal with the city to move them two blocks north to 2820 West 41st, where they will be incorporated into a new, eight-unit development. The irony is, they had to knock down another old home to make room for the Dorothies. It recently sold for $2.85 million. • Vancouver historian John Atkin says the current spate of demolitions is partly due to quirks in the city’s zoning that date back to 1922, when Point Grey was a separate municipality. Lots in Vancouver were generally 25 feet wide, while lots in Point Grey were 33 and 66 feet wide. Point Grey’s zoning also allowed for much higher floor space, and when Point Grey joined Vancouver in 1929, the Point Grey zoning stayed in place. “Most people in the 1920s were building fairly modest homes,” Atkin explains. “So virtually every house (on the west side) from 1922 onward, which is the era of character houses, these great storybook castles and little English revival houses, is sitting with this massive potential density sitting on top of them. “Unless that density disappears, those houses are all sitting there as bulldozer bait, because suddenly you can go from tiny house to big house.

“The value then is all in the land, the (existing) house has no value whatsoever. And pretty much any incentive the city throws at the owner — put an infill in, put your laneway house in — it’s not going to give them the density of the existing floor space that’s in the zoning.” This even applies to old mansions in Shaughnessy. “Shaughnessy has what we would think are these absolutely monstrous houses,” said Atkin. “But many of them are actually underbuilt for their very large lots. Hence almost any Shaughnessy house is bulldozer bait. I’ve walked through a couple recently where you think, ‘Wow, what a great house,’ and the real estate guy is selling it for lot value, because he knows the house isn’t going to stay.” Another problem is that when the character homes were built in the 1920s and ’30s, land was cheap, so people often built homes on multiple lots, “so they could put the house in and then the big garden around it.” “You have two or three legally subdivided lots, and often the house sits across the lots, which poses a big problem,” said Atkin. “If the house doesn’t fit on one lot, then it’s generally going to be (demolished), because two or three separate houses is worth more than one house and an infill.” The result is that some of the prettiest houses ever built in Canada have been ripped down. “We have lost extraordinarily beautiful little storybook houses and character houses,” said Atkin. “We even lost a Dunbar castle, for (bleep’s) sake. You don’t demolish those sorts of things. But somebody blew it up, because they could put a much larger house on the property. “That’s your primary problem. You can twiddle with heritage incentives, you can talk warm and fuzzy about heritage, but you can also get a demolition permit, knock the house down and start building. “(But if) you go the heritage route, well, hang on to your hat, because you go off in a different stream. It takes much longer, and you’re not going to get something that can be readily sellable. And that’s the problem.” Atkin said to save the remaining character houses, the city has to be serious about renewing its heritage register, which was compiled in 1985 and has never been updated. He also said the city has to come up with incentives that make it financially viable to keep an old home, rather than replacing it with something double the size. • Vancouver councillor Heather Deal agrees the heritage registry needs updating, which is why it is the foundation of Vancouver’s new “heritage action plan.” “After many years of saying we were going to do it, and not quite getting around to it, we finally bumped it up the priority list and gave it the funding it needs,” said Deal. “We also added some factors, such as looking at the character homes issue. The staff are currently in the process of hiring consultants to come in and do the work that we asked for, which includes looking for programs that give incentives for retaining older homes.”

Deal said the city will look at extending heritage grants, allowing more density on a site if you retain an old building, and “streamlining” the cumbersome process homeowners have to go through to restore an old house. But she doesn’t think changing the zoning to prohibit bigger homes in much of the west side will fly. “We talk about (the issue) like somebody who comes in from outside and imposes this,” she said. “But people have invested in that property, (and) often have held it for decades, and are now looking to recoup on their investment. And so downzoning is not something that is necessarily popular among a lot of people. “In fact, in New West, there was a neighbourhood with a lot of character homes, and a group of heritage activists got the city to look at downzoning. And the vast majority of people said, ‘No way, you’re not (interfering) with my investment’.” There is no doubt some homeowners are cashing in, big-time. The 1,100-sq.-ft mid-century modern home at 4488 Cambie St. where Kristin DeRose lives has been rezoned for condos, and sold for $3.7 million in 2012. The other three houses on the block sold for $3.96 million,$3.48 million, and $3.7 million, respectively. All are on 65-by-150-foot lots, which are being consolidated into a 102-unit development that includes two six-storey buildings and a row of townhomes. Caroline Adderson is sad to see some beautiful mid-century homes go, but said there is a payoff in densification. But she added that there is no densification if you simply tear down one house and replace it with a bigger single-family house, which is what’s happening in Kerrisdale. She notes Vancouver’s governing Vision party promotes itself as environmentally friendly, and has a stated goal of making Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020. She wonders how the city will pull it off when every house that comes down produces an estimated 45 tonnes of waste. According to the city, 1,082 buildings were torn down in Vancouver last year. Metro Vancouver estimates that 33 per cent of the waste going to local landfills comes from demolitions and construction. “I think, just a second, greenest city in the world by 2020?” said Adderson. “How can that be?” Whether the demolition wave continues may depend on investors from China, who many blame for pushing the local housing market sky-high. Washington-based Global Financial Integrity estimated that China suffered a net outflow of $472 billion US in 2011, and at least some of that money has gone into Vancouver real estate. But the federal government recently announced it was shutting down an immigrant investor program. And Deal said that may have an effect on the Vancouver market. “There’s been a huge amount of controversy and debate on whether or not foreign investment has a lot to do with the destruction of homes,” said Deal. “We’ll be able to test that theory fairly soon, as the (immigrant investor) program discontinues.” jmackie@vancouversun.com _______________ Prices ever-higher You can chart the rise of house prices on Vancouver’s west side by searching an address through BC Assessment, which shows sale prices dating back a couple of decades. Here are the sale prices of some of the “character” homes on the Vancouver Vanishes Facebook site, plus some sale prices on the Cambie corridor that the city recently rezoned for condos: