The math can’t lie. The city of Vancouver sits on 115 square km of the most beautiful land in the country; that hasn’t changed in more than a century and it’s not going to.

Yet, in the decade between 2001 and 2011, Vancouver’s population rose by 69,000 people; while the number of homes rose by just 28,000. Within the current 265,000-household total, only 47,000 are single-family homes of the sort coveted in the #donthave1million campaign.

There can be no clearer explanation for why Vancouver house prices are the highest in the country: We have a rising number of people bartering for a declining resource. No amount of innovative tax policy or draconian restriction on investment or speculation is going to turn that tide.

Compare Vancouver in the national context, and you hit the same mathematical and physical limits. Unlike some other cities (see details below), Vancouver faces immediate — if beautiful — constraints: the mountains and ocean on our doorstep. We’re squeezing our population into much tighter space. Regardless of the ratio of foreign investors, you would expect the housing in Vancouver’s warm, attractive streets to be significantly more expensive.

That’s not to suggest we should shirk our responsibility to address housing affordability in the city proper or in the whole Metro Vancouver region. Our communities will only remain livable if people can afford to live here. We should learn all we can about the effects of foreign ownership and speculation, and if someone can craft a tax policy that will improve affordability without undermining the investments of current residents, we should give it due consideration.

But we should do so with a clear eye on what is reasonable and possible in our fabulous but finite environment.

We’re hearing heartfelt complaints from young people who fear they will never be able to afford a single-family home in Vancouver. Fair enough. But it would be oddly extravagant (as well as physically impossible) if every professional couple in their late 20s could move into a suburban-style home within a 10-minute drive of the downtown peninsula. A better question might be whether it is fair or appropriate that 25 per cent of Vancouver’s current population now occupies 65 per cent of the land, often resisting any change to their single-family neighbourhoods that might accommodate new residents, be they foreign buyers or grown children hoping to stay in the communities where they were raised.

We’re also hearing complaints that families can’t find accommodations that are large enough in Vancouver’s townhouses and condominiums. It’s like the good old days are lost forever.

Are they? In the good old 1970s, the average home was 1,050 square feet and the average family size was 3.5. Yet by 2006, the average home had ballooned to 1,950 square feet and the average family size had shrunk to 2.5. Our circumstances have changed, but so have our expectations.

Within all of these restrictions and complications, the development industry is committed to being part of the solution. It’s how we make our living: building homes that people want at prices they can afford. If we’re going to do that in Metro Vancouver — and especially if we’re going to do it without consuming invaluable farmland on the constrained fringes of our existing municipalities — we will need to make better use of the limited land we have available.

We will need to work with communities and political leaders who are prepared to make room for development at a density and scale that will accommodate our grown children and our still-welcome immigrants even while retaining our livable character. Sometimes, that will mean condo towers. More frequently it might mean duplexes, fourplexes and mid-rise buildings, including more that have family-friendly three-bedroom configurations.