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The B.C. association that fights for housing developers has expressed its appreciation for my reporting on the growing number of international students and immigrants arriving in Metro Vancouver.

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The Urban Development Institute says my articles highlight the need for supplying more new homes to keep up with demand, mostly from offshore. And they are right to point to rapid population expansion as a significant part of the housing affordability story in Metro Vancouver.

So what’s to be done? Should Metro Vancouver politicians increase the supply of housing, as the UDI urges? Or should they work on trying to reduce demand? That’s the nucleus of the region’s often ill-natured debate.

“Over the next 25 years, our province is expected to grow by more than 1.4 million people, partly as a result of the federal government’s plan to raise immigration 13 per cent by 2020,” UDI president Anne McMullin wrote this year. “That means we must work together to create new homes if we want our children and grandchildren to have a future in B.C.”