Why SHOULDN'T we just let the Chinese build a bunch of empty buildings? It's their money and if they want to waste it building us cheap housing on an investment that will eventually go bust, I say we let them.

The solution is scorched earth, "LOL, you thought your investment was going to go up, but instead we built such a ridiculous amount of housing that houses are now free for everyone".

That takes a long time to play out, and other factors come in to play during that time.

The fact that this didn't happen is due to regulation and other market distortions.

Increased supply, even if not available on the market means that the owner or occupant will not outbid a local on a different housing unit. Multiple additional housing units will over time enter the market and reduce competition and rent increases. A more friendly zoning situation will also spur developers to bring in more housing capacity. This will stabilize or reduce rents, as has been empirically demonstrated in the past year by Seattle.

If you could wave a magic wand and do the same thing for food and water wouldn't you do so?

Which has another cost: everyone here who owns their own property would see their most significant asset disappear as the value of their home plummeted along with all the investment properties.

If I could do the same for food, we'd soon live in a hellscape of rotten food.

In reality supply creation is constrained by real world factors such as time and labour supply and "just add more supply" is not so easy. It takes time.

On top of this Airbnb has acted as a sort of friction against supply creation, as when you create a new building, some percentage of the new units were being bought purely to be rented out 100% of the time as a hotel business and were thus never contributing to increasing the vacancy rate. This is why this new policy from the City of Vancouver is explicitly aimed at this sort of Airbnb use. When the City of Vancouver approves a new condo building, which takes years to build, they ideally want 100% of the units in that apartment building available for local renters.

Ultimately, supply is constrained by cost. And in Vancouver, that's not an issue - if the regulation allows it, converting a single family home to a multi-unit dwelling is so ridiculously profitable that the solution to the housing crisis is to simply change zoning to allow it, and then wait. "just add more supply" really is that easy if you let the market forces work. yes, it's going to take time, but this problem has been ongoing in Vancouver for much longer now than the amount of time needed to fix it.

I am aware that the nearest city (New Westminster) is developing pretty actively, but there is a deadzone in between the two (Burnaby) that seems to have draconian NIMBY zoning laws. Generally speaking, Vancouver's housing crisis is pretty amazingly interesting and probably is more a result of the incredibly poor transit here[2] than anything else.

[1] There may be some single family units remaining in the Denman neighborhood and there are some remaining in Strathcona (near east van.) as well as lots in Kitsilano and the south shore in general, but both of these areas are generally considered outside of the downtown core.

[2] Oh yea, we have driverless trains, woo... but there are only three transit lines none of which connect to either of our major universities and poor management of the system has left the lines overcapacity.

Lougheed is fair, I would generally consider that part of the Burquitlam span. It's awkwardly spread out with the mall itself sitting in a sea of parking lots, that doesn't tend to help build a good neighborhood but it is thriving, possibly due to being within short reach of the box stores out United/Woolridge.

Sorry, I was incorrect about Metrotown, it is a pretty nice city center but the rest of Burnaby suffers from west-coast suburb development, areas are either residential, res+light commerce or res+employers, it's hard to find a neighborhood where you can live, work and shop unless you're working in retail, and IMO a neighborhood that can't supply all three is going to fade away to pure residential in time due to NIMBYism.

Population density does play a huge part, which forces inadequate access to skytrains and so on, but you can still catch a bus, then use the same fare to get on the seabus, then the skytrain, then more buses, and maybe bring your bike so you can get that last mile in.

It's a public service and one that society should be happy to invest in. Governments that balance the books on public transit with accountants alone are acting against the societal good.

Cities built before cars were as widespread as they are now had to put a lot more effort into making themselves livable and providing sane ways to move about the city locally (for daily needs) and regionally (for occasional needs)

At the moment housing starts in Vancouver are at all time highs, unprecedented for decades, and yet vacancy remains sub zero and housing is very unaffordable. This suggests that even these unprecedented levels of supply creation are unable to meet demand, and there are more issues at play than a lack of supply.

Protest all you want, but with current available data, all the public can do is speculate, only the government has access to the data necessary to have a deeper understanding.

https://twitter.com/YVRHousing/status/984243329494745088

It only takes about a year in the US: http://eyeonhousing.org/2015/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-bui...

https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/policy-and-strategy/planning...